Though New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is fresh off another victory that has earned her two more years in Congress, the 31-year-old recently confessed that she has serious reservations about pursuing a long-term career in politics and warned that she might even quit in the near future.
The topic first came up in an interview with The New York Times after the sophomore representative was asked about a potential run for the senate after serving another term in the house.
“I genuinely don’t know,” she answered.
“I don’t even know if I want to be in politics. You know, for real, in the first six months of my term, I didn’t even know if I was going to run for re-election this year,” she added.
When pressed for a reason, Ocasio-Cortez cited the unpleasant work environment.
“It’s the incoming. It’s the stress. It’s the violence,” she explained.
Ocasio-Cortez added she found it demoralizing that while she often receives pushback from her Republican colleagues, she receives almost as much from her Democratic ones.
“It’s the lack of support from your own party… thinking you’re the enemy,” she lamented.
“Internally, [the Democratic Party has] been extremely hostile to anything that even smells progressive.”
The representative added that she ultimately decided to remain in her position to help prove that support for the progressive agenda was not a “fluke.”
“I chose to run for re-election because I felt like I had to prove that…this movement was real,” she explained.
However, Ocasio-Cortez — who had previously worked as a bartender before her shock win in 2018 — joked that her supporters should not be too surprised if she leaves the political sphere in the near future. In fact, she joked that the odds that she pursue higher office and the odds that she start a homestead were “probably the same.”
While Ocasio-Cortez has touted the strength of the Democratic party after former Vice President Joe Biden’s projected victory, many politicos have suggested that liberals had a poor showing on November 3, particularly in the House of Representatives. Though pollsters had predicted that Democratic candidates would pick up around a dozen seats, the party actually ended up losing a net total of five seats , with more likely to follow as results continue to trickle in.
Meanwhile, Ocasio-Cortez made headlines earlier this week after lashing out at The Lincoln Project, which defined itself as a political group of conservatives opposed to Donald Trump. Though The Lincoln Project and Democrats had been tentative allies during the election season, Ocasio-Cortez slammed the group for achieving little despite their $67 million fundraising haul in a scathing Twitter thread, per The Inquisitr .