- U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s mother Blanca Ocasio-Cortez has spoken exclusively to DailyMail.com about her Democrat star daughter
- Blanca Ocasio-Cortez – BOC – is still settling down in Eustis, Florida, a small city in the far suburbs of Orlando with her mother Clotilde, 78, and a rescue dog
- She said: ‘After my husband died the family went through tough times. I was cleaning houses in the morning and working as a secretary in the afternoon’
- ‘We moved from The Bronx to Yorktown Heights, but it was difficult making ends meet. I was skipping mortgage payments and we almost lost the house twice’
- Early on, AOC didn’t show signs she’d get into politics – except that she talked incessantly and itched to show off her brains, her mother said
- ‘She wasn’t raised to be a socialist,’ Mrs. Ocasio-Cortez said. ‘That’s not how Puerto Ricans are. She’s a democratic socialist, and it’s very different’
- Blanca was particularly put off by the controversy surrounding AOC’s move into D.C. high-rise, saying ‘that building isn’t even that expensive by D.C. and New York standards’
- The mother-of-two said her new Trump-supporting Florida neighbors don’t know she is AOC’s mother, saying she doesn’t like the limelight for her family
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.
AOC’s chief of staff ran $1M slush fund by diverting campaign cash to his own companies
Two political action committees founded by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s top aide funneled over $1 million in political donations into two of his own private companies, according to a complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission on Monday.
The cash transfers from the PACs — overseen by Saikat Chakrabarti, the freshman socialist Democrat’s chief of staff — run counter to her pledges to increase transparency and reduce the influence of “dark money” in politics.
Chakrabarti’s companies appear to have been set up for the sole purpose of obscuring how the political donations were used.
The arrangement skirted reporting requirements and may have violated the $5,000 limit on contributions from federal PACs to candidates, according to the complaint filed by the National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group.
Campaign finance attorneys described the arrangement as “really weird” and an indication “there’s something amiss.” They said there was no way of telling where the political donations went — meaning they could have been pocketed or used by the company to pay for off-the-books campaign operations.
PACs are required to disclose how and when funds are spent, including for expenditures like advertisements, fundraising emails, donations to candidates, and payments for events and to vendors.
The private companies to which Chakrabarti transferred the money from the PACs are not subject to these requirements.