LAS VEGAS, Nev. — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, five days away from a New York primary in which she faces a Democratic challenger, ventured into a downtown concert venue to push Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the true protectors of abortion rights.
“We are the people who are going to save American democracy,” Ocasio-Cortez told a crowd of hundreds gathered at the indoor rally on Thursday. “This room is the front line of democracy and it will live on the consent of the governed. And I have a message for this conservative [Supreme] Court and to Donald J. Trump: ‘We do not consent.’”
She said, “The next battleground is November. It’s Nevada. It’s defeating Donald Trump and electing [sic] Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.”
The progressive Democrat claimed she was a “Planned Parenthood baby” because her mother decided to keep her pregnancy after an ultrasound revealed the child she was carrying.
“But it was her choice,” Ocasio-Cortez said, “not a lobbyist’s and not a politician’s.”
Choice — and vocal opposition to Trump — were highlights of the rally.
When state Democratic Party chair Daniele Monroe-Moreno called Trump a “criminal,” the crowd cheered and one man shouted “Lock him up.”
“I had an abortion and it saved my life,” Alexis Gonzalez-Black, a partner at August Public, told the audience.
Ocasio-Cortez, who made headlines this week slamming the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, for funding candidates opposing her fellow “Squad” members over the issue of support for Israel in its war against Hamas, was welcomed to the Fremont Country Club by a Mexican mariachi band that played “Cielito Linda” and other standards. The Congresswoman is of Puerto Rican heritage.
Notably absent were any members of the mostly Democrat Nevada Congressional delegation. Sen. Jacky Rosen, a first-term member of the upper chamber who’ll face Army veteran Sam Brown in November, was absent, as was Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto, and Reps. Dina Titus, Susie Lee and Steven Horsford, who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus.
Nevada’s only GOP Congressman, Mark Amodei of Reno, was an unlikely participant.
A Biden-Harris campaign spokeswoman acknowledged the absences and said “scheduling” issues were to blame.
One local supporter, Christine Thomas of the Veterans Advocacy Council, said reproductive health “absolutely” matters.
“There is absolutely a need to make sure that everyone knows that even legislatively, we’ve seen in the past, they’ve changed things … because there was no representation.”
She said the Biden-Harris administration has “a more clear understanding” of the needs of women and the LGBTQ community.
But Democrat Peter Kulkin, who recently moved to Henderson, a Las Vegas suburb, from Newburgh, New York, said Ocasio-Cortez could have done this event “in two weeks from today” because of her primary challenge.
“She’s paying some dues here, but I’m afraid it will come at her own expense,” he said.
