Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Lashes Out at ‘Predatory’ Jill Stein

In an Instagram story posted on Sunday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, blasted Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein as “predatory” due to her multiple runs for the White House while struggling to grow the third party at the grassroots level.
In 2016, Stein played kingmaker in several key battleground states. Her vote total was higher than Donald Trump’s margin of victory in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan—prompting intense backlash from Democrats and political pundits. Not only was Stein widely condemned as a spoiler, but former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was the Democratic nominee during the 2016 election, later accused her of being a “Russian asset.”
Ocasio-Cortez accused Stein and the Green Party, which reached its current party status in 2001, for only putting its emphasis on presidential elections. To date, no Green Party candidate has ever held a federal office and only a handful have been elected as state legislators.
Ocasio-Cortez, responding to a question from an Instagram follower about Jill Stein’s candidacy, said that “this is a little spicy, but I have thoughts.”
“If you run for years in a row, and your party has not grown, has not added city council seats, down ballot seats and state electives, that’s bad leadership. And that to me is what’s upsetting,” the congresswoman said about Stein.
Stein will be on the ballot in Arizona, California, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and West Virginia, according to Ballotpedia’s most-recent update.
She will also be on the ballot in Montana, Utah, Nevada, Alaska, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Maine, Maryland and Missouri, Stein’s campaign manager Jason Call previously told Newsweek.
Meanwhile, the Green Party is on the ballot in Mississippi, South Carolina and Hawaii.
The reason for why Stein is on the ballot in some states and the Green Party is on in others is because of ballot access procedures.
On its website, the Green Party states that “at least 144 [party members] hold elected office in 20 states across the United States as of February 15, 2024.” The list includes Green Party members of local school, zoning and tax boards, as well as several city council members.
The New York Democrat said that Stein had been the Green Party’s candidate for 12 years in a row. However, Howie Hawkins ran as the party’s nominee in 2020.
“If you have been your party’s nominee for 12 years in a row, and you cannot grow your movement, pretty much at all, and can’t peruse any successful strategy…and all you do is show up every four years to speak to people who are justifiably pissed off, you’re not serious. To me, it does not read as authentic, it reads as predatory. I’m sorry, I’m just saying it,” Ocasio-Cortez said in her Instagram story.
She also asserted that she’s not against third parties, overall, and that she has and will continue to endorse some third-party candidates, even against Democrats.
“What I have a problem with is, if you’re running for president, you are the DeFacto leader of your party. I’ve been on record with criticisms of the two-party system. This is not about that,” the congresswoman added.
A spokesperson for Stein referred Newsweek to the Green Party candidate’s posts on X, formerly Twitter, in response to Ocasio-Cortez.
The Massachusetts native wrote in one post, “What’s seriously predatory is pretending your candidate is ‘working tirelessly for a ceasefire’ [in Gaza] when in reality they’re actively arming and funding genocide.”
She wrote in a second post, “Democrats sue to kick us off ballots, hire operatives to infiltrate and sabotage us, lock us out of debates, fight ranked-choice voting, then act concerned that Greens have only won 1400 elections. So which party is authentic, and which is predatory?”
Newsweek emailed Ocasio-Cortez’s office Sunday afternoon for comment.
The Democratic Party has gone through considerable legal efforts to challenge third parties from appearing on ballots.
Before independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump, Democratic-funded lawsuits had successfully removed him from the ballot in New York and had tried and failed to remove him in North Carolina and New Jersey.
On Monday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected an attempt by Democratic National Committee (DNC) official David Strange to knock Stein off the state’s ballot this year.
Strange said that the Green Party should not be allowed to nominate presidential electors in Wisconsin because it does not have any state officeholders or legislative candidates to nominate these presidential electors. However, the court ruled that “the petitioner is not entitled to the relief he seeks.”
Michael White, co-chair of the Wisconsin Green Party, said the complaint was a “mark of fear by the Democratic Party.”
In her 2017 book, What Happened, Clinton wrote: “So in each state, there were more than enough Stein voters to swing the result.”
Nationally, Stein received 1 percent of the vote in 2016, just under 1.5 million votes. In the 2020 election between Trump and Joe Biden, the Green Party’s candidate, Hawkins, only received 0.2 percent of the popular vote.
When asked recently by Newsweek if she feared a similar backlash after Trump’s 2016 victory when Clinton and many in the Democratic Party blamed her for taking crucial votes in several battleground states, Stein said those “smear or fear campaigns by the parties of Wall Street have never stopped.”
“The exit polls showed the vast majority of our votes in 2016 were non-voters,” Stein said, stating it is nonsense to claim her party took votes away from Clinton. “That campaign has never stopped and doesn’t influence my thinking. My thinking is on the climate catastrophe, economic hardships and stopping endless wars.”
In addition to Stein, Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris could also lose votes in key states to Cornel West, the “Justice for All Party” presidential candidate.
According to the Associated Press, a cohort of Republican strategists, attorneys, and supporters nationwide are striving to influence the upcoming November elections in a manner that potentially benefits Trump. Their objective is to bolster third-party candidates like West who present liberal voters with a different option that might divert support from Harris.
The funding source for this initiative remains ambiguous, but it holds substantial potential to alter outcomes in states that saw extremely narrow margins in the 2020 election won by Biden.
West’s campaign has encouraged the effort. Last month, the academic told the AP that “American politics is highly gangster-like activity” and he “just wanted to get on that ballot.”
Trump has offered praise for West, calling him “one of my favorite candidates.” Of Stein, the former president favors her for the same reason.
“I like her very much. You know why? She takes 100 percent from them. He takes 100 percent,” Trump has said.
Update: 9/1/2024, 9:31 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with more information.