Former Democrat Senate Candidate Says AOC’s NYC Liberal Message Would Fall On Deaf Ears With Midwestern Voters

Former Democratic Senate candidate Morgan Harper of Ohio said Tuesday that Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could struggle to connect with Midwestern voters if she were to run for president in 2028.

Ocasio-Cortez and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont have been on an “anti-oligarchy” tour targeting President Donald Trump and White House senior advisor Elon Musk with rallies in several states. Harper told Fox News host Harris Faulkner during “The Faulkner Focus” that while Ocasio-Cortez was pushing a message of “economic populism,” the former bartender-turned-congresswoman had one major obstacle when it came to connecting with voters in the Midwest during a presidential campaign.

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“You spoke and you ran in your state of Ohio, so you spoke on behalf of, I would assume, some Democrat voters you know in that state,” Faulkner asked Harper. “So why don’t they think she can be the face of your party if she has got those bona fides?”

“When we were talking about that, coming from the perspective from Ohio. They want to see people that are from there, that have a connection to the experience of what it is to be in a place that yes, has cities but also has a lot of rural areas,” Harper said. “AOC is coming from New York City. New York City is a very different place than the rest of the country.”

Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California urged Ocasio-Cortez to challenge Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York in the 2028 Democratic primary, when Schumer is up for reelection to his sixth term in the Senate, NBC News reported in March. Ocasio-Cortez held a double-digit lead over Schumer in a hypothetical match-up in a poll released April 4 by Data for Progress.

Harper did not definitively rule out the possibility that Ocasio-Cortez was able to be a viable national candidate in the future.

“Whether or not she decides to run for whatever office in the future, and higher office and I do agree the timelines are getting truncated here, so all things are possible and certainly on the table,” Harper said.

A CNN/SSRS poll released in March showed that Ocasio-Cortez led when Democratic voters were asked who best represented the party’s values. Ocasio-Cortez was tied for third with Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey in a hypothetical Democratic primary in a Data for Progress poll released April 16, trailing only former Vice President Kamala Harris and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

During Harper’s unsuccessful 2022 U.S. Senate bid, media sources compared policies she backed to those embraced by “the Squad,” a group of far-left House members including Ocasio-Cortez and Democratic Reps Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.