OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is getting a primary challenger, and it is a candidate who appears to be the polar opposite of her “radical” left-wing positions.
Reports on Wednesday said that the self-avowed democratic socialist from New York will face Marty Dolan, a Wall Street investor who received his MBA from Harvard University and grew up in New York City.
In announcing his candidacy for New York’s 14th congressional district, Dolan did not spare AOC criticism. While he’s running as a Democrat, Dolan said he hopes to restore some sanity to the party, and that would start by beating the three-term “progressive” in the primary.
“I am excited to formally announce my candidacy for the Democratic nomination for New York’s 14th Congressional District,” Dolan said on his campaign website. “The June 25th, 2024, primary will be a referendum: Are we better or worse off from following radical policies?”
He went onto say that “progressives” like AOC are “radicals whose influence on the Democratic Party is overweight.” Dolan went on to say that Democratic policies are not keeping New Yorkers safe.
“The impact in NYC is obvious: bail reform a disaster, the National Guard in the subway, toothpaste locked up in drugstores but criminals running free, scarce resources directed to (non-sanctuary) immigrants coming from all over the world,” Dolan said.
“These difficulties must be addressed in the context of a runaway $34 trillion federal debt and NYC’s 14% marginal tax rate,” he added. “Regional tax inequality is far more exaggerated in the USA than in any other country.”
He also noted that in recent years, New York’s far-left Democratic policies have caused upwards of 500,000 higher-earning taxpayers to leave the city, something he called “unsustainable.”
“The radicals can’t deliver more than breadcrumbs when they ignore that the primary breadwinners are leaving and brush off taxpayer concerns in favor of abstract populist ideologies,” Dolan said in a reference to “tax the rich” slogans by AOC and those who agree with her.
“Enough is enough,” he added.
The businessman wants to bring the Democratic Party back in line with what the founders envisioned, adding that the “left us the blueprint” and adding that the party has “drifted off course.”
“We also urgently need to ‘reset’ our society’s income inequality and harmonize regional differences in social policy,” Dolan stated. “We call our approach the ‘Hamilton Plan v. 2.0’ in honor of one of our greatest New Yorkers, Alexander Hamilton, who forged the independent colonies into a great republic.”
Speaking of radical policies, earlier this month AOC called for Democrats to “investigate” the U.S. Supreme Court if they won back a House majority in the fall.
The left-wing extremist is calling on her party to demonize the court ahead of the 2024 election in an attempt to de-legitimize its constitutionalist majority.
“We need to go after the Supreme Court … and through the Supreme Court, we explore the entire network of issues that are most important to everyday Americans: the influence of dark money in creating a government that works against the American people, the majority of the American people,” she told the Off-Message website.
“The Supreme Court is a political institution, and Chief Justice [John] Roberts may not like to hear that, but he works with them, and he knows,” the congresswoman said. “It’s a political institution that responds to pressure. And absent pressure, they are going to do more of what we saw this week, which is enabling and risking our entire democracy at the behest of Donald Trump and Leonard Leo and the entire network that installed them there. And we have to fight back. We need to show people what they vote for.”
