• A billboard went up in Times Square on Wednesday blaming Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for Amazon’s cancellation last week of its HQ2 project in Queens, New York.
  • The billboard said the termination of Amazon’s deal with New York cost 25,000 jobs and $4 billion in wages.
  • The sign was funded by the Job Creators Network, a conservative business advocacy group.
  • Ocasio-Cortez responded by saying it was paid for by “billionaire-funded groups” advocating “dark money & anti-worker policies.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York lashed out at a billboard in Times Square that blamed her for the termination of a deal with Amazon that would have parked its second headquarters, known as HQ2, in Queens.

Amazon announced last Thursday that it was backing out of the deal to develop its HQ2 in New York. The gist of the plan was that Amazon would get about $3 billion in tax credits over 10 years and in return create 25,000 jobs at the new headquarters.

Ocasio-Cortez – among other local politicians and activists – was a vocal opponent of the deal. Amazon cited that resistance in a blog post announcing the cancellation.

The Fox News host Laura Ingraham had tweeted a photo of the billboard, which was paid for by the Job Creators Network, a conservative business group that advocates lower taxes and fewer regulations, according to the news website Axios. The group says on its website that its goal is to "protect the 85 million people who depend on the success of small businesses."

The billboard says: "25,000 Lost NYC Jobs. $4 Billion in Lost Wages. $12 Billion in Lost Economic Activity for NY. Thanks For Nothing, AOC!" The hashtag #SocialismTakesCapitalismCreates is at the bottom.

Read more: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says that $3 billion in tax credits should be given to the public, not Amazon - and a new poll shows that nearly half of Americans agree

The billboard went up on Manhattan's 42nd Street near Eighth Avenue on Wednesday and will be displayed for a week, the JCN said in a statement.

Ocasio-Cortez said in a tweet early Thursday that the billboard was sponsored by "billionaire-funded groups" advocating "dark money & anti-worker policies" she's fighting against.

"Few things effectively communicate the power we've built in fighting dark money & anti-worker policies like billionaire-funded groups blowing tons of cash on wack billboards (this one is funded by the Mercers)," she said, adding, "(PS fact that it's in Times Sq tells you this isn't for/by NYers.)"

Read more: Bernie Sanders congratulates New York for 'standing up' to Amazon after tech giant cancels plan for new headquarters in Queens

amazon cancels hq2 in new york city protest

Foto: People protest Amazon's plans to build a second headquarters in Queens, New York.sourceGetty/Andrew Lichtenstein

The Mercers are a billionaire family headed by the hedge funder Robert Mercer, who has donated to President Donald Trump's campaign and conservative organizations like Breitbart. Mercer's daughters, Jennifer and Rebekah, were last year linked to a company created by executives from Cambridge Analytica, the British firm found to have improperly hoovered up data from millions of Facebook profiles for political gain two years ago.

Ocasio-Cortez added a screenshot of the JCN's Wikipedia page, which says the group was founded by the billionaire Trump donor Bernard Marcus and funded by conservative groups including the Mercer family.

The congresswoman then compared JCN to a scene from "The Office."

While Ocasio-Cortez is correct that Marcus founded the JCN, the group's funding is murkier.

In a 2017 Forbes article titled "Who Funds This New Small Business-Group? Hint: Mostly Not Small Businesses," Robb Mandelbaum cited financial data showing that of the $4.6 million the group raised in 2015, $1 million came from the Marcus Foundation.

The Mercer Family Foundation, run by Rebekah Mercer, gave $100,000 to the group in 2013 and 2014, when it was called the Job Creators Alliance.

Breitbart, which the Mercer family has funded since at least 2011, has in the past few years also regularly promoted the JCN's work in its articles and online ads, the media watchdog Media Matters reported in 2017.

It is not clear whether the Mercer family still funds the JCN.

On Thursday, JCN released a statement saying that they put up two new billboards at 7th Avenue and 42nd Street in Times Square. One responds to her Thursday morning tweet - and calling it "wack." The second says the billboard cost around $4,000, "But you cost NY 25,000 jobs and $4,000,000,000 in annual lost wages. Ouch."

Ocasio-Cortez was an outspoken critic of the Amazon deal, but she was not alone in her distaste for the deal.

According to the New York Times podcast "The Daily," which interviewed New York Times reporter J. David Goodman, three main groups opposed Amazon's HQ2 in Long Island City, Queens: unions who oppose Amazon's labor practices, local groups worried about an increase in cost of living, and a third group who opposed the $3 billion tax incentive that New York City was offering.

And as Politico points out, the Amazon walking out of the deal with New York is "complicated."