AOC won’t say whether she’ll mount primary challenge against Chuck Schumer

New York congresswoman has not been shy about expressing her disillusionment with politics

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has once again declined to rule out mounting a primary challenge to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the senior Democratic senator from her home state of New York.

Now in her second term representing the Bronx in the US House, Ms Ocasio-Cortez has shown remarkable transparency about her up-in-the-air plans for the future.

“I’m not playing coy or anything like that. I’m still very much in a place where I’m trying to decide what is the most effective thing I can do to help our Congress, our [political] process, and our country actually address the issues of climate change, health care, wage inequality, etc.,” she told the new Washington-based publication Punchbowl in an interview published on Monday.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez has hinted in previous interviews that she at times suffers from extreme disillusionment within the Democratic party framework. Asked shortly after the 2020 elections if should would continue running for re-election in New York’s 14th District, she could not say.

“I genuinely don’t know. I don’t even know if I want to be in politics,” she told the New York Times at the time.

“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.”

In her new interview with Punchbowl, Ms Ocasio-Cortez suggested she would not be basing her future plans on whether Democrats appear likely to keep or lose their House majority in 2022.

“I’m not sure about that either. For me, I don’t make these decisions based on these short-term factors.”

Ms Ocasio-Cortez, 30, is often considered the “next generation” of political leadership in the Democratic party. But her comments to Punchbowl indicate she’s already focused on how her political movements today could affect subsequent generations.

“If I want to have a child, I would want my child — or my nieces or nephews — to have guaranteed health care by the time they’re my age. And freedom from want. I’m also very indecisive,” she said.

As for her relationship with Mr Schumer, Ms Ocasio-Cortez told Punchbowl she and the Senate minority leader have an ongoing dialogue.

“He and I have an open relationship, we speak to each other regularly,” she said.

The congresswoman indicated that it was complicated to say whether she believes Mr Schumer is doing a good job or not, although she suggested that she understands the difficult circumstances under which he has operated over the last four years as the minority leader.

“We’ve had to deal with a fascist president and [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell,” Ms Ocasio-Cortez said.

“There’s this thing, ‘Are we doing a good job?’ There are things you can do in the minority. There are also things you couldn’t do with this minority because Senate rules changed,” she said, an apparent reference to Mr McConnell scrapping the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, a move that allowed Mr Trump to fundamentally alter the judicial landscape in this country.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez has been asked numerous times, and by numerous outlets, if she will challenge Mr Schumer, who is up for re-election in 2022, but has never indicated which way she might be leaning.