A New York state assemblyman took aim at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Tuesday, mocking her for identifying as a “Bronx girl” while reminding the public of her suburban upbringing in Westchester County.
Assemblyman Matt Slater, a Republican from Yorktown, highlighted the congresswoman’s background by sharing a high school yearbook photo of her as a freshman at Yorktown High School, situated in a quiet suburb roughly 40 minutes north of the Bronx.
Slater’s response came after Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat representing portions of the Bronx and Queens, found herself in a heated exchange with President Trump. The clash began after she demanded his impeachment for carrying out airstrikes in Iran without first seeking congressional authorization.
In response to her call for impeachment, Trump fired back by branding her “one of the ‘dumbest’ people in Congress.” Ocasio-Cortez quickly hit back in a series of tweets.
“Also, I’m a Bronx girl. You should know that we can eat Queens boys for breakfast. Respectfully,” she posted, referencing the president’s Queens upbringing.
But Slater wasn’t having it. Sharing the yearbook image, he noted her clear ties to Yorktown. “If you’re a BX girl then why are you in my Yorktown yearbook? Give it up already,” he wrote on social media.
Speaking to The Post, Slater dismissed the congresswoman’s Bronx identity as misleading. “The truth is AOC is Sandy Cortez who went to Yorktown High School and lived at the corner of Friends Road and Longvue Street,” he said, referring to her given name.
Slater added that the portrayal of Ocasio-Cortez as a hardened Bronx native is, in his words, a political performance. “She may think it makes her look tough or like some kind of champion for the radical left who voted for [mayoral candidate] Zohran Mamdani, but she really needs to come clean and drop the act.”
Since her unexpected 2018 victory over longtime incumbent Joe Crowley, the progressive congresswoman, now 35, has drawn criticism for emphasizing her Bronx roots while downplaying her years in the suburbs.
That same year, shortly after her election, she appeared on Late Night with Stephen Colbert and quipped about Trump: “I don’t think he knows how to deal with a girl from the Bronx.”
According to a New York Times profile, Ocasio-Cortez’s family moved to Yorktown when she was about five years old to gain access to better public schools. She graduated from Yorktown High School in 2007, and property records show the family home remained in her name until it was sold in 2016.
Ocasio-Cortez has previously addressed the criticism, saying that living in Yorktown gave her insight into the stark inequality that exists across zip codes. “It is nice. Growing up, it was a good town for working people,” she tweeted in 2018. “My mom scrubbed toilets so I could live here & I grew up seeing how the zip code one is born in determines much of their opportunity.”
On Wednesday, a spokesperson for Ocasio-Cortez reaffirmed her biographical roots, stating that she was born in the Bronx’s Parkchester neighborhood before moving to Westchester. “Throughout her childhood, Representative Ocasio-Cortez traveled regularly to The Bronx to spend time with her extended family,” the bio states.
{Matzav.com}