Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic socialist congressional candidate who has spent weeks campaigning with fellow socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, on Thursday refused to endorse his prospective candidacy in the 2020 presidential race.
Ocasio-Cortez, 29, worked as an organizer for Sanders’ failed presidential campaign in 2016 before winning in a surprise upset over longtime establishment Rep. Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., in the state’s 14th Congressional District primary in May.
“She’ll see what the field looks like,” Corbin Trent, Ocasio-Cortez’s communications director, said in an interview with Politico. “She’s focused on 2018, [Bernie’s] focused on 2018. We’re all focused on 2018.”
For his part, the 77-year-old Sanders did not endorse Ocasio-Cortez’s run against Crowley. And in August, former President Barack Obama, in turn, initially declined to endorse Ocasio-Cortez even after her stunning primary win, underscoring the challenges facing progressives campaigning to the left of the Democratic Party establishment in hopes of taking their views mainstream. (Obama endorsed her earlier this month.) – READ MORE