Jay Jacobs and AOC are (kinda) buds now

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is not in the New York Democratic wilderness anymore – just ask state Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs.

Jacobs, who has never been shy with his critiques of the party’s left wing, offered Ocasio-Cortez rare praise at the New York delegation’s breakfast at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday morning. “You don’t hear this from me often, but I will say this to you: I thought AOC was outstanding last night,” Jacobs said, referencing her energetic main stage speech Monday night that drew widespread praise. “Don’t tell her I said that, will you?”

When Democrats underperformed in 2020, Jacobs laid much of the blame at the feet of progressives like Ocasio-Cortez, and the issues that they championed, like defunding the police. “Those ideas play very well in the districts that elect them,” Jacobs told City & State at the time. “They’re not sensitive at times to some of these swing districts.” Ocasio-Cortez criticized him in a response at the time.

A year later, Ocasio-Cortez called on Jacobs to resign after he compared India Walton, a Black, socialist candidate for mayor of Buffalo, to Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Jacobs later apologized.

Following the party’s poor performance in the 2022 midterms, Jacobs drew the ire of left-wing Democrats, including Ocasio-Cortez, who sought to have him replaced as leader of the state party. But he continued to receive steadfast support from Gov. Kathy Hochul and rebuked progressives who blamed him personally and accused the party of failing by running candidates who were too moderate. Jacobs suggested in a midterm postmortem report that progressives themselves were failing to motivate voters to turn out in high numbers. He doubled down on his criticisms of progressives in a WNYC interview a few months after that.

Jacobs was reportedly privately pulling for Westchester County Executive George Latimer to unseat Rep. Jamaal Bowman in a competitive House Democratic primary this year. He saw Latimer’s victory as a win for moderates like him. “Democratic voters made clear that Democratic voters are staking a moderate position,” Jacobs told NY1 after the election, even though progressives also had several victories that night.

Jacobs’ praise of Ocasio-Cortez in Chicago was a marked shift, potentially indicative of both her growing acceptance in mainstream Democratic circles, and arguably her influence. Her primetime speaking slot certainly spoke to the latter.

Ocasio-Cortez offered what seemed to be the first mention of the war in Gaza and the prospect of a ceasefire in her speech Monday evening. And some progressives and pro-Palestine activists were disappointed she didn’t go further with her remarks – like calling for an arms embargo with Israel.

Jacobs wasn’t alone in his praise of Ocasio-Cortez at the Tuesday morning breakfast either. “She is no longer a rising star, she is a star,” said Rep. Adriano Espaillat, another power broker in New York Democratic politics. That’s a long way from her surprise victory in 2018 over then-Rep. Joe Crowley, one of New York’s most influential Democrats, when mainstream Democrats considered her much more a nuisance than a star, rising or otherwise.