(AP Photo/Kevin Hagen).
- A feud playing out on Times Square billboards escalated on Friday after a group supportive of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defended her opposition to Amazon’s New York headquarters deal.
- After a conservative business advocacy group blamed Ocasio-Cortez for 25,000 lost jobs and $4 billion in lost wages as a result of Amazon’s cancellation of its Long Island City HQ2, a progressive group hit back with another billboard.
- "Fighting gentrification in NYC, helping to stop a $2.8 billion tax give-away, taking on the world’s 3rd largest corporation, thanks AOC!" the Democracy for America ad read.
A feud playing out on Manhattan billboards escalated on Friday after a progressive group put up its own ad defending Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s opposition to Amazon’s planned New York headquarters.
The public fight began when the Job Creators Network, a conservative business advocacy group, put up a billboard in Times Square blaming Ocasio-Cortez for 25,000 lost jobs and $4 billion in lost wages as a result of Amazon’s cancellation of its Long Island City HQ2.
"Thanks for Nothing, AOC!" read the ad, which was placed in a tourist-heavy spot.
Ocasio-Cortez hit back at JCN in a series of tweets on Thursday in which she called the attack "wack" and said the group does the bidding of the pro-Trump billionaires it’s funded by. The 29-year-old also argued that JCN’s campaign is proof of how effectively she and her allies are "fighting dark money & anti-worker policies."
JCN was founded by Bernard Marcus, a billionaire who donated to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. And the billionaire Mercer family, who also donated to Trump’s campaign and funded the conservative news site Breitbart, have donated to a related group, the Job Creators Alliance.
JCN didn’t relent, putting up two more billboards on Thursday, one of which read, "Hey AOC, saw your wack tweet."
On Friday morning, progressive political action committee Democracy for America jumped into the fight, putting up its own Times Square billboard defending Ocasio-Cortez.
"Fighting gentrification in NYC, helping to stop a $2.8 billion tax give-away, taking on the world’s 3rd largest corporation, thanks AOC!" the ad read.
Ocasio-Cortez was an outspoken opponent of Amazon’s HQ2 deal, but local lawmakers and activists led the pushback to the plans. The tech company was set to receive nearly $3 billion in tax incentives from the city and the state and said it would create 25,000 jobs for New Yorkers over the next decade.
Amazon cited the resistance of local politicians in a blog post announcing the cancellation.
Alex Ma contributed to this report.
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Source: Business Insider – feedback@businessinsider.com (Eliza Relman)