EXCLUSIVE: 'God played quite a joke on me with this politics stuff!' The privacy-loving mother of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez whips up lasagna as she tells how she had to flee New York because of high taxes and gushes about wedding bells for her daughter

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Mrs Blanca Ocasio-Cortez, the woman who inspired U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to take up the fight for the 'little guy,' says she always knew her daughter would make something of herself.

She knew even before the birth, 29 years ago, of the New York Democrat who has driven the right crazy since her surprise congressional win last year.

'Her dad and I were preparing for Alexandria's birth and still picking names,' the 56-year-old mom of two said in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com. 'And he came up with ''Alexandria.'' I thought about it for a while and I said: ''Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. That sounds very powerful. That'll be her name.'''

Mrs Blanca Ocasio-Cortez – or BOC as her signature reads – is still settling down in Eustis, Florida, a small city in the far suburbs of Orlando.

She moved into the out-of-the-way lakefront community shortly before Democrat AOC filed her candidacy to become the youngest woman ever elected to the U.S. Congress. 

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's mother Mrs Blanca Ocasio-Cortez has spoken exclusively to DailyMail.com about her Democrat star daughter's upbringing, the challenges she faced as a windowed mother and how she is trying to keep a low profile in Trump-supporting Florida

Speaking from her modest home in Florida while cooking lasagna, Blanca says Alexandria got a political education at the dinner table, something to balance out the fact she was only involved in sports at school. She said: 'We had a lot of conversations at the dinner table among ourselves about the issues of the day'

Blanca says she hopes Alexandria will soon marry her longtime social media consultant boyfriend, Riley Roberts (pictured together in an undated photo), saying: 'I love him. He is the most loving, supporting person I've seen'

'I lived in the New York area for most of my life but I started being unable to afford it,' Blanca said in the living-room of her modest but tidy Florida house. 

'After my husband (Sergio Ocasio) died (of lung cancer in 2008), the family went through tough times. Alexandria was in college, but I still had her little brother (Gabriel Ocasio-Cortez, 26, a real estate agent) who needed to be put through school.'

With small business-owner dad Sergio around, Blanca said, the family enjoyed a middle-class lifestyle. Shortly after AOC's birth, the family was able to leave their one-bedroom condo in The Bronx for a small single-family house with a yard in nearby Yorktown Heights.

The mother-of-two said the couple took a mortgage and received help from other family members who pooled some of their resources.

'We had a great life there,' Blanca said. 'Alexandria was very social, so she always had a bunch of girls over. She took over the shed in the backyard. She cleaned it up, put up curtains and photos and made it look nice, and that was like a clubhouse for her and her friends.'

Already as a young teenager, mom said, AOC got a political education at the dinner table, something to balance out the fact she was only involved in sports at school.

'We had a lot of conversations at the dinner table among ourselves about the issues of the day,' Blanca said. 'We'd talk about (President Barack) Obama or healthcare or elections.'

Early on, Alexandria didn't show signs she'd get into politics - except that she talked incessantly and itched to show off her brains, her mother said. 

'When I took her to her pre-K interview, she didn't let me talk much,' Blanca said. 'She was going on and on about knowing the alphabet and being able to count.'

Once in high school, Alexandria became a voracious reader of books about history and war and biographies of historic figures.

Blanca explained the hardships she faced as a windowed mother, saying: 'After my husband (Sergio Ocasio) died (of lung cancer in 2008), the family went through tough times. Alexandria and her brother (Gabriel Ocasio-Cortez) were still little, so I had to put them through school'. Pictured: Blanca, AOC, Gabriel and their grandmother Clotilde

Blanca said: 'I was cleaning houses in the morning and working as a secretary at a hospital in the afternoon... it was still difficult making ends meet. At one point, I was skipping mortgage payments and we almost lost the house.' Pictured: AOC as a child with her late father Sergio 

The mother-of-two said she moved to this modest Yorktown Heights home for cheaper housing, adding: 'I worked and prayed and prayed, and things worked out. After the children graduated from college, I figured it was time for me to move to Florida'

Dad Sergio's death, however, put the family into a tail spin. He had no life insurance, two years of health care bills due and the money his business brought in dried out. Blanca recalls she faced foreclosure not just once, but twice.

'It was scary,' she said. 'I had to take medicine I was so scared. I had to stop paying for the mortgage for almost a year. I was expecting someone knocking on the door to kick me out at any time. There were even real estate people coming around to take photos of the house for when it was going to be auctioned. The worst is that I only had $50,000 left to pay on the loan.'

Eventually, Blanca worked out a deal with the bank and managed to stave off eviction.

'I was cleaning houses in the morning and working as a secretary at a hospital in the afternoon. I was working from 6am until 11pm. And I prayed and prayed, and things worked out. After the children graduated from college, I figured it was time for me to move to Florida.'

Blanca said it was a no-brainer, adding: 'I was paying $10,000 a year in real estate taxes up north. I'm paying $600 a year in Florida. It's stress-free down here.'

The mother-of-two said she picked Eustis because a relative already lived here, and right before Christmas 2016, Blanca paid $87,000 for an 860-square-foot home on a quiet street that dead-ends into a cemetery.

The street isn't one with manicured lawns and sculpted hedges. Occasionally, a drug deal takes place on the steps of another home up the street.

But, Blanca said, it's home.

'My house was crumbling and the yard was in disarray,' Blanca said. 'But I've been working on it since I moved in. I painted outside and inside then started improving everything else.'

When DailyMail.com visited Blanca one evening, she was in the yard building parts of a kitchen island. Her face was covered with a face mask and she was buffing a slab of wood.

A couple of nights later, she talked while making lasagna for a relative visiting from Puerto Rico. 

The socialist Democrat's mother said: 'She saw struggling parents putting their children through school, but also how difficult life was for people in the Bronx compared to Yorktown. She saw the difference in education and status between parts of the family, and she just wants everybody to have the same opportunities.' Pictured: AOC in 2007 at Yorktown High School

'My daughter works from the heart,' Blanca said. 'What you see is what you get. She saw how unfair the system is, and she wants to change that' 

The mother-of-two said she picked Eustis because a relative already lived here, and right before Christmas 2016, Blanca paid $87,000 for an 860-square-foot home on a quiet street that dead-ends into a cemetery 

Blanca lives with her mother, 78-year-old Clotilde, who suffers from pulmonary fibrosis and often breathes oxygen from a concentrator, and a loud rescue mutt named Tammy.

By day, Blanca works for the Lake County School District as clerical assistant.

While it's easy to understand how her struggles could've shaped her daughter's political platform, including a single-payer health care system, free college tuition, affordable housing, higher taxes on the rich and a war against climate change, Blanca said Alexandria was also inspired by the differences between towns and cities a few miles apart.

'My daughter works from the heart,' Blanca said. 'What you see is what you get. She saw how unfair the system is, and she wants to change that. She saw struggling parents putting their children through school, but also how difficult life was for people in the Bronx compared to Yorktown. 

'She saw the difference in education and status between parts of the family, and she just wants everybody to have the same opportunities.'

Blanca said she's still processing her daughter's meteoric rise. AOC unexpectedly won a Democratic primary in a district that includes swaths of The Bronx and Queens against 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley, then waltzed into Congress on an anti-Donald Trump wave in the general November elections.

'It's surreal,' Blanca said, 'I was watching the returns in November and I was thinking: ''Is this really happening?''

Blanca also shared a strange story to illustrate the serendipitous nature of AOC's fast ride to Washington, D.C.

'One of the last things she did with her dad before he died was sit with him and watch a Star Trek: Voyager episode on TV,' Blanca explained. 'In one scene, Captain Janeway (a character played by Kate Mulgrew) appears and my husband, who could no longer talk, pointed at the captain then at Alexandria, and back and forth, to say to her he thought she'd be like Captain Janeway one day, someone in charge.

'We didn't think anything of it. Then, who showed up on the stage of Alexandria's last rally before the general election in the Bronx 10 years later?' 

Blanca said: 'One of the last things she did with her dad before he died was sit with him and watch a Star Trek. In one scene, Captain Janeway (played by Kate Mulgrew) appears and my husband, who could no longer talk, pointed at the captain then at Alexandria, and back and forth, to say to her he thought she'd be like Captain Janeway one day, someone in charge.'  Pictured: Mulgrew surprising Alexandria at a rally the weekend before she won the election 

Blanca said she's still processing her daughter's meteoric rise after unexpectedly wining a Democratic primary in a district that includes swaths of The Bronx and Queens against 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley then waltzing into Congress on an anti-Donald Trump wave in the general November elections. Pictured: AOC outside the Bronx apartment building she lived in

Blanca was particularly put off by the controversy surrounding AOC's presence in a D.C. high-rise (pictured is the general area where she lives) where rent can go up to $5,000 a month. 'She needs some privacy and security,' said Blanca,  By the way, that building isn't even that expensive by D.C. and New York standards' 

Blanca said Kate Mulgrew showed up unannounced and unaware of the significance of her character to AOC.

'My daughter was speechless,' Blanca says. 'For once.'

What Blanca has discovered over the past year is that the peace and quiet she was able to enjoy for most of her life may be gone forever.

'I love privacy and calm,' the lifelong Democrat voter Blanca said, lowering her voice to make sure her neighbors in this Trump territory can't hear her. She doesn't believe they know she is AOC's mother. 'I don't like the limelight for myself and my family. But it seems that God played quite a joke on me with this politics stuff.'

Blanca shows off the badge from Star Trek was given to her from Captain Kathryn Janeway. Blanca's husband was a huge fan of Star Trek and once told AOC that she would be like Captain Janeway

The photogenic AOC has become a lightning rod for Republicans who see her as an extremist.

Most of her moves, political and personal, have been dissected on social media. Whether it was dancing outside her congressional office, or her anti-Amazon stance when the company considered building a second headquarters in Queens, or even whether she eats environmentally unsound hamburgers, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has taken an inordinate amount of incoming flak.

It was revealed last month AOC was among anti-Trump politicians marked for assassination by Coast Guard Lt. Christopher Hasson, who was arrested last week as he allegedly prepared for mass murder.

'It's a little bit too much,' the proud mother said about AOC's portrayal by the right. 'Frankly, I try not to look at social media. There are crazy people out there, unfortunately, who believe everything they read.

'Some in the media, especially Fox News, look for anything they can find to criticize Alexandria. They don't even check the facts.'

Blanca was particularly put off by the controversy surrounding AOC's presence in a D.C. high-rise where rent can go up to $5,000 a month.

'She needs some privacy and security,' Blanca said, who speaks with her daughter three to four times a month. 'She told me she picked that building because the amenities allow her not to get out that much. There's a gym and yoga on the premises.

'When she is out and about, she gets stopped every minute.

'By the way, that building isn't even that expensive by D.C., and New York standards.'

Blanca said she hopes Alexandria will marry her longtime boyfriend, social media consultant Riley Roberts (pictured together in June 2018), adding: 'I know they love children, and they do very well with children from the family'

The Puerto Rico-born Blanca, meanwhile, isn't so fond of the socialist label that AOC has been issued.

Her daughter, Blanca said, is a democratic socialist.

'She wasn't raised to be a socialist,' Blanca said. 'That's not how Puerto Ricans are. That's not what we do. Socialists are in Cuba or Venezuela. Besides, anyone who tries to help little people like me is branded a socialist.

'She's a democratic socialist, and it's very different. They focus on working people's needs. They're not about the rich or big corporations. Democratic socialists are about what Democrats were supposed to be about, but Democrats are not doing a good enough job.'

As a mother she hopes Alexandria will soon marry her longtime boyfriend, social media consultant Riley Roberts.

'I love him,' Blanca said. 'He is the most loving, supporting person I've seen. He helped her tremendously during the election. They've been together for four years now, after they reconnected from a college breakup.

'I know they love children, and they do very well with children from the family.

'So, I hope they get married soon. Although they haven't told me anything about their plans.'