Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a politician who is currently in the running for the House of Representatives, has made a bit of a name for herself by claiming to be a “girl from the Bronx,” who will — if she wins — represent New York City’s working class.
But now, a new, explosive report from the Daily Mail suggests that the candidate is actually lying about her working-class roots.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who posits herself as a “socialist” who fights for New York’s working class — and is especially favorable to the “Bernie Bro” demographic for that reason — actually grew up in Westchester County, which is a ritzy suburb of New York City.
The outlet reports that Ocasio-Cortez’s father chose to move the family to the suburb in 1991 because of the “good school districts” in the area — school districts which didn’t exist in the Bronx.
Ocasio-Cortez attended public school in Yorktown, where homes sell for nearly $900,000, according to Trulia .
In her official biography, however, Ocasio-Cortez claimed that she was born and raised in the Bronx, and completely omitted her time in the ritzy upstate suburb.
Because so little was known about the candidate before her shocking defeat of the incumbent, Joe Crowley, it was easy for this to fly under the radar for most New Yorkers who were in her governing district.
Want to learn about another amazing candidate? Here’s @KerriHarrisDE.
Kerri, running in Delaware, drove to New York HERSELF to get out the vote and outfitted her team in Ocasio2018 gear to do the same on Election Day.
She’s a real one. Thank you Kerri! https://t.co/1TJBE3zfdu pic.twitter.com/AVgVG4IuwA
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 30, 2018
What’s more, even though Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed to be a daughter of a “small businessman,” and a mother who “cleaned houses,” her father, Sergio Ocasio-Roman, was born in New York City and was a prominent architect, having founded the firm Kirschenbaum & Ocasio-Roman Architects, PC. According to its Manta listing, the company boasted an annual revenue of $500,000 per year.
Sergio Ocasio-Roman died from lung cancer in 2008.
Her mother, meanwhile, confirmed the family’s move to Westchester County in her own interview with the New York Times , and said that it was her mother — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s grandmother — that cleaned houses in Puerto Rico, not her.
In fact, Ocasio-Cortez won several science competitions in high school and was on the dean’s list at Boston University. After college, she founded a children’s book publishing company that sought to portray the Bronx in a positive light.
No bans. No walls. No fences. No chains. No justice – no peace.
We will fight, we will vote, and we will run until hate is dismantled.
Vote today and help us mobilize. AFTER VOTING, NYC #MuslimBan protests start at 6pm.
2 NYC Congressional candidates today support #AbolishICE pic.twitter.com/ePTMSJvoOm
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 26, 2018
That all is a far cry from the “hard-knock life” that Ocasio-Cortez claims to have had.
And although Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did not return the Daily Mail’s request for a comment about the matter, she’s still expected to be a shoo-in for the NY-14 House of Representatives seat, because it’s a historically liberal district in New York.