Ocasio-Cortez says she’s not ready to endorse 2020 candidate, will focus on local races

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said she’s not ready to endorse a 2020 candidate but offered praise for several members of the crowded field this weekend, according to the Boston Herald.

“I’m extremely excited by the policies and the policy leadership, the plan leadership, that‘s been advanced by Sen. [Elizabeth] Warren [D-Mass.],” Ocasio-Cortez said Saturday during a visit to Brookline, Mass., to endorse a candidate for local office. “Of course I worked on Sen. [Bernie] Sanders’ [I-Vt.] campaign, and I find his values to be my values, too.”

{mosads}Ocasio-Cortez offered praise for several other Democratic hopefuls as well, according to the newspaper, calling Gov. Jay Inslee’s (D-Wash.) leadership on climate and environmental issues “phenomenal” as well as lauding Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) for his work on criminal justice reform.

“I tend to look for transformative policy for working class Americans,” in a candidate, as well as a “longstanding commitment to those policies, so it’s not just a recent adoption of caring for all working-class folks,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

But she added that for now she intended to reserve her endorsements for local contests, “because this is how we’re going to rebuild our country from the bottom up.” Ocasio-Cortez was in Brookline to endorse Raul Fernandez’s candidacy for Select Board. Fernandez was one of Ocasio-Cortez’s teachers at Boston University, and the video in which she danced on a rooftop to Phoenix’s “Lisztomania” was his idea.

Ocasio-Cortez also declined to make an endorsement in an April interview, offering similar praise for Sanders and Warren but saying the prospect of a bid by former Vice President Joe Biden, who had not yet formally announced his candidacy at the time did “not particularly animate” her.