Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez chief of staff
Chakrabarti was campaign manager for Ocasio-Cortez's unexpected primary victory over 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley, and afterwards became her campaign chair. While her general election victory in the heavily Democratic district was considered a foregone conclusion, Chakrabarti leveraged her newfound high profile to campaign for other progressive candidates across the country. After she won the November 2018 general election, she appointed him as her chief of staff.
In 2019, Chakrabarti was named to the Politico Playbook power list to watch.
Chakrabarti led the Ocasio-Cortez staff and several progressive groups in writing the Green New Deal resolution that was submitted to the House of Representatives by Ocasio-Cortez and to the Senate by Ed Markey February 7, 2019. The New Yorker quoted him as saying, "We spent the weekend learning how to put laws together. We looked up how to write resolutions." The Washington Post quoted him as well:
"it wasn't originally a climate thing at all ... we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing."
Chakrabarti expressed a vision of what Democrats should try to do while Republicans hold power in the Senate and Presidency:
"Don't expect them to back down . . . Another thing to really do over the next two years is to basically show the American people what will be possible if the Democrats win the House, the Senate and the presidency in 2020, and that means putting our best foot forward. It means putting the most ambitious, the boldest, the biggest things we can, and then just build a movement around that."
Relating that to the policies Ocasio-Cortez proposes and supports via Twitter, Chakrabarti told Brian Stelter on CNN's "Reliable Sources":
"She's able to do things very quickly because she has a pulse on where the people are."Chakrabarti publicly supported Bilal Mahmood's run as a Democrat for California's 17th State Assembly district in a 2022 special election on September 30, 2021. Together, he and Mahmood planned an environmental framework similar to the Green New Deal for California, including a carbon tax to fund zero-interest loans for green retrofits.
In February 2019, Chakrabarti appeared as a guest on Bloomberg News to clarify Ocasio-Cortez's role in Amazon's decision to pull its planned HQ2 from Long Island City, Queens, saying she objected to the process by which it had received its original deal, but had no specific animus toward the company. He stated that AOC's goal had been to see the local community more involved in discussions, but once community members joined the discussion, Amazon made the decision to withdraw. Chakrabarti elaborated further that Amazon would be welcome to return to the negotiating table under the condition that the company engage adequately with the local communities to be affected by the project.
Chakrabarti worked on the part of the Justice Democrats platform which included abolishing ICE. To the question of whether a different agency should take its place, he replied "everyone has a different idea of what happens after".
In a 2019 tweet, Chakrabarti wrote that the New Democrats and Blue Dog Caucus should be called "the New Southern Democrats" for voting to "enable a racist system". This was in response to Democratic representatives approving an aid package which included funding for southern border enforcement. The House Democratic Caucus Twitter account, managed by Hakeem Jeffries, objected to his referring to Sharice Davids by name in these posts and attacked him for his perceived targeting of a Native American woman and person of color.
On August 2, 2019, Representative Ocasio-Cortez announced that Saikat Chakrabarti "has decided to leave the office to work with New Consensus to further develop plans for a Green New Deal." That same day, in an interview with The Intercept, Chakrabarti said he would be starting work with New Consensus, an organization dedicated to the Green New Deal, the congresswoman's "ambitious climate, economic, and racial justice agenda."
