A third of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) own constituents in New York’s 14th Congressional District say they would not vote to reelect her, according to a new door-to-door survey of 2,261 homes.
The freshman congresswoman had a favorability rating of 21 percent, with less than 11 percent believing she had their best interests in mind when she quashed the Amazon deal.
Another key finding was that 42 percent of her constituents were unfamiliar with her name, “despite her enormous media coverage and Twitter presence,” the pollsters said.
A major point of disagreement constituents had with the congresswoman was the scrapping of the Amazon HQ deal. The survey found that only 9 percent were opposed to the deal, which would have brought in thousands of new jobs to the New York area. Thirty-three percent believed Ocasio-Cortez did not have their best interests in mind in regard to the Amazon deal.
“Facing an electorate more concerned with results than retweets, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez has problems in her backyard,” the pollsters said.
“Despite her online notoriety and fandom in the national new progressive movement, the citizens of New York District 14 want a representative aligned with their values.
“It’s clear Rep. Ocasio-Cortez is not the model for hope and change she sold herself to be.
FEC Complaint
Ocasio-Cortez allegedly accepted excessive campaign contributions and violated reporting rules by accepting undervalued services from a company run by her campaign manager, a complaint to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) said.Campaign manager Saikat Chakrabarti set up the company, Brand New Congress LLC, which was paid $170,000 by Ocasio-Cortez and 12 other “far-left progressive Democratic candidates,” according to the April 1 complaint filed by the Coolidge Reagan Foundation, a conservative nonprofit.
Yet the company provided services to the candidates worth “likely in excess of $1 million,” the complaint stated. “Brand New Congress provided cheap campaign services to Ocasio-Cortez and other candidates in part by failing to amortize its overhead and infrastructure costs among the amounts it charged them.”
Operating at a loss, the company was only able to sustain itself “through constant infusions of cash,” the complaint stated. The money mainly came from two political action committees—Brand New Congress PAC and Justice Democrats PAC—which together gave the company close to $900,000.
Brand New Congress PAC was run by Chakrabarti, the complaint states, while Justice Democrats PAC was controlled by Chakrabarti and Ocasio-Cortez at least since late December 2017 and during the height of Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 primary campaign, according to the complaint, referring to filings with the government, media reports, and information on the Justice Democrats website.
Through this scheme, Chakrabarti’s company “provided illegal excessive in-kind contributions to Ocasio-Cortez and the other candidates,” the complaint alleged. In addition, Brand New Congress PAC and Justice Democrats PAC likewise violated contribution limits and reporting requirements “by funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to Brand New Congress LLC to subsidize the services it was providing candidates.” Ocasio-Cortez also violated both contribution limits and reporting requirements “by accepting these illegal in-kind contributions.”
Chakrabarti became Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff after she assumed office.
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