XPost: alt.politics.democrats, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, sac.politics
XPost: alt.gossip.celebrities
From: felcher.adam.schiff@sacbee.com

She may be America’s most famous freshman congresswoman, but in
New York, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a virtual ghost.

She has no district office and no local phone number, unlike the
state’s three other freshman members.

And it’s unclear whether the 29-year-old lawmaker, who
represents the Bronx and Queens, actually still lives in the
Parkchester neighborhood that has been so closely tied to her
rise — even though she won her upset victory over fellow
Democrat Rep. Joe Crowley with accusations that his home in
Virginia made him too Washington-focused to serve his district.

Ocasio-Cortez has used her deceased father’s Bronx condo on her
voter registration since 2012, and even posed in the one-bedroom
Bronx flat for celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz in a Vogue
magazine profile after her stunning November election. But The
Post could find little indication she continues to live there.

The Post e-mailed the Ocasio-Cortez’ spokesman, Corbin Trent,
four times with specific questions — they were all ignored. On
Saturday, The Post reached Corbin by phone.

“We will not be commenting,” he said. Among the queries he
refused to answer: Where does the congresswoman live?

On Saturday night, a staffer promised a Post reporter that
Ocasio-Cortez would talk to him after a speaking event in Corona.

During the event, two staffers were seen reading an early
edition of this story on their phones.

“Come downstairs, I have to take a picture quick,” the
congresswoman then told the reporter after the event,
instructing him to wait for her. Twenty minutes later, she
ducked out a back door, jumped into a chauffeured SUV, and
zoomed off.

Ocasio-Cortez was in New York City last weekend and this
weekend, with appearances in Queens on both Saturdays — yet she
was not seen coming or going from her Parkchester pad either day.

Her apartment’s next-door neighbor said she had never seen
Ocasio-Cortez. Another neighbor, who has lived down the hall
from the congresswoman’s apartment for the last 40 years, said
he’d never seen her or her boyfriend, Riley Roberts, who has
claimed the address as his own since last spring.

“I would have remembered,” said the neighbor when shown a
photograph of Ocasio-Cortez.

Workers at Jerry’s Pizzeria, less than a block from her
building, and at the local grocery store said she had never
patronized their businesses — and a server at a nearby taqueria
said the congresswoman had only come in to be filmed by news
crews.

A postal worker who delivers mail to the building said that in
the last 10 years he has only seen Ocasio-Cortez intermittently,
and that several months’ worth of mail regularly accumulates in
the mailbox before anyone bothers to collect it. The worker said
that Ocasio-Cortez and Roberts were the only ones getting mail
at the address.

“Just because their names are on the box doesn’t mean they live
there,” he said.

And in 2017, when Ocasio-Cortez first filed paperwork to become
a congressional candidate, she didn’t even know what district
she lived in, mistakenly declaring plans to run for neighboring
District 15 before correcting the error days later.

Meanwhile, in Washington, Ocasio-Cortez has rented a pad in a
luxe building in the chic Navy Yard neighborhood, where studios
start at $1,840 a month, according to the Washington Examiner.

Her new digs feature gold-plated amenities like a rooftop
infinity pool, a cycling studio with a dozen pricey Pelotons,
men’s and women’s saunas, and a golf simulation lounge — but no
affordable units for low-income residents, in spite of a local
law that requires them, the news site reported.

In the eight months since Ocasio-Cortez’s dramatic defeat of the
long-serving Crowley in June’s Democratic primary — a victory
that all but guaranteed a general election win in the heavily
Democratic District 14 — the congresswoman has failed to open a
local office.

Ocasio-Cortez has made four trips to the city since she was
inducted to Congress on Jan. 3, according to a Post review of
published reports and social media. Those excursions featured
five public events in her district — and three high-profile
Manhattan appearances, including a Jan. 21 guest slot on “The
Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

A district office “makes government immediately responsible and
accountable to the citizens,” said Jadan Horyn of Reclaim New
York, a government watchdog group.

“Constituents need to know their representatives are working for
them, and not for national prominence.”

The space slated for Ocasio-Cortez’s constituent office is in a

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