Firebrand freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., reportedly refuses to meet with the executives of the big Wall Street banks that are New York City's largest private-sector employers.
Fox Business Network's Charlie Gasparino and Lydia Moynihan reported Monday that Rep. Ocasio-Cortez has not met with bank executives despite overtures made to her since she took office in January.
Though other progressives like New York City's Mayor Bill de Blasio have had frosty relationships with Wall Street, Ocasio-Cortez has chosen to have no relationship at all, Fox Business reported — and she might be the only high-profile local elected official to refuse meetings with the banks.
"AOC is running a social movement against big money and the banks," Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf told Gasparino and Moynihan. "She got away with chasing Amazon out of New York, and she isn't afraid of JPMorgan and Citigroup, no matter how many people they employ in her district."
Ocasio-Cortez is a member of the powerful House Financial Services Committee, which provides oversight on the big banks and Wall Street firms, and earlier this month grilled both Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, and Mike Corbat, the CEO of Citigroup, about the 2008 financial crisis.
Neither executive has met with the freshman lawmaker despite those financial institutions being New York City's top two private sector employers, Gasparino and Moynihan reported, citing unnamed sources.
A spokesman for Citigroup declined to comment, and press officials at Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley would not deny they have not met with her, Fox Business reported. A spokeswoman for Ocasio-Cortez also did not comment, Fox Business reported.
According to Gasparino and Moynihan, the New York City Partnership, the business community's major lobby group in the city, knows of the friction and has been monitoring the situation. An unnamed official at the partnership told Fox Business at least one major bank CEO has asked the partnership to help set up a meeting.
"The banks are the city's biggest employers, and it's just idiotic that she won't meet with us," one unnamed senior banking executive told the Fox Business journalists.
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