AOC is getting worried. It’s getting closer to census time and New York is likely to lose another congressional seat.
Two if the citizenship question ends up on the census form. Cortez says that Democrats could eliminate her seat for the 2022 election or gerrymander her district to include a lot of sane people who won’t vote for her. She has made a lot of enemies in the Democratic party but I doubt they will need to worry about her.
An incumbent is in trouble when they poll below 50% and currently, she is polling at 23%. Reelection in 2020 is not a sure thing.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is worried that establishment Democrats will eliminate or gerrymander her district after the 2020 census for being a thorn in the side of leaders like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
In an interview with the New Yorker’s David Remnick that was published on Tuesday, the freshman Democrat said she is not taking her seat for granted even though she is confident she will win a second term in her current district.
“I feel confident in our reelection, but we have a census and gerrymandering coming up,” she said. “And when you are critical of people in your own party, it’s entirely possible that in ’22 I could get a spaghetti noodle of a district.”
New York could lose a House seat after the 2020 census, and Ocasio-Cortez told the Intercept in February that she was worried that her district could look significantly different after 2020 if establishment Democrats decide to stick it to her.
Ocasio-Cortez expressed her concerns to Remnick just days before a frustrated Pelosi dismissed her and her freshman “squad” and “their public whatever and their Twitter world” in an interview with Maureen Dowd of the New York Times.