Squad member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., played coy on whether she planned to challenge fellow Democrat, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, for one of New York's Senate seats.
Asked about the possibility of running for the Senate in a new Politico profile, she replied, "don’t ask me that question," before telling the publication to "print that" response.
Gillibrand is up for re-election in 2024. Shortly after her 2018 election, she ran for president, angering some New York media outlets who said she lied about not harboring White House ambitions, but she never generated any momentum and dropped out well before the 2020 Democratic primaries.
Ocasio-Cortez's relationship with party leadership has changed from an "agitator to an insider" in Congress, Politico said. The far-left darling has been encouraged in some circles to seek higher office.
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In January, Ocasio-Cortez ascended to the No. 2 seat for Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. The Democrat admitted she was less critical of party leadership with an influx of more "liberal, younger and more diverse" allies in her party.
Her willingness to work with the more moderate side of her party has resulted in "a significant shift" in party dynamics and less media attention. "I … own that I was very critical of our party’s leadership," Ocasio-Cortez told the outlet.
Despite her new leadership role and recently winning re-election, the progressive Democrat revealed she was open to seeking higher office or leaving Congress entirely.
"There’s a world where I’m here for a long time in this seat, in this position. There’s a world where I’m not an elected official anymore. There’s a world where… I may be in higher office," she said to the outlet.
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The Democrat rebuffed attempts to compare her brand of politics to her outspoken peers on the other side of the political aisle.
"There are people, including moderates, who sometimes try to draw this completely unfair, false equivalence between progressives and, frankly, the fascists that we see in the Republican Party," Ocasio-Cortez slammed.
Newly elected Gen Z progressive Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla. revealed he was being mentored by Ocasio-Cortez. One of the lessons he'd learned from his mentor, he said, was how to be a "bad--- motherf---er."
She’s "helping on the best ways to craft questions, the best ways to deal with combative people on the committee," Frost said.