House Democrats in districts won by President Donald Trump should expect to feel pressure from the party’s left flank to ensure they vote for impeachment, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said.
The New York Democrat and liberal firebrand on Wednesday cited seven of her first-term House colleagues from Trump-friendly districts who say they’re open to impeachment proceedings, based on the president’s reported pressuring of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden, son of former Vice President Joe Biden, over his business deals in that country.
Each lawmaker previously served in the military or worked in intelligence operations.
“When you have more than seven of these national security Democrats, many of them are in R- plus six districts saying, ‘We can run, we can do this,’ it’s a lesson to other Democrats concerned about crossing voters back home,” Ocasio-Cortez told reporters in the Capitol Wednesday. “I think people are going to feel that pressure from their constituencies, and I think that’s going to play a key role.”
Democratic Rep. Jeff Van Drew, first elected in 2018 to represent a New Jersey district where Trump two years earlier beat Democratic rival Hillary Clinton 51-46%, said the Left’s pressure over impeachment is real.
“It’s not pressure like somebody is putting you in a headlock, but it’s pressure like, ‘Gee we’re all in this together and we’re all on board and we all have to have the same message.’ And that’s not true,” Van Drew told the Washington Examiner. “We’re Americans like everybody else and we have an independent thought process and I think that’s important.”
Van Drew, who told reporters Wednesday that he did not think conversation between Trump and Zelensky was so nefarious it was necessary to call for a impeachment inquiry, said he is receiving pressure to change his mind from rank and file Democrats and leadership.
“A little bit of both, but nothing that you can’t handle,” he said. “I mean if you can’t handle that you shouldn’t be in this game.”
