Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez graced the cover of this week’s issue of Time magazine, further cementing the freshman congresswoman’s status as a national figure.
The headline adorning the cover, paired next to a shot of Ocasio-Cortez, dubbed her, “The Phenom.”
In the accompanying story by Time’s national correspondent Charlotte Alter, Ocasio-Cortez talks about her growing celebrity, saying she “can’t go anywhere in public and just be a person without a lot of people watching everything I do.”
As Alter put it, “Ocasio-Cortez has become the second most talked-about politician in America, after the President of the United States.”
The 29-year-old Ocasio-Cortez, who was elected last year following an upset in the Democratic primary over longtime New York congressman Joe Crowley, also described what she believes is causing the divide within her party.
“There’s always this talk about division within the Democratic Party, ideological differences,” she told Time. “But I actually think they’re generational differences. Because the America we grew up in is nothing like the America our parents or our grandparents grew up in.”
Not even halfway through her first year in office, Ocasio-Cortez has already established herself as one of the faces of the Democratic party, a hero to progressive voters and a nemesis to Republicans. She has become a ubiquitous figure in ominous Fox News segments and GOP attack ads. And this week’s cover of Time comes on the heels of this month’s issue of Rolling Stone, on which Ocasio-Cortez appeared alongside Reps. Jahana Hayes and Ilhan Omar, who are also freshman congresswomen, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.