The leader of the progressive Squad says she learned plenty from the former boxer from Searchlight, Nevada.
Hours after Harry Reid died, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeted a tribute to the former Senate powerbroker as an invaluable partner in her unlikely rise from Queens bartender to national political force.
“His counsel, encouragement, kindness, and generosity was so deeply moving. It was sincere. And I will never forget it,” AOC tweeted late Tuesday.
“Thank you, Senator Reid,” she added.
Reid, who rose from childhood poverty in hardscrabble rural Nevada to become a powerful Senate Majority Leader, died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 82.
AOC revealed that Reid had an uncanny ability to realize that she was in a tight political spot.
“Sometimes, in a quiet or difficult moment, Harry Reid would reach out,” she wrote. “It was like he knew.”
Reid, the ultimate political insider, made an unlikely mentor to Ocasio-Cortez, who launched her career by ousting powerful Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) and has been a thorn in the side of establishment Democrats.
But Reid apparently realized that the Democratic Party needs outspoken progressive voices like AOC alongside establishment dealmakers in his own mold.
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