Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Blasted as a 'Deadbeat' by Fellow Democrats for Refusing To Pay Party Dues
Democratic socialist New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is ruffling some feathers within her own party by refusing to donate any money to the House campaign arm of the Democratic Party.
Ocasio-Cortez has always been something of a rebel within the Democratic Party.
After all, she won her seat in 2018 after successfully primarying longtime Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley.
Since then, she’s criticized members of the Democratic Party whom she doesn’t see as liberal enough.
In an interview with New York magazine published earlier this week, for instance, she said that “Democrats can be too big of a tent.”
“In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America, we are,” she said of the former vice president and current Democratic presidential front-runner.
Here’s where Ocasio-Cortez’s dues to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee come in.
According to Fox News, each Democrat in the House is assigned “a certain amount of dues they must pay to help the party win elections in November” — money that comes from their fundraising totals.
Those who have higher profiles and have been in Congress longer have to pay more. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for example, has already contributed $900,000 of the $1 million she is required to “donate,” according to Fox.
Ocasio-Cortez is required to pay $250,000 in dues.
Like roughly 40 percent of her Democratic colleagues, Fox reported, Ocasio-Cortez has yet to pay anything she owes yet.
Unlike most of her colleagues, though, she does not intend to do so anytime soon.
“For me personally, I’m not paying D-trip dues,” she said.
One reason Ocasio-Cortez refuses to do so is a DCCC policy that allegedly blacklists vendors who support primary challenges to sitting Democratic members of Congress.
“One, I don’t agree with the policy around blacklisting groups that help progressive candidates,” she said.
“I think we need to evolve as a party and make room for that.”
It’s not that Ocasio-Cortez is having a hard time raising money.
“In the third quarter of 2019, she raised $1.42 million — more than any other House Democrat,” Fox reported. “She beat out top Democrats like Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff by rejecting corporate PAC dollars and traditional high-dollar fundraisers and instead relying on grassroots small-dollar fans who are rooting for the young pol and her unapologetic fight for progressive ideals, like the Green New Deal.
“Her fourth-quarter fundraising is even bigger. Her campaign nearly hit its goal of raising $2 million in the final three months of 2019 from online donors from every state. That amount puts her 2019 fundraising at more than $5 million, a groundbreaking amount for the youngest female ever elected to Congress.”
But instead of contributing money to the DCCC, she’s bypassing the official Democratic Party congressional campaign arm to more directly contribute to the liberal candidates she supports — some of whom just happen to be challenging incumbent Democrats.
And some establishment Democrats are not pleased.
“Sometimes the question comes: ‘Do you want to be in a majority or do you want to be in the minority?'” Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York told Fox. “And do you want to be part of a team?”
Meeks suggested she does not, in fact, want to be part of a team.
“DCCC dues are about supporting others because you want to be part of the team,” he said. “The goal is to be in the majority. And the goal is, when you are on a team I would think, to respect individuals whose districts are different than yours.”
“Deadbeat Cortez should pay her bills,” an anonymous House Democratic aide added. “She’s always whining about people paying their fair share and here she is leaving her friends with the bill.”
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