Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is sharing how she felt the first six months after becoming a Congresswoman.
The New York lawmaker was sworn-in in January of 2019 and her first term ends in January of 2021 — she is seeking reelection. She won her district in the 2018 congressional elections against 10-term incumbent now-former Rep. Joseph Crowley.
Ocasio-Cortez is now making the cover of Vanity Fair’s December edition. Speaking with the magazine, she shared, “There have been many times, especially in the first six months, where I felt like I couldn’t do this, like I didn’t know if I was going to be able to run for reelection.”
“There was a time where the volume of threats had gotten so high that I didn’t even know if I was going to live to my next term,” she added. “Their sisterhood and their friendship, it’s not some political alliance. It’s a very deep, unconditional human bond.”
Ocasio-Cortez is part of “the squad” which consists of her, Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who all became freshmen representatives after the 2018 election.
After a friend told Ocasio-Cortez, “It’s to get you to destroy yourself so that they don’t have to destroy you,” the New York representative said she came to realize, “Okay, I’m not crazy. It’s not that this is too much for me. It’s that this is an environment with a very specific purpose.”
President Donald Trump has taken swipes at the Congresswomen. He seemingly referred to the women when he tweeted in July of 2019 at “‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen” telling them to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
Ocasio-Cortez also told Vanity Fair, “It’s not an accident that, every cycle, the boogeyman of the Democrats is a woman,” adding, “A couple of cycles ago, it was Pelosi. Then it was Hillary, and now it’s me.”