Democrat Cindy Axne Takes More Money from AOC’s Defund the Police Group

central report on Cindy Axne
David Greedy/Getty
Jacob Bliss
Washington, DC

Vulnerable Rep. Cindy Axne (D-IA) took another $5,000 from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) pro-defund the police Super PAC, Courage to Change.

Recently released campaign finance data from the FEC revealed that Axne accepted $5,000 from Courage to Change on October 20, 2022. The congresswoman also took the same amount of money from the PAC in March 2021.

Earlier in the year, it was reported that Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) pro-defund the police Super PAC pushed a litmus test for prospective candidates seeking their endorsement, demanding they pledge to slash police funding.

The PAC’s questionnaire asked:

If running for a legislative position, do you pledge to vote for the following; alternatively, if running for an executive position or a position that does not vote on such matters, do you pledge to publicly support and work towards the following: A public safety strategy to reduce the annual budget for law enforcement and defense spending, and shift those funds towards community resources and programs, including: victim support and compensation funds; community schools; rehabilitation and re-entry programs for incarcerated persons? [Emphasis added.]

However, Axne had not signed the pledge before or after she took money from the group, according to the PAC’s website and Ocasio-Cortez’s spokesperson, PolitiFact noted, in July.

Lydia Hall, a spokesperson for the congresswoman’s Republican challenger, suggested in a statement to PolitiFact that Axne would not have taken the PAC’s money if she actually opposed reducing police funding.

“Cindy Axne voted for legislation that defunds police and is bankrolled by some of the loudest voices in the movement to defund police,” Hall added.

Additionally, Republican challenger Zach Nunn, in an interview with Breitbart News Sunday in July, said that “Fundamentally, at the federal level, we have turned our back on our first responders” and that “Cindy Axne actively sought to defund the police.”

Nunn and his spokesperson were referring to the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which passed on an almost party-line vote of 220-212 last year. Republicans described the piece of legislation as a plan that would engage in “defunding the police.”

While the legislation has been stalled in the U.S. Senate, a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) nonpartisan analysis found that it would cost more than 18,000 police departments around the country significant funds, with the majority of the cost going towards training, data collection, management, and reporting.

PolitiFact’s acknowledged that the legislation would “require departments to put money into training and resources and apply for grants to pay for resources.”

Ultimately, as Breitbart News has noted in the past, “the politics of defunding police departments — and even more broadly the issues of leftist socialist ideas taking over the Democrat Party — are at the core of a political shift seen in many places nationwide.”

The National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Mike Berg explained to Breitbart News, “It’s not surprising AOC keeps donating to Cindy Axne” because “Axne votes like a Brooklyn socialist.”

Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jbliss@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter @JacobMBliss.

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