If far-left Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez intends to mount a Democratic primary challenge to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, she has to act soon.
The window of opportunity is closing as New York state’s filing deadline approaches on April 7, ahead of the June 28 Democratic primary.
AOC has never overtly said she was eyeing a primary challenge to Schumer, who has led the Democratic caucus as both minority and majority leader and is a prominent fixture in New York politics, where his allies credit him with being closely attuned with his constituents.
But many of Schumer’s actions have been interpreted as trying to please the Democratic Party’s activist liberal base. Including trying to increase the amount of spending in President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda.
Rumors have circulated in Washington that some progressive activists were pushing for a primary challenge to Schumer, with Ocasio-Cortez seen as the most likely contender for such a challenge.
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The progressive Ocasio-Cortez has risen to a national profile and has become a fundraising powerhouse. She was reportedly weighing a bid for Senate, however, in an interview with CNN last year, she said she had not seriously considered a primary against her fellow New York Democrat, but she also did not rule out the possibility.
Historian and author David Pietrusza told the Washington Examiner that New York’s petition period starts March 1 and that “you don’t start this thing up in three weeks.”
“These are radical times, and radical people do radical things, but either they’re keeping it really under wraps, or they’re not going to do it,” Pietrusza said. “Or they would be very ill-prepared.”
James Coleman Battista, an associate professor of political science at the University at Buffalo, told the Washington Examiner that “it seems unlikely” that Ocasio-Cortez could defeat Schumer in a statewide primary due to his “well-established network of supporters and volunteers.”
“On the other hand, it was unlikely that she would defeat [former Rep. Joe] Crowley, and yet here we are,” Battista said about Ocasio-Cortez’s vanquished 2018 Democratic primary opponent, a House member for 20 years and a member of his party’s House leadership.
Battista said Ocasio-Cortez’s “dense, very heavily Democratic district” that she currently represents, covering parts of the Bronx and Queens, “might be a better match for her, since a smaller cadre of very deep supporters can knock on a higher proportion of doors in her target areas, as opposed to the numbers you’d need to knock on doors in suburban or exurban areas.”
“Another difference is that everyone knows she’s a credible threat, so it seems unlikely that Schumer would sleepwalk through the primary the way that Crowley did,” he added.
Pietrusza said that a primary challenge by Ocasio-Cortez might not ultimately raise her profile.
“Why would she do this?” he asked. “Because she has a platform already. She doesn’t need a bigger microphone because every time she does something, or goes to Florida, or, you know, wears a dress, or says something, it’s all over the internet, right? She doesn’t need a bigger platform than what she has now.”
Pietrusza said that if Ocasio-Cortez or another progressive challenger did want to become a senator, they might have a path to do so on a third-party ticket rather than challenging Schumer, citing a “huge” Democratic enrollment advantage in New York state.
“A split Democratic Party would not necessarily be fatal in this state,” he said.
But Pietrusza said a challenge to Schumer from the left likely would not ultimately succeed.
“Occasionally, majority leaders get knocked off in general elections,” he said. “Generally, they’re Democrats. It doesn’t happen often, but it sometimes happens, but it doesn’t happen in a primary. And statewide primaries against incumbents are pretty damn rare in New York.”
Asked about the odds of Ocasio-Cortez holding her fire and waiting to challenge New York’s other senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, in a primary when she is up for reelection, Pietrusza said, “all the same things apply except that Schumer is such a much stronger candidate.”
“Most of the time, she’s invisible,” he said of Gillibrand.
Pietrusza said that low turnout in many of New York’s recent elections could alter the landscape of hypothetical primaries.
“People are not coming out for a lot of these races,” he said. “You know, democracy is kind of faltering that way, just out of boredom, I guess.”
Battista also mentioned low turnout as a factor that can end in “weird stuff” happening in a primary.
“In the discipline, we’d say that there’s a strong stochastic or random component to the process. I’d say that we’d really want to see polling on it,” he said.
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Battista said he would “bet on Schumer in that contest if I were a betting man.”
“But I wouldn’t want to bet more than the price of dinner for two,” he said.
