Ocasio Cortez Loses
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez declared victory when Amazon announced Thursday that it would not build a second headquarters (known as HQ2) in Queens, New York. Gov. Andrew Cuomo called it a “lost economic opportunity” and blamed “a small group [of] politicians [who] put their own narrow political interests above their community.”
Ocasio-Cortez Commits Re-election Gaffe, Losing a Progressive Ballot Line Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez needed 15 signatures to secure a Working Families Party ballot spot, but a court. Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview with the progressive National Catholic Reporter that she considers herself Catholic and “grew up in the Catholic faith.” She told the publication that her favorite story from the Bible is when Jesus threw money changers out of the temple.
The dispute between the two Democrats lays bare a divide over the plan to offer $2.8 billion in tax breaks for Amazon to establish a major presence in New York City. On one side, old hands like Cuomo; on the other, the newly insurgent, left-leaning wing represented by Ocasio-Cortez.
“Today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers and their neighbors defeated Amazon’s corporate greed, its worker exploitation and the power of the richest man in the world,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter. The new development would have been in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens, near Ocasio-Cortez’s district.
The outspoken freshman Congresswoman was a critic of the deal Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio had brokered with Amazon.
Cuomo and other supporters of the project said that Amazon would have brought more than enough investment to the city to justify the tax breaks, and would have established New York as a tech hub to rival other hubs like San Francisco.
Additionally, he said, HQ2 would have brought “at least 25,000-40,000 good paying jobs for our state and nearly $30 billion dollars in new revenue to fund transit improvements, new housing, schools and countless other quality-of-life improvements.”
However, Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter questioned the validity of the jobs figure and pointed to a report that Amazon will pay zero federal income tax in 2018, despite $11 billion in profits.
“$0 for schools. $0 for firefighters. $0 for infrastructure. $0 for research and healthcare,” she tweeted Thursday. “Why should corporations that contribute nothing to the pot be in a position to take billions from the public?”
In Amazon’s search for a city to host HQ2, the company invited city boards to put forward bids, which Ocasio-Cortez and others criticized as a means for the company to secure the largest tax breaks possible.
Ocasio-Cortez was elected to Congress for the first time in last year’s midterm elections. The following week, Amazon announced that New York and Arlington, Va., were the winners of its much-hyped HQ2 search competition. Immediately, the congresswoman-elect stated her opposition to the proposal.
“Amazon is a billion-dollar company. The idea that it will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks at a time when our subway is crumbling and our communities need MORE investment, not less, is extremely concerning to residents here,” she said on Twitter last November. “It’s possible to establish economic partnerships [with] real opportunities for working families, instead of a race-to-the-bottom competition.”
Amazon has said it will continue to hire extra workers in New York despite walking back its HQ2 plans.
Get our Politics Newsletter. The headlines out of Washington never seem to slow. Subscribe to The D.C. Brief to make sense of what matters most.
Thank you!
For your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder.Ocasio Cortez Loses It
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) said during a recent town hall that Republicans regularly call any election loss 'illegitimate.'
Ocasio-Cortez said during her appearance last weekend that Republicans were routinely denying election results, which she called a hallmark of 'tyranny.' A number of prominent members of her own party have said that fraud and cheating marred, or even invalidated, Democrats' recent gubernatorial losses in Georgia and Florida, as well as Hillary Clinton's defeat in the 2016 presidential election.
Recent Stories in Politics
'It's quite tragic and it's very sad that it's devolved to the point that any election they lose is illegitimate, and any election they win means they can govern with impunity,' Ocasio-Cortez said. 'That is almost the definition or one of the hallmark aspects of authoritarianism.'
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez Twitter
Ocasio-Cortez has repeatedly praised Democrat Stacey Abrams, the Georgia gubernatorial candidate who never conceded her 2018 loss in spite of losing by more than 54,000 votes to Republican Brian Kemp. Abrams claimed Kemp engaged in systematic voter suppression. Democratic presidential candidates, including Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), repeated her complaints.
Abrams is not the only high-profile candidate whose loss Democrats have contested. Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum suggested in March that he would have beaten Republican Ron DeSantis if there had been a proper vote count. Gillum conceded his defeat the night of the election, then retracted his concession, and then conceded again when a recount showed him more than 30,000 votes behind his opponent.
Ocasio Cortez Loses Twitter
Similarly, Democrats have cried foul over Hillary Clinton's 2016 loss to Donald Trump since the day of the election. Clinton has been among the most vocal objectors, calling Trump an 'illegitimate president' who knows he stole the election with Russian assistance.