Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is backing a liberal challenger to fellow Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinski — her first endorsement of a candidate aligned with the progressive group Justice Democrats since being elected to Congress.
The left-wing political action committee, which aims to challenge more moderate Democratic incumbents, announced in a tweet Tuesday that Ocasio-Cortez will support Marie Newman’s bid to oust Lipinski and represent Illinois’ 3rd Congressional District.
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“We are so proud that @Marie4Congress is the first Justice Democrat of this cycle to receive an endorsement from @AOC,” the organization wrote online. “The momentum is growing to make the Democratic Party fight for solutions as big as the problems we face and create a party for voters, not corporate donors.”
Justice Democrats was instrumental in Ocasio-Cortez’s upset victory over former Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) in the 2018 midterm elections and has allied itself with a slate of other progressive members of Congress — including Ocasio-Cortez’s fellow “squad” members Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).
Those lawmakers’ significant public profile and advocacy for a new generation of party leadership has spooked less liberal House Democrats fearful of primary rivals outflanking them from the left. Shortly after the 2018 elections, Justice Democrats put incumbents on notice for the threat of primary challengers, causing tensions to run high throughout the Democratic Caucus.
But Newman, as opposed to other incumbent challengers, has been blessed by more mainstream Democratic figures. Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), as well as Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, have all endorsed her campaign.
Newman previously lost to Lipinski in the 2018 Democratic primary for his House seat by roughly 2,000 votes. He is one of the most conservative House Democrats and has long drawn ire within the party over his opposition to abortion rights.
Lipinski slammed Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement of his opponent in a statement Tuesday, charging that the nod “makes crystal clear that Ms. Newman is an extreme candidate who is completely out of step with the voters” of his district, “who do not want to be represented by a fifth member of the ‘Squad.'”
Ocasio-Cortez criticized those comments by Lipinski in a tweet Tuesday afternoon.
“This is a real quote from a Democrat representing a safe blue seat,” she wrote online. “Aggressive statements like these are so casually thrown from corporate candidates towards grassroots ones, yet they never get branded as ‘divisive,’ despite their rhetoric. We should ask ourselves why that is.”
