House Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez likes to bash others for taking campaign contributions from wealthy donors, but it seems she isn’t averse to taking them herself after all.
In 2018, Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., took a $2,700 donation from billionaire Tom Steyer, who is running in the Democratic primary, according to a 2018 filing that OpenSecrets.org happened upon (side note: Steyer has donated an absolute fortune to a wide range of Democratic political candidates and PACs).
According to Politico, Steyer, along with billionaire Michael Bloomberg, have each spent $200 million combined on their campaigns.
As recently as the past couple of weeks, while stumping for fellow Democratic Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Ocasio-Cortez has railed against other candidates who have dared take contributions from the wealthy.
“For anyone who accuses us for instituting purity tests — it’s called having values,” she said. “It’s called giving a damn. It’s called having standards for your conduct to not be funded by billionaires, but to be funded by the people.”
And there is a simmering tension among the vast array of Democratic candidates running in the primary, from the ultra-progressive, like Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, to the more moderate, South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
Warren attacked Buttigieg during the recent Democratic debate over holding fundraisers in “a wine cave full of crystals” as the Democrats try to outdo each other in winning over working-class voters.
“The mayor just recently had a fundraiser that was held in a wine cave, full of crystals and served $900-a-bottle wine,” Warren said. “He had promised that every fundraiser he would do would be open-door, but this one was closed-door. We made the decision many years ago that rich people in smoke-filled rooms would not pick the next president of the United States. Billionaires in wine caves should pick the next president of the United States.
“I do not sell access to my time.”
Of course, Warren herself is a millionaire at least 12 times over, according to Forbes.
“According to Forbes magazine, I’m literally the only person on this stage who’s not a millionaire or a billionaire,” Buttigieg fired back.
And while the in-fighting has gone on, Sanders has swooped back into second place in most major polling services, allowing him to pick up big-time endorsements from the far left.
“I do think a system that allows billionaires to exist when there are parts of Alabama where people are still getting ringworm because they don’t have access to public health is wrong,” Ocasio-Cortez said earlier this year.
Do as I say, not as I do …