I Don’t Care Where Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Lives
Breathless coverage of this freshman Congressman is getting tiresome.
Yet more breathless coverage of the freshman Congressman, this time from the New York Post, who assigned three reporters to figure out “Where in the world does Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez live?”
She may be America’s most famous freshman congresswoman, but in New York, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a virtual ghost.
She has no district office and no local phone number, unlike the state’s three other freshman members.
And it’s unclear whether the 29-year-old lawmaker, who represents the Bronx and Queens, actually still lives in the Parkchester neighborhood that has been so closely tied to her rise — even though she won her upset victory over fellow Democrat Rep. Joe Crowley with accusations that his home in Virginia made him too Washington-focused to serve his district.
So, the last at least gives the story an interesting hook. But Crowley served 32 years in Congress; Ocasio-Cortez has barely eclipsed 32 days—it’s unlikely she’s lost touch with her district.
Ocasio-Cortez has used her deceased father’s Bronx condo on her voter registration since 2012, and even posed in the one-bedroom Bronx flat for celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz in a Vogue magazine profile after her stunning November election. But The Post could find little indication she continues to live there.
The Post e-mailed the Ocasio-Cortez’ spokesman, Corbin Trent, four times with specific questions — they were all ignored. On Saturday, The Post reached Corbin by phone.
“We will not be commenting,” he said. Among the queries he refused to answer: Where does the congresswoman live?
[…]
Ocasio-Cortez was in New York City last weekend and this weekend, with appearances in Queens on both Saturdays — yet she was not seen coming or going from her Parkchester pad either day.
Her apartment’s next-door neighbor said she had never seen Ocasio-Cortez. Another neighbor, who has lived down the hall from the congresswoman’s apartment for the last 40 years, said he’d never seen her or her boyfriend, Riley Roberts, who has claimed the address as his own since last spring.
“I would have remembered,” said the neighbor when shown a photograph of Ocasio-Cortez.
Workers at Jerry’s Pizzeria, less than a block from her building, and at the local grocery store said she had never patronized their businesses — and a server at a nearby taqueria said the congresswoman had only come in to be filmed by news crews.
A postal worker who delivers mail to the building said that in the last 10 years he has only seen Ocasio-Cortez intermittently, and that several months’ worth of mail regularly accumulates in the mailbox before anyone bothers to collect it. The worker said that Ocasio-Cortez and Roberts were the only ones getting mail at the address.
“Just because their names are on the box doesn’t mean they live there,” he said.
So . . . that’s a little weird. It may be that she moved a lot and just kept her dad’s condo as her fixed address for convenience, but it’s odd that no one was picking up her mail. It may also be that, given the amount of media scrutiny she’s gotten, she prefers to keep her actual residence private. Unless she’s violating the law in doing so, I’m not sure why we care. Again, she’s just been in Congress a few weeks—it’s not like she’s lost touch with her constituency already.
And in 2017, when Ocasio-Cortez first filed paperwork to become a congressional candidate, she didn’t even know what district she lived in, mistakenly declaring plans to run for neighboring District 15 before correcting the error days later.
That’s mildly amusing but, again, not a big deal.
Meanwhile, in Washington, Ocasio-Cortez has rented a pad in a luxe building in the chic Navy Yard neighborhood, where studios start at $1,840 a month, according to the Washington Examiner.
Her new digs feature gold-plated amenities like a rooftop infinity pool, a cycling studio with a dozen pricey Pelotons, men’s and women’s saunas, and a golf simulation lounge — but no affordable units for low-income residents, in spite of a local law that requires them, the news site reported.
This is pitiful: she basically lives in a halfway decent building. DC isn’t cheap and $1840 a month is not a lot of money. Hell, I paid $1200 a month for a decent two-bedroom townhouse way out in Ashburn, Virginia when I first moved to the area 17 years ago. We had a gym, too, albeit no saunas or infinity pool. I could understand some local bloggers from Paducka not understanding this basic context. At least one of three reporters from a newspaper in New York City should know better.
In the eight months since Ocasio-Cortez’s dramatic defeat of the long-serving Crowley in June’s Democratic primary — a victory that all but guaranteed a general election win in the heavily Democratic District 14 — the congresswoman has failed to open a local office.
The framing here is absurd. It’s true that it was all but certain that she was going to win once the primary result came in. But she wasn’t going to be able to rent office space or hire a staff until she had access to the funds for that. One presumes that happens only when she actually got sworn in last month; otherwise, the taxpayer would have had to foot the bill for both Crowley’s office (he was, after all, still the Representative for District 14) and hers.
Ocasio-Cortez has made four trips to the city since she was inducted to Congress on Jan. 3, according to a Post review of published reports and social media. Those excursions featured five public events in her district — and three high-profile Manhattan appearances, including a Jan. 21 guest slot on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
A district office “makes government immediately responsible and accountable to the citizens,” said Jadan Horyn of Reclaim New York, a government watchdog group.
“Constituents need to know their representatives are working for them, and not for national prominence.”
The space slated for Ocasio-Cortez’s constituent office is in a new building in Jackson Heights.
So . . . the complaint is that she’s been back to New York multiple times for public events but doesn’t have an office, which demonstrates that she’s in it for national prominence instead of working for her constituents? And yet there is a space slated for a constituent service office? Huh?
Suites in the building at 74-09 37th Avenue rent for about $40 per square foot. Ocasio-Cortez’s office, on the third floor, is just under 5,000 square feet, which would bring the annual undiscounted rental price to $200,000 or nearly $17,000 a month.
In January, Ocasio-Cortez sought to blame the delay on a stubborn landlord at a different building where her predecessor Crowley maintained one of his two district offices.
“Although we attempted to take over our predecessor’s lease, the landlord wanted to almost double rent” from $7,800 to $15,000 per month, she tweeted Jan. 22 — without specifying which of Crowley’s spaces she had hoped to inherit.
“That spike would have meant less caseworkers for our community,” she posted. “Instead, we’re making a new space with a family business!”
But Ocasio-Cortez neglected to mention that her rent would end up likely topping the cost of Crowley’s former digs.
When The Post visited last week, the congresswoman’s office was still under construction, with workers building interior walls and installing drywall. A carpenter there said the work would probably take several more weeks to complete. A staffer said at a community board meeting that it would open March 4.
It’s unknown if taxpayers or the landlord is paying for the extensive renovations.
A spokesman for Cow Bay Contracting, the Nassau County construction company working on the office space, refused comment. Ocasio-Cortez’s office refused to answer the question.
Now, I think the Congresswoman’s office ought to answer these sorts of questions, even if they’re annoying. Still, given the sensationalistic nature of the rest of the report, I’m skeptical at the numbers here. Besides which: Ocasio-Cortez, like any other Member of Congress, is given a budget for office space, staff salaries, and the like. There is no Congressional equivalent to “overseas contingency operation” funding where they get to pay for renovations off-budget.
Obviously, Ocasio-Cortez needs to open one or more offices in her district. It sounds like one, at least, is currently under construction. Unless she’s the only freshman Member who hasn’t yet opened for business, there doesn’t seem to be a story here.
So sick of the breathless “stories that aren’t stories”. Conservative media is giving her all the free publicity she will ever need, and given the level of crazy amongst them right now, I do not blame her if she wanted to keep where she sleeps on any given night out of the public eye as much as possible.
I don’t understand how you, of all people–a Republican and conservative, can downplay what is happening here. Uppity foreign women are taking over our Congress and living in sumptuous surroundings with gyms and saunas at taxpayer expense! My little $525/mo. studio apartment in Southwest Washington certainly doesn’t have gyms and saunas, and I’m certain that none of that so-called “constituency” that she claims to be serving lives like that either.
And that other one, the
ragheadwhatever she is! Talking back to a public servant, a hero of the Reagan Administration and courageous warrior against Communism. Sometimes I just don’t know what’s gotten into you RINOs. We will rue the day!@Jax:
AOC is living rent-free in the heads of many conservatives. It’s pretty funny actually.
I have a few conservative friends who seem to *constantly* post this or that about her, complaining about her coverage. When I point out that they are amplifying her and that constantly targeting her makes her more sympathetic, I get radio silence. It is astonishing to me how utterly obsessed conservatives are with her–she’s a freshman MOC, who is figuring out the ropes.
Honestly, if that landlord did double the rent and she took a hike, the delay in getting an office open isn’t just understandable–it’s laudable.
And I suppose that if AOC had put up with the landlord’s price hike the NYTimes reporter would have found another reason to complain….
(Heck, who puts up with a 100% price hike? I would have vamoosed as well.)
@grumpy realist:
Speaking of which, didn’t Trump raise the dues for Mar-a-Lago by 100% when he was elected? From $100,000 to $200,000 per year?
There’s actually a warning flag here. Not the Republican faux hysteria about exorbitant $1900/mo rate for her DC apartment (like that number would shock a NYer) or that she doesn’t have a lease ironed out and a district office outfitted and occupied in one month (again, nothing that would shock a NYer). But if it turns out she actually lived outside her district when she was a candidate, that could be a real problem.
Unless she lives off-Earth, which would be interesting, who the hell cares?
The first time I read a posting about her it was on a right website that I peruse sometimes. This was in early December, and they were reporting that she had said that rents were high in the DC area. I thought that this was not news, but the comment section was full of guys elbowing each other in the ribs to make funny remarks about that crazy bitch. Now she has an apartment costing less than 13% of her income, and I supposed to be shocked by the extravagance. Almost every day there is a report of a shocking, non shocking position of hers; Democratic rep is for minimum wage hike and other such radical ideas.
Obviously, she is a synecdoche for something the conservatives fear. The future may well hold more like her! They have tried to damage her brand; my favorite is the release of the video of her dancing on the roof while in high school. I bet Lindsey Graham never danced on a roof! Of course, if he had he would have been every bit as cute.
James, you may not care but the base does. These are the people who elected a reality TV star to the Presidency because that was a bonus for them – of course they’re going to be obsessed with soap opera drama about “socialist dares to not live in hellhole like we’d expect” and “omg the unexpectedly hot liberal moved! Let’s find out where!!!… for journalism, we swear!!”.
She’s caught their attention the same way Trump or Palin did but on the other side of the favoritism line. She fascinates them but they’re not quite sure why – if she’d been conservative, it would be a mad crush. They’re going to treat her like a Kardashian, report on all the minutiae and petty shenanigans of her life and completely dismiss anything of substance because she’s a beautiful young woman. They’ll focus on the looks and anything in her life to minimize and disqualify her while at the same time getting their voyeur on.
Here’s AOC’s response to the story:
https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1099854063196352512
@MarkedMan:
Possible but doubtful. If your living accommodations become untenable through no fault of your own during your candidacy, it’s not like you intended to circumvent the system and should get a legal pass. Otherwise, what’s to stop underhanded candidates from bribing landlords to jack up untenable rates on opponents, banks to suddenly foreclosure with no warning, or even for their residence to have a little “accident” that means they’ll have to find permanent lodgings potentially outside the district? Hey, maybe even some literal ratfucking and get the building shut down or condemned for health reasons due to excessive vermin? I see *way* too many potential ways to get rid of a candidate if that’s suddenly an option and conservatives lately don’t seem to mind the whole “jail time” thing….
The GOP might go after her but if it wasn’t her choice (and really, accepting a 100% increase by the landlord isn’t a viable “choice”), then how can she be held accountable for the actions of others that cause potential residency issues? If your house burns down your house during your candidacy, is it really the end if you can’t find a place in-district immediately?
Let me solve this problem for you, James:
Stop reading it.
Whenever I get tired of reading about a particular person (anyone from Kim Kardashian to Dick Cheney) it has been 100% effective for me
AOC was on the hit list of that coast guard lieutenant white supremacist terrorist. I wouldn’t exactly be advertising maps to my residence if I were her.
@Slugger:
I think that might be the most telling aspect. It really drives home the fact that much of the GOP – at least inside the beltway – really do inhabit an echo chamber where they reinforce to each other that a living wage is COMMUNIST and we all know the rents AREN’T HIGH ENOUGH!
To many denizens of flyover country, however, who do have less than $400 in savings and who don’t have parents who can bankroll us with our first million, her “ideas” (really, her pointing out, uh, how life works for much of the 99%) are in sync with our own experiences. I recall seeing recently a GOP congressman in Ohio commenting that people just needed to trade down their cars and sell their houses and rent instead. This is clearly a man who has never had to choose between a car payment and food, first of all, because the car is necessary for work to buy food and food is necessary for, well….
But second of all, being able to buy a house is an economic privilege for many people that helps those in a position to do so afford to live in a better situation than renting would, thus contributing to economic stability. I could not afford to live in my neighbourhood if I rented but I can afford a 15-year mortgage because I have a stable job and income, good credit history, and the ability to put up a 20% down payment. A lot of people – including a lot of millennials with student debt – don’t have even that small luxury and they are paying $1500 to rent a smaller place than my $800 mortgage costs. My daughter’s master’s cohort has graduating students with teacher’s licenses who are planning to move home and substitute teach while supplementing with Lyft/Uber while they start to pay off their student loans. I can’t comprehend that – I was self-supporting at the age of 21 with $500 in student loans and a bachelor’s degree under my belt. But that was in 1987.
TL;DR: AOC is shining a light for even a political junkie like me on how Congress actually works; and the more the GOP calls her common-sense observations “crazy socialism” the more they show how out of touch they are with the current situation for most Americans, esp. millennials. I hope like hell this means millennials begin to turn out to vote more and more to break the over-65 stranglehold on the ballot box.
To me, the point is not about where Alexandria Cortez lives. The point is that for better or worse the American political system is built on localism, on each House Representative representing his or her district. Foreign observers noted, with LOTS of envy, that Gabby Giffords was almost killed because she was attending her constituents.
That might mean that Alexandria Cortez is vulnerable to a primary challenge from a local pol. Or might it simply represent the nationalization of politics, where every local election becomes a national election.
I’m afraid that Conservatives simply have envy of her, and they will want to play the same game. But if she does not keep an office or a house in her district that’s not a trivial matter. Her constituents live in the Bronx, not on Twitter.
There are far more people following her on Twitter than living in her district. That might be distorting things a little bit.
Interesting in that this is a local attack. Not living in her district, etc. Of course, that is where you have to hit the congressperson as that’s where they are elected. Probably related to her celebration of keeping jobs and tax dollars out of New York by driving Amazon off. She’s got the megaphone credit but that little debacle seems to be a simmering political issue. See the recent open letter from the NY state budget director. That lays out the local adversaries, but anyone unhappy with the loss would also hit the vocal freshman congressperson. We are 2 months into a new Congress which means the campaigns for the 2020 House elections have started gearing up.
I really don’t give a flying fuq about this…I’m more curious about Cadet Bone Spurs finally having the balls to go to Vietnam.
But I do wonder, how do you keep a residence in NYC and DC on $175K a year?
It’s impossible.
Ryan slept in his office. Not to sound sexist, but that’s a little more difficult for a woman.
@MarkedMan:
Only if her voters find it to be a problem. It’s weird, but you are not required to live in the district you represent. Bernie Sanders’ son ran for NH Congressional District 1 seat, even though he lives in Congressional District 2. The only requirement is that you live in the state in which you are running.
@Jen:
I didn’t know that. I’ve seen any number of eligibility challenges based on whether someone actually lives in a district but I guess that must have been state or local.
@Jen:
They might find it to be a problem. If she will be defeated in a primary or even in a general election it will be because of that, not because of Schumer nor NY machine politics. When her predecessor lost people inquired about whether if Crowley was paying attention to the district, and like, remember a guy from Virginia that was Majority Leader and that called himself “young gun”?
@Doug Mataconis:
It really is, and it only has the effect of amplifying all of her ideas.
If any other freshman member of congress had proposed a Green New Deal or 70% marginal tax rate on ten-millionaires, it would have gone nowhere. But because the conservatives (and the right wing media) are so obsessed with her, those ideas get way more play than if they’d just ignored them. This leads to amusing things, like a Fox News push-poll of their own viewers that accidentally comes out in favor of higher taxes on the rich.
So now, the conversation is how much should we tax the rich? And how much of the Green New Deal can be implemented? It’s honestly amazing how much the right wing nutters have helped spread her message.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I skip 99% of the articles but I still see an inordinate amount of chatter about them on Twitter, Facebook, and the like.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
No, it isn’t. The median household income in New York City stands at $57,782. In DC, it’s $77,649. She’s well above those combined figures. And both numbers are far lower for individual earners. And, one presumes, her partner is kicking in some rent money as well.
@Andre Kenji de Sousa: Yes, of course–which presumably is one of a number of reasons that Levi Sanders had an absolutely horrible showing in the NH CD1 primary–along with the oddity that if you run outside the district you actually live in, you can’t even vote for yourself.
I was responding to the suggestion that there was potentially a legal or eligibility issue at stake, that’s all.
———–
In the spirit of Professor Joyner’s recent post Where Have All the Editors Gone?, I am compelled to note that the proper spelling of “Atomic City” in Kentucky is Paducah.
@James Joyner:
Sure…and 20% of the city lives below the poverty level. I have a number of friends who live in the city, and I cannot imagine how you can live in any of the 5 Burroughs on just $58K. In DC nearly 17% are below the poverty level.
There’s a reason Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House and heir to a fortune made from Government contracts, was sleeping in his office.
(For comparison…In Sleepytown, CT, where my ass is currently parked, the median income is $87K and poverty is at 5%.)
@JKB: “Probably related to her celebration of keeping jobs and tax dollars out of New York by driving Amazon off. ”
So tell us, what exactly did she do to drive Amazon off? It’s true that she criticized the deal, but she had nothing to do with the negotiations and no role in the planning.
Are you saying that she is such a ferocious monster that merely suggesting Amazon allow their workers to unionize was enough to terrify the biggest company in the world to run away from New York City?
@Jen: There is a legal issue here. Alexandria Cortez would need an address in New York state, even if it’s a hotel room in the Adirondacks. That, and the political issue, her constituents are the people that live in her district, not her followers on Twitter.
@wr: maybe JKB is one of those extremely stupid conservatives who believe AOC is in a coven of witches casting spells against Trump. 😀
@wr: you know, if conservatives were smart, and wanted good jobs, they’d be raising a stink and demanding that Amazon locate in Tuscaloosa, or Birmingham, or Indianapolis, or Salt Lake City, or Biloxi. but they’re dumb, so they’re complaining that Amazon isn’t increasing the jobs in New York City.
During the shut down the NYT had a piece about AOC’s lack of an office, while several other new house members had at gotten something up and running. At the time AOC’s people blamed the shutdown and not having the needed resources to proceed. There is an appearance that she doesn’t quite understand that being a celebrity is not job 1 for a member of congress. Articles such as the NY Post one reinforce that impression.
@Teve:
In fairness, red states, including Alabama, have been doing this for at least the last 25-30 years. Most of the European and Asian car companies with American facilities have then in the Deep South. Alabama won the bid for a Mercedes plant in between Birmingham and Tuscaloosa when I was still in grad school and they’ve lured in Honda and BMW since. It’s true that there has been a piling on against AOC on the Amazon deal but lots of cities in red states (Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Indianapolis, Miami, Nashville, Raleigh) competed to get the HQ and lost. It’s rather hard to beat the built-in advantages of DC and NYC.
@Andre Kenji de Sousa: Now you’re just being argumentative. She lives in New York, and is a registered voter there. She’s also recently been told that a right-wing nut/terrorist had her name on his hit list. She is more than welcome to be less than forthcoming about exactly where she rests her head at night, as long as she remains a resident of the state.
“I don’t care where Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lives” – here is another one, seen on a lot of bumpers around here:
“We don’t care how you do things up north”
@James Joyner: oh I know, I was just taking dumb potshots. I used to live in Raleigh, and quite enjoyed it, but in fact believe that we need a solution that eliminates these states racing to the bottom in zero sum jobs competitions. Right now winners keep winning, and losers keep losing, and there’s a reason that MLB and the NBA have systems in place to counteract exactly that force. Massive widening inequality makes everyone poorer in the long run.
@Sleeping Dog: “There is an appearance that she doesn’t quite understand that being a celebrity is not job 1 for a member of congress. Articles such as the NY Post one reinforce that impression.”
Wait… there’s an appearance? And a right-wing publication that wants to destroy her is reinforcing that impression? Hot dang, it must all be true then!!!
If AOC lied about living in the district she ran for office in, that is election fraud, which I believe is a felony. It could potentially invalidate her election victory were the law actually applied to liberals in New York. Of course, in reality that is not a worry at all. No NY prosecutor would ever dare prosecute a darling of the left, no matter how valid the case.
@TwistedSister:..election fraud…
As is noted above, when elected, a candidate for the United States House of Representatives must be an inhabitant of the State from which they are chosen.
There is no requirement of residency to any particular Congressional District.
Maybe you can cite the felony you are referring to in your post.
once I identify that someone is a troll I no longer read and respond to them, but this was the first comment I’ve seen from this new troll so I’ll address it.
You must be a Trumper, based on how you think you understand the Constitution, while having no fucking clue what it says. Go read the part that mr. Bluster excerpted above. Or, better yet, just go hang out at some place like Breitbart, or the Gateway Pundit, where other people with your IQ hang out.
Expect to hear Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s name mentioned several more times between now and the November 2020 election. Think of it as the modern equivalent of Hillary’s emails — something to be mentioned at every opportunity to every audience by Republican politicians, and in every other column of text in every American newspaper intent on displaying its impartiality.
She’s young, she’s stupid, she dances, she speaks of socialism. she hasn’t made a pilgrimage to Israel, she’s got a live-in boyfriend …. There are just any number of horrible things about her to upset God & gay & abortion-fearing American voters, and it’s the Constitutional duty of every Republican political leader to make this clear. And come the 2020 campaign, of course, every Republican candidate will be sure to describe his opponent as ANOTHER Alexandria Oxcasio-Cortez. Isn’t ONE of them in Congress enough!
@Concerned Citizen: Now she says that people should quit having children.
@Tyrell:..Now she says that people should quit having children.
That is NOT what she said. Stop lying.
@Tyrell:..Now she says that people should quit having children.
That is NOT what she said. Stop lying.