Ocasio-Cortez Endorses Challenger to Pro-Life Illinois Democrat
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Tuesday endorsed the primary challenger of one of the most pro-life Democrats in Congress, Chicago-area congressman Dan Lipinski.
The young progressive from New York awarded her first House endorsement of the 2020 elections to Marie Newman, who also enjoys the endorsement of Democratic presidential contenders Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
“Marie Newman is a textbook example of one of the ways that we could be better as a party — to come from a deep blue seat and to be championing all the issues we need to be championing,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “The fact that a deep blue seat is advocating for many parts of the Republican agenda is extremely problematic. We’re not talking about a swing state that is being forced to take tough votes.”
“She will be a powerful voice for upholding Roe v. Wade at a disturbing moment in our history when a woman’s right to control her own body and future is at stake,” said Sanders in his endorsement.
Newman, a supporter of abortion rights, narrowly lost last year when she first challenged the pro-life Lipinski for his seat representing Illinois’s 3rd Congressional District, a position he has held since 2005.
“I think the party really hurts itself tremendously by suggesting that it’s not open to people who are pro-life, pro-life voters,” Lipinski told National Review at the March for Life earlier this year.
“I also know that there are a lot of people who come up to me all the time and tell me that they are pro-life,” Lipinski added, noting that some are his own constituents. “They want to be a Democrat but they don’t feel that the party is accepting of them.”
“It’s terrible for the party,” he continued. “These people feel like they have been pushed out of the party.”
“If it happens again another primary, I’m ready for that,” he said in January of the possibility another tough primary challenge.
“He clearly just doesn’t like equality, period” and doesn’t understand “everyday basics,” Newman said of her opponent.
Newman supports Ocasio-Cortez’s signature issue, the Green New Deal, as well as Medicare for All, one of Sanders’s priorities. Lipinksi voted against the Affordable Care Act.
