Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is being praised by the California media as the “political world’s rising superstar,” will speak on Tuesday at a fundraiser where people who want to see the card-carrying Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member will have to pay $2,700 for a seat.
As a nod to the people to whom she hopes to give free health care, housing, and a college education if she is elected to represent New York in the U.S. House of Representatives, some “friends” tickets are available for $50, according to the San Francisco Examiner:
[Ocasio-Cortez’s] popularity is so gangbusters, she won a primary race in June in a New York congressional district she wasn’t even running in as a write-in candidate, according to the New York Daily News.
Well, surprise surprise, her popularity extends all the way to the West Coast. Ocasio-Cortez has two fundraisers planned Tuesday in San Francisco’s Mission District, and both have sold out. One even sold out twice.
The first fundraiser the firebrand candidate will attend is a high-price affair at The Assembly, hosted by a who’s-who of local progressives including Supervisor Jane Kim, among a bevy of others. The tickets range from a “friend” seat at $50 to a “host” level seat at $2,700.
“Yowza. I felt my wallet shiver just typing that,” the reporter said in the story.
The newspaper reported Ocasio-Cortez would also appear at the El Rio bar at a San Francisco Progressive Alliance event, where tickets range from $10 to $250.
Shanti Singh, co-chair of the DSA SF chapter, told the Examiner that demand to see Ocasio-Cortez is so high that they had to move the event twice to accommodate the crowd.
“Her agenda is really rooted in combating oppression,” Singh said. “She’s a young person, and we’re sending a card-carrying socialist to Congress.”
“It means there’s a lot of thirst and energy behind someone who wants more radical, systematic change in our system,” San Francisco Berniecrats Co-Chair Claire Lau said in the Examiner story. “Having a young woman of color who embraces democratic socialism being able to beat the political establishment is very encouraging for a lot of progressive left organizers.”
An article in the New York Post after Ocasio-Cortez beat Democrat Rep. Joe Crowley in New York’s primary races said that before her surprise win she worked as a bartender at a restaurant in Manhattan.
Ocasio said even as a child she didn’t think it was right that her parents got to move to an area in New York with better schools while others in her family attended bad schools.
“At a very young age I knew it was wrong,” Ocasio-Cortez told Mic. “I knew that the fact that my cousins didn’t have adequate resources or adequate public services and good schools, and I did, was something that just didn’t strike me as right.”
Although Ocasio-Cortez has never before run for office, she has been involved in left-wing politics previously, including campaigning for Bernie Sanders.
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