AOC’s Westchester childhood nickname resurfaces as her ‘Bronx girl’ claims get shouted down
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez‘s childhood nickname from her time growing up in Westchester County recently resurfaced as the far-left “Squad” lawmaker has faced scrutiny over her “Bronx girl” claims.
The lefty lawmaker was known as “Sandy” as a youngster in Yorktown Heights and was affectionately remembered as a top-notch student in the school district that’s about 34 miles north of the Boogie-Down.
“She was amazing,” Yorktown High School science teacher Michael Blueglass told Halston Media in 2018, shortly after Ocasio-Cortez defeated former Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY) in New York’s 14th District congressional primary.
“Aside from her winning one of the top spots and going to the [Intel International Science and Engineering Fair], she was just one of the most amazing presenters in all of the years I’ve been at Yorktown,” Blueglass gushed.
“Her ability to take complex information and explain it to all different levels of people was fantastic,” the teacher said of “Sandy.”
Even as she was described as a stellar student from the suburbs during her younger years, Ocasio-Cortez has repeatedly claimed she grew up in the Bronx.
The Democratic congresswoman touted the “Bronx girl” claim in a social media barb directed at President Trump last week, where she argued females from the uptown borough “can eat Queens boys for breakfast.”
In her back-and-forth with Trump, where she called for the president’s impeachment over strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Ocasio-Cortez came under fire for playing up her Bronx allegiances while neglecting to mention that she spent the majority of her childhood in Westchester County.
State Assemblyman Matt Slater (R-Yorktown) noted Sunday that most of his constituents remember the progressive pol as “Sandy Cortez” from Yorktown Heights.
“She’s embarrassing herself for doing everything possible to avoid saying she grew up in the suburbs instead of the Bronx,” Slater argued.
“She has said she visited extended family, she has said she commuted. Now she’s in between,” he continued. “It’s clearly desperate attempts to protect the lie that she is from the Bronx.”
Ocasio-Cortez, 35, was born in the Bronx but her family moved to Yorktown when she was 5 years old.
Slater, who was a senior at Yorktown High School when Ocasio-Cortez was a freshman, had shared the congresswoman’s yearbook photo last week, which went viral and prompted a response from the lefty firebrand.
“I’m proud of how I grew up and talk about it all the time,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on X Friday. “My mom cleaned houses and I helped. We cleaned tutors’ homes in exchange for SAT prep.”
“Growing up between the Bronx and Yorktown deeply shaped my views of inequality & it’s a big reason I believe the things I do today!”