Someone just sent Chuck Schumer a terrifying new message through a media leak: watch your back Chuck because AOC is coming.
We don’t know who leaked the information that AOC may consider a primary challenge to one of the sitting New York Senators.
One must strike while the iron is hot in politics as AOC is surely being advised. Someone as ambitious as AOC will not sit behind Chuck and Gillibrand forever, that much we know.
From The Daily Wire: The Democratic Socialists who launched a full-on assault on the House of Representatives in 2018 are looking at bigger targets for 2022 and 2024, but they still involve the group’s most successful candidate to date, Rep. Alexcandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
According to a report in Axios, “top Democrats” are expecting Ocasio-Cortez to build on the success of the small civil war she’s created between factions of the party and launch a campaign to primary one of New York’s two Senators, either Sen. Chuck Schumer or Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.
Schumer seems the more likely target, according to Axios’s sources, particularly given that he often falls on the “wrong” side of the battle between progressives and moderates. She’s also dealt more closely with Schumer, helping to dictate how the Senate handles policy initiated in the House by progressive legislators, including her own “Green New Deal,” which came up for a vote in the Senate and lost handily (even though AOC and her co-authors were adamant that a solution be enacted quickly).
Gillibrand, though, may be the weaker candidate, especially given her lackluster primary performance thus far, and will be up for re-election more in Ocasio-Cortez’s timeline: 2024, rather than 2022 for Schumer.
There are drawbacks. Even if Ocasio-Cortez is planning to move on to bigger and better things, she’ll need a base of support she currently lacks.
National popularity is one thing, but a Senate run will require the attention of every voter in New York State, and Ocasio-Cortez is only popular with voters in and around Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. Those might be key constituencies for a Senate run, but they by no means guarantee a victory for a first timer.
From Axios: Top Democrats tell “Axios on HBO” they expect Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may eventually primary one of the two New York senators — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in 2022, or Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in 2024.
Why it matters: AOC has instantly become one of the party’s most coveted endorsers (up there with Clintons and Obamas) — and has recently made common cause with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a pairing that could take off.
