WASHINGTON ― Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is considering a run for the top Democratic spot on a high-profile House committee.
The progressive icon told HuffPost on Wednesday that she might like to replace Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) as the highest-ranking Democrat on the House oversight committee, which led the impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden this year.
“I’m interested, and I’m certainly having a lot of conversations with my colleagues about it, and I’ve been receiving a lot of outreach about it in the caucus as well,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Ocasio-Cortez, 35, is one of the youngest members of Congress, and it would signal a small but significant generational power shift for Democrats if they made her a committee leader.
Raskin is leaving the ranking member position on the oversight committee to pursue the same spot on the House judiciary committee, which he told his colleagues in a letter would become “the headquarters of Congressional opposition to authoritarianism” under his leadership.
Raskin, Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats on the House oversight committee fiercely battled Republicans in their effort to impeach Biden, which was ultimately unsuccessful and was even mocked by one Republican as “failure theater.” (The impeachment inquiry was likely doomed from the start thanks to its partial reliance on half-baked material that also happened to be Russian propaganda.)
During hearings, Ocasio-Cortez was often in the fray, such as when she stood up to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) in May for insulting another committee member’s appearance.
“Ranking Member Raskin and I have been laying out a strategy over the last two years that has been particularly effective in that committee at really being able to wrestle back not just the power of the committee, especially given the fact that we’re in the minority, where it’s especially difficult to do that, but we’ve also been able to affirmatively advance our priorities,” Ocasio-Cortez told HuffPost on Wednesday.
“And so I think, given the tremendous amount of work and groundwork that we’ve laid out in the last two years ― and how important it’s going to be to continue and deepen that work, given the incoming Trump administration ― that’s something that’s very much weighed heavily on me,” she said.
Democracy In The Balance
Support HuffPost
Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.
If Ocasio-Cortez makes her bid for ranking member official, she’ll have to defeat fellow oversight member Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), who announced his intention to run for the position on Tuesday. Connolly, 74, noted in a letter to colleagues that he’s served on the committee for 16 years.
When Ocasio-Cortez came to Congress in 2019 at age 29, she was the youngest woman ever to serve in Congress, and many in the media and the government considered her something of an upstart. However, she has since become an authoritative voice in the progressive wing of the party.