Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says in a new interview that her relations with senior colleagues has improved since she first took office but says that her relationship with Speaker Nancy Pelosi remains strictly professional.
The New York progressive congresswoman sat down with GQ for an expansive interview with correspondent Wesley Lowery, and explained how she received a chilly reception from members of her own party upon arriving on Capitol Hill. The 32-year-old first took office in 2018, at the time unseating an establishment-aligned Democrat for the seat who was seen as a potential replacement for Speaker Nancy Pelosi: Joe Crowley.
Arriving in Washington, Ms Ocasio-Cortez said she experienced outright hostility from members of her own party angered at her challenging an anointed leader of the caucus.
Describing her swearing-in ceremony, she noted that many of her own colleagues refused to clap when her name was called as they had done for other new members: “[I]t was very clear that the reception was not the same, just a smattering of applause”.
“My everyday lived experience here is as a person who is despised. Imagine working a job and your bosses don’t like you—and the competing company is trying to kill you,” she told the magazine.
One older, befuddled member of her party even mistakenly gossiped about her — to her face — at the ceremony without realising it.
“It’s a real shame that that girl won,” she recalls the unnamed member quipping. She remembers shooting back: “You know that’s me, right?”
Nearly four years after her election to Congress, she says her relationships with colleagues has improved as many have been forced to reckon with not only her popularity within the party base but her staying power in terms of electoral success: She has now beaten back one primary challenger, in 2020, and scared any potential Democratic rivals out of the race this cycle.
But one divide remains: Her frosty relationship with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose thinly-veiled contempt for much of Ms Ocasio-Cortez’s platform was evident in 2019 when she dismissed the Green New Deal plan espoused by the congresswoman and her colleague Ed Markey in the Senate as the “green dream” in a snide comment to reporters.
Ms Ocasio-Cortez dismissed much of that drama as media speculation in her interview with GQ, but admitted that the two do not speak beyond addressing matters of the House: “I wouldn’t say it’s personal,” she said of their relationship.
Conservatives in her party (or those seeking to appeal to the right in tough races) continue to pick fights with her. Most recently, her Ohio colleague Tim Ryan made a point of openly rejecting her endorsement of his campaign for the US Senate, telling reporters, "It's not a helpful endorsement here...nor did I seek it."
Ms Pelosi, too, has been less diplomatic than has her New York counterpart when describing progressives in her own party. While she has been careful not to name names, the Speaker and her allies regularly disparage their lefty colleagues in the media.
“[T]hey don’t have any following. They’re four people, and that’s how many votes they got,” she said of Ms Ocasio-Cortez and the so-called “Squad” in 2021.
“Some people come here....to pose for holy pictures,” the Speaker further mocked them in an interview with Politico that year. “See how perfect I am and how pure?”
The sniping has clearly taken a toll on the congresswoman, who is still a relative newcomer to Congress. In 2020, she told reporters that the “hostility” from leadership and other Democrats unwilling to play as a team could drive her out of politics together.
"I don't even know if I want to be in politics," she said in an interview with The New York Times. "You know, for real, in the first six months of my term, I didn't even know if I was going to run for re-election this year."
"Externally, there's been a ton of support," the congresswoman added at the time "But internally, it's been extremely hostile to anything that even smells progressive."
