“The biggest villain was Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.”
New Yorkers consider Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez the “biggest villain” in the saga that saw Amazon pull out of its planned headquarters in Queens, according to a poll released Monday.
The Siena College survey of 700 registered New York voters found that 38 percent see Ocasio-Cortez as the chief bad guy, compared to just 12 percent who deem her the hero. That made her the most-blamed person for the collapse of the deal, which would have seen Amazon bring up to 25,000 jobs to the city in exchange for $3 billion in incentives.
“More people think that Amazon, Governor [Andrew] Cuomo, Mayor [Bill] de Blasio, the State Senate, and local Queens activists were villains in this saga than they were heroes,” pollster Steve Greenberg said in a press release. “However, voters say the biggest villain was Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.”
WATCH: Reality Check for AOC: Life in Congress Is Really Hard
Source: Reality Check for AOC: Life in Congress Is Really Hard by OccupyDemocratsLogic
While Democrats most of all faulted Amazon for abandoning them, both Republicans and independents fingered Ocasio-Cortez, the poll showed. The freshman Democrat – who represents the part of Queens where Amazon planned to move in – was a leading critic of courting Amazon, and she celebrated the effort’s failure.
Anything is possible: today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers & their neighbors defeated Amazon’s corporate greed, its worker exploitation, and the power of the richest man in the world. https://t.co/nyvm5vtH9k
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 14, 2019
Another 34 percent of voters picked local activists as their villains, Siena College noted, and 29 percent blamed de Blasio. The mayor, for his part, has sought to shift blame to Amazon.
The survey said that an overwhelmingly 67 percent of voters think Amazon withdrawing of an agreement to build a sprawling corporate campus in New York was bad for the city, the poll showed, and only 21 percent are happy about the development.
Last week, a Gallup poll revealed that people across the United States are souring on Ocasio-Cortez as they learn more about her. Among the 71 percent of Americans who know her name, 41 percent disapprove of her, compared to 31 percent who approve, according to the survey.
Ocasio-Cortez dismissed the findings Saturday in a series of tweets, arguing that it’s not people who dislike her, so much as Republicans. She went on to accuse Fox News of spreading “awareness” about her among GOP voters.
The reason people know more is bc Fox News has turned into “AOC TMZ” (no offense to TMZ), so awareness is growing w/ GOPers.@JaneMayerNYer has reported deeply on this propaganda machine + it will be aimed at any Dem they want. Nothing changes that.
We can’t be scared by that.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 16, 2019
Gallup noted that support for Ocasio-Cortez has grown among Democrats and nonwhites, two groups that make up most of her district. So she does not necessarily need to worry about her electoral prospects.
However, a number of prominent Democrats are reportedly looking to remove Ocasio-Cortez from Congress by mounting a primary challenge against her in 2022.
Via Pluralist
