Do we like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?
Our score: 8 out of 10. A long record of backing trans people, migrants, workers and climate action, with one contested position on Israel and a minor ethics finding.
Born in the Bronx, Ocasio-Cortez studied economics and international relations at Boston University, worked in Senator Ted Kennedy's office, then came home to organise in the Bronx and worked on Bernie Sanders' 2016 campaign. She'd never held office when she ran in 2018.
Then came the upset. She beat Joe Crowley, a 10-term incumbent and the House Democrats' caucus chair, while being outspent roughly 18 to 1. On the night she said they had beaten “a machine with a movement”. Since then she's become the face of the party's left, and last year she packed arenas with Sanders on the Fighting Oligarchy tour, with around 36,000 reported in Los Angeles.
On the harm test she's one of the clearer wins in Congress. She told trans young people “I stand with you” in a video last October, and she has put her name to bills on public housing, home-care wages, a climate corps and a 10 per cent credit card rate cap. After a fatal shooting by a Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis she told CNN the country had to “draw a line in the sand” against federal agents' conduct.
The asterisk is Israel. In Munich in February she said unconditional US aid had “enabled a genocide in Gaza”, and in April she told colleagues she'd vote against all military aid to Israel, defensive systems included. Her allies read that as holding US law to account; critics, including some fellow Democrats, called the genocide claim wrong and inflammatory. Where you land depends on which of those you hear first, and it's a contested political position, not a pattern of harm.
On the stains: the House Ethics Committee found her 2021 Met Gala outfit and ticket broke House gift rules and ordered her to pay roughly $3,000 more, a fairly small ending to a nearly four-year saga. A conservative group's 2019 complaint to the Federal Election Commission alleged her chief of staff moved about $885,000 through PACs and LLCs; she said “There is no violation.” Nothing here suggests a boss people are scared of.
The good stuff is real. In 2021 she raised more than $4.7 million for Texans after the winter storm, flew down to help at a Houston food bank, and said charity can't replace policy. She also does what she says: her bills this year include a data-centre moratorium, a public housing Green New Deal and a fix to Medicare Advantage steering.