With Friends like AOC, Who Needs Enemies?

In 2018 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and I both decided to do something bold — we ran for office. But that is where our similarities end.

I ran in Colorado’s HD-44. When I moved here in 2003 Democrats didn’t even bother to run. In 2014 we got a whole 30% of the vote. AOC decided to run in New York’s 14th Congressional district where a ham sandwich with a “D” next to it’s name can comfortably expect to get 70% of the vote.

I got 100% of the vote at my primary caucus — which was easy since I ran unopposed. People don’t queue up to run in an un-winnable district. I was met with nothing but smiles, welcome, and encouragement from local Democrats. They knew what I was signing myself up for and wanted me to know how much they appreciated it. AOC’s experience was the exact opposite. NY-14’s incumbent was a ten term House Rep with 31 total years in public office. He was so busy helping arrange resources and training for candidates like me — people trying to flip red seats blue — that he neglected to secure his own primary. That kind of generosity is why his coworkers voted to make him part of the House leadership. They liked him. His door was always open and he always had their backs. AOC told voters that he was out of touch and he didn’t care so they should nominate her. Enough voters believed her that she won the primary. She advanced by taking their colleague down. Her reception was predictably a lot cooler than mine.

Another big difference was fundraising. I didn’t do much. Sometimes people who run in hopeless districts have unrealistic expectations and tell people that they need donations to win. I’m uncomfortable with promising people that I’ll win if they give me money when I know it’s a really long shot. I was mostly running to show that winning was possible. If an introverted, face blind, mildly autistic, computer programmer running on a budget of $7,000 could crack 40% then imagine what an actual politician with resources could do! So I had a donation link but I didn’t rattle the can much. My events were held in public parks, libraries and house parties. No phone-banking. No text banking. No barrages of mass mails. Just me, my two feet, and 20 thousand doors to personally knock on while my amazing husband and volunteers wrote stacks and stacks of post cards. AOC, by contrast, raised over 2 million dollars in 2016 (and over 17 million in 2020) to campaign for a seat that is impossible to lose. Money she didn’t need from people who maybe did need it. Most of it from not just out of her district but out of her state.

My general election was a local geography lesson as I pounded pavement up and down my district. Every week I selected some precincts around a park or library and spent the weekdays knocking on every door with invitations to the park for that weekend to learn about my campaign. Course if they wanted to talk right now instead I was quite willing to do that. And when I say every door I mean every door. In a district that is about 45% R, 30% I, and 25% D you have to make a case for every vote. You have to make human connections so that voters see you as a person, not a symbol or a party. AOC’s general election, OTOH, was spent everywhere except her district. Whenever a woman was standing in the way of one of Bernie’s chosen primary candidates he needed another woman to attack them. So he whisked AOC away to campaign against everyone from Sharice Davids in Kansas’s 3rd congressional district to Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan’s gubernatorial primary. You may recall that both these ladies won their primaries and then their general elections. That happened a lot. How would you feel about AOC if you had taken the leap to run for office in 2018 and suddenly she flew in from New York to attack your character and sic twitter on you? It isn’t just the old school dems who have reason to dislike her as a person.

The second to last difference between us is that she won her race and I lost mine. But I got over 42% and cut the GOP’s margins in half. And I did it with no money, no viral campaigning, and absolutely no twitter. Just 20 thousand door knocks and hundreds of across the aisle conversations. My voter registration efforts ranked 5th out of 65 districts in Colorado for number of new voters registered. I did well enough that in 2020 we attracted a charismatic, small business owning, mom with a political science degree to run. She got a third more votes than I did and pushed us another step closer. I’m feeling good about 2022. NY-14, by contrast, is on the opposite trajectory. AOC finished 10% lower in 2020 than she did in 2018 and Biden got significantly more votes than she did in her own district.

The last difference between us is probably the biggest. It’s what we did the year after our races were over. My signature issue was lowering prescription drug costs and in running I made a wide array of contacts among representatives on both sides of the aisle. So in 2019 I took off my candidate hat and put on my advocate hat. I helped shape and get bipartisan support for HB 19–1216, a first of it’s kind Rx price control bill capping insulin copayments in Colorado. Talking about this issue with Republican voters for half a year was great practice for talking to Republican legislators. Other states swiftly copied it and if it survives the Supreme Court it will be applied to more drugs than just insulin allowing states to regulate drug prices in their borders. While that was happening AOC was sworn in as a federal congresswoman, got a staff, access to other legislators, and the ability to call any expert in the nation and have them rush to answer her questions. She used these assets to increase her social media presence. She passed zero bills. And her inflammatory rhetoric became a staple of GOP campaign ads in 2020. The targets of those attack ads are understandably angry with AOC when the GOP holds her tweets against them.

Anger I am entirely sympathetic with.

I know exactly how hard it is to run blue in a red district. How many postcards I can write before the ache in my hand starts making them illegible. The twinge in my hip I still have — 2 years later — from the repetitive stress of kneeling to slip flier after flier under a door mat. The compromises you have to make to earn the support of right leaning voters. The vulnerability of putting yourself out there. The lost income and awkwardness of explaining your employment gap afterwards. If I had made it and then got hit with AOC themed attack ads in 2020 … well lets just say Rep Spanberger is a soft cuddly teddy bear compared to me.

Rep Ocasio-Cortez, You have squandered every opportunity that elected office provided you. Majorities are made or broken in the middle. It is the centrists, not the extremists, who chart out the limits of the possible. And no, we don’t give you what you want. But what we give you is all you will ever get. The moderate seats you endanger with your theatrics are vastly more important than you are. Get off social media. Do your job. Maybe try passing an actual bill or two? If all you want to do is tweet you don’t have to hold elected office for that. If you aren’t going to resign then you need to up your game to be worthy of that seat. Look at Sharice Davids. She passed 10 bills in the last two years. Bills that made a difference. Be more like her.