The Squad’s impact has been undeniable, even with few legislative victories

Analysis: Four Democratic women of colour have been especially bright on oversight, campaign fundraising, and shifting the Democratic party’s Overton window, writes US political correspondent Griffin Connolly

‘The Squad’ (from left): Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib (Getty)

The “squad” of first-term Democratic congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib had no illusions about the limits of their progressive persuasion when they were sworn into office roughly 16 months ago.

Legislatively speaking, their victories have been few so far.

No, congress has not passed a bill to establish a single-payer healthcare system.

No, millions of young Americans have not been liberated from their monthly student loan payments.

And as far as anyone can tell, universities are still cashing tuition checks from students and their parents, not the government.

“All major advances in our country began as a vision,” Ms Omar told The Independent in a recent email exchange, ticking off a list of political sea changes – women’s suffrage, the civil rights laws of the 1960s, the 2010 healthcare overhaul known as “Obamacare” – that were the result of decades of agitation by activists that only gradually garnered support from federal lawmakers.

“We know that change takes time. But that should not deter anyone from advocating for the policies we need,” the Minnesota congresswoman said.

No, most of the squad’s lynchpin progressive proposals have not become law.

But look closely and you’ll see that the four freshman women of colour have had a meaningful impact on a host of issues, from Ms Omar’s measure securing free school meals during the coronavirus pandemic that became law in April, to altering the Trump administration’s immigrant deportation policy, to whipping up support from every major Democratic presidential candidate for Ms Ocasio-Cortez’s so-called “Green New Deal”.

Legislative victories are rare for first-term lawmakers, who are usually relegated to the backbench at caucus meetings and struggle to build bipartisan consensus to move bills and amendments out of committee.

But legislation is only one of many ways to track a legislator’s success.

Oversight, campaign fundraising, and a member’s ability to draw her party towards or away from certain policies are often equally important metrics to assess whether someone can sustain long-term congressional impact.

And Ms Ocasio-Cortez, Ms Tlaib, Ms Omar, and Ms Pressley have undeniably leveraged the media’s fascination with them and their virtually unmatched online presences to excel in those three areas, more than half a dozen experts spanning the political spectrum told The Independent.

Media obsession

The Washington Post reported in January that Ms Ocasio-Cortez was the most talked about freshman on cable news during the squad’s first year in office.

Among all House members, she trailed only speaker Nancy Pelosi and intelligence chairman Adam Schiff, the Democrats’ lead impeachment manager, in mentions on the cable news networks CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC.

Ms Tlaib and Ms Omar also cracked the top 10, the Post reported, and together with Ms Ocasio-Cortez comprised more than 75 per cent of the cable news mentions of all freshmen members.

The publicity wasn’t all positive.

Ms Tlaib became a natural Democratic bogeywoman on Fox News when she was caught on camera mere hours after her swearing-in ceremony telling a story about how she had recently said to her son, “We’re gonna go in there and we’re gonna impeach the motherf***er,” referring to Mr Trump.

Her words, of course, proved prophetic: 348 days later, on 18 December 2019, the House voted to impeach the president – but only after Democratic moderates shifted their position to favouring impeachment, putting new pressure on Ms Pelosi.

The phrase even made a nice slogan for a line of T-shirts Ms Tlaib sold to raise money for her re-election campaign.

Ms Omar and Ms Tlaib, the first Muslim congresswomen in US history, spent countless hours of their first few months in office weathering accusations of antisemitism after each of them made remarks about Israel that many observers said were problematic.

Cummings’ proteges

The squad’s outsize presence in the public discourse was a headache for many Democratic party leaders and longtime members.

In March 2019, the caucus passed a resolution condemning the “insidious, bigoted history” of “accusations of dual loyalty” of Jews to the US and Israel, language clearly crafted to punish Ms Omar for comments she had made that appeared to allude to the stereotype.

But the late House oversight chairman Elijah Cummings saw a way to harness the squad’s energy into an incredibly powerful messaging force for the party: recruiting them to his panel, which launched an aggressive slate of high-impact probes into the Trump administration, a proposed citizenship question for the 2020 census that would have ramifications on communities with large immigrant populations, and prescription drug prices, among many other topics.

Mr Cummings, who died in October, was a roundly respected presence at the Capitol in both parties despite his ambitious oversight regime against Mr Trump.

He was also one of the most ardent believers on Capitol Hill that “sunshine” – Washington-speak for government transparency – is one of congress’ most powerful tools to alter the policies of the executive branch and powerful industries because of the public pressure it can stir up.

Ms Pressley said she is “still unpacking” the lessons Mr Cummings imparted on her before he died from health complications.

“I feel uniquely blessed to have shared a dais with him,” the congresswoman told The Independent, adding that she still thinks of him often.

Mr Cummings met with Ms Ocasio-Cortez in early January 2019 to gauge her interest in the committee and explain that to succeed within it would require a prodigious amount of reading and homework.

The chairman came away from the meeting thinking the New York Democrat and her fellow freshman congresswomen Ms Tlaib and Ms Pressley would be stars on the panel.

His instincts were correct.

In May, videos of Ms Ocasio-Cortez went viral after she ran circles around pharmaceutical executive Daniel O’Day of Gilead Sciences, which at the time was charging $1,700 a month for an HIV prevention drug developed through taxpayer-funded research.

Mr Cummings credited Ms Ocasio-Cortez at the hearing with “leading the charge” to hold it in the first place.

“They made Oversight must-see TV,” Kurt Bardella, a former top aide to Republican ex-chairman of the committee Darrell Issa, said of the squad.

“These oversight hearings can be long, gruelling, in the weeds. He saw in them the ability to distil these hours into sound bites to advance the agenda,” Mr Bardella said.

Ms Pressley, a former congressional staffer herself for many years, knew better than most how behind-the-scenes work could bend even a hostile administration’s policy.

In August 2019, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security decided to stop considering “medical deferred action” requests from undocumented immigrants with critical health conditions who were scheduled for deportation.

Medical deferred action provides immigrants and their families temporary relief from deportation if they have life-threatening health conditions that could not be adequately treated if they were deported.

Ms Pressley, whose Boston-area district is 40 per cent immigrant families, penned a letter to the administration and spearheaded an effort to hold an Oversight subcommittee hearing on DHS’ new policy.

Less than a month later, the administration reversed its decision to roll back medical deferred action.

‘Not enough Ilhans, not enough AOCs’

While the ranks of the 97-member Congressional Progressive Caucus – of which the squad are all members – have steadily swelled since its founding in 1991, the moderate New Democrat Coalition is still the largest policymaking group in the Democratic caucus.

That often makes it difficult for progressives to score anything more than incremental legislative victories in the final versions of bills that make it to Mr Trump’s desk.

Exhibit A: Coronavirus.

While Ms Ocasio-Cortez was the only Democrat to vote against the most recent coronavirus response bill worth nearly a half-trillion dollars in federal money, a handful of other progressives expressed strong reservations about it because it didn’t include virtually any of the CPC’s proposed policies, such as funding for election security and recurring direct cash payments to every American while the pandemic persists.

“There just aren’t enough Ilhans. There aren’t enough AOCs,” said Jennifer Epps-Addison, president and executive director of the progressive Centre for Popular Democracy.

The squad, and the various liberal groups that back its members, are trying to change that.

Justice Democrats, the progressive PAC that provided essential grassroots organising and fundraising support for each squad member’s 2018 campaign, is back at it again in 2020 with another slate of progressive candidates and Democratic primary challengers.

The group picked off its first target in March, when liberal activist Marie Newman defeated pro-life Democratic Congressman Dan Lipinski in Illinois’ 3rd District by less than 3 percentage points.

Ms Pressley and Ms Ocasio-Cortez, who both vanquished longtime Democratic incumbents in their respective 2018 primaries, endorsed Ms Newman early in the race.

“The squad is big. It’s anyone committed to the work of equality and justice,” Ms Pressley told The Independent.

‘No hard feelings’

While they wear their congressional “disruptor” badges proudly and openly criticise certain elements of the Democratic party as not being progressive enough, the squad isn’t exactly burning bridges with moderate members of the caucus, at least on a personal level.

Last year, Ms Omar was mulling whether to endorse 27-year-old Jessica Cisneros, the primary challenger of Texas Congressman Henry Cueller, a longtime Blue Dog Democrat who is cozy with the gas and oil industry and is the only member of the party with an A rating from the National Rifle Association.

A staffer in Ms Omar’s political office called Mr Cuellar’s campaign manager, Colin Strother, to let him know before any official word leaked that she’d be endorsing Ms Cisneros – a show of courtesy that translated to, “No hard feelings, but I’m receiving a lot of pressure to endorse the progressive, so that’s what I’m doing.”

Mr Strother said he understood the congresswoman’s predicament and that placing such calls and giving advance notice goes a long way in maintaining good intra-party relationships, even if members don’t always see eye-to-eye on policy.

“Everyone’s got to do what they have to do,” Mr Strother said.

Ms Omar ended up not endorsing either candidate in the race. Mr Cuellar won the March primary by less than four percentage points, a 2,746-vote margin.

Team players?

Democratic political strategists believe the squad is also uniquely positioned to help grow the caucus by putting their money where their mouths are.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez particularly has harnessed her popularity on social media to become one of the most prolific fundraisers in the House, raking in more than $8.1m through the first five quarters of the 2020 cycle, per the Federal Election Commission’s online database.

That’s the sixth-highest figure in the House, and the most among freshmen members.

What makes Ms Ocasio-Cortez’ total even more impressive is that she doesn’t accept money from super PACs, a pledge most other Democratic freshmen, including the rest of the squad, has also made.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez also largely eschews the fancy fundraising dinners and extravaganzas where most of the other top-10 congressional fundraisers pad their stats. Seventy-eight per cent of the money she has raised came from individual contributions of $200 or less, per Open Secrets.

Ms Omar is no slouch, either, having raised nearly $3.4m so far this cycle. That puts her comfortably in the top 10 per cent of House candidates.

Since both Ms Omar and Ms Ocasio-Cortez hail from solidly Democratic districts where they don’t have to spend nearly as much money for re-election as they’re pulling in, that could free them up to spend big on other races.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez’ leadership PAC, Courage to Change, has raised nearly $500,000 and has spent thousands of dollars for progressive candidates in places as wide-ranging as New York’s 15th District (Samelys Lopez), Nebraska’s 2nd District (Kara Eastman), New Mexico’s 3rd District (Teresa Leger), and Illinois’ 3rd District (Ms Newman).

She has also cut checks for current House Democrats Katie Porter of California and Jahana Hayes of Connecticut to help protect the party’s chamber majority.

“These freshmen members have a tremendous opportunity to demonstrate that, hey, they are team players, they are a part of this caucus, and they’re going to do things that may not be beneficial to them personally, but to the caucus overall,” Mr Strother said.