Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., said it would "be an honor to be vice president” in a recent Spanish-language interview Sunday before headlining a Las Vegas campaign event for Sen. Bernie Sanders.
The 30-year-old freshman congresswoman quickly pointed out that she falls five years short of the constitutional age limit to be vice president. The vice president – and president – must be at least 35 years old.
“It’d be an honor to be vice president,” Ocasio-Cortez told "Noticias Telemundo" correspondent Guadalupe Venegas in Las Vegas. “I can’t because I’m not old enough.”
Ocasio-Cortez gave a keynote address at Sanders’ Spanish-language town hall in Las Vegas on Sunday. She endorsed him for the White House in October and could play a key role for the Vermont independent in seeking Nevada’s large Latino vote, differentiating himself from fellow progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
“I was a community organizer in the Bronx for Sen. Sanders during the last presidential campaign,” Ocasio-Cortez added. “That was my first experience, organizing right there in the street for an election.”
“Before that, I did community work in education, with the Latino community and with the National Hispanic Institute, but that was my first time organizing for an election. It was an experience that I will never forget,” she continued. “It was an important part of my experience when I decided to run for Congress. I learned that there was another way of doing politics here in the U.S.”
Also in her interview with “Noticias Telemundo,” Ocasio-Cortez, whose mother is Puerto Rican, reiterated how important it was for her to continue to practice her Spanish.
“If we are first- or second-generation, it is important that we cultivate our language. I must speak and practice more to improve my own Spanish. Our language is the link with our families and our communities,” Ocasio-Cortez said. She had tweeted that she was "nervous" to host the town hall in Spanish because she doesn't speak the language often.
She also spoke about how far she’s come over the past year and a half, since ousting a powerful incumbent Democrat in New York's 14th Congressional District in a June 2018 primary and then defeating a Republican in the general election that November.
“Last year I worked in a taqueria, as a waitress and as a bartender, and now I am a congresswoman,” she said. “That is a huge change. But my values are the same. And we are saying the same thing we were saying last year: that we must fight for working families, for health insurance, for education for all children and a fair salary.”
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