Democratic Socialist Chair Wins Salary as Party Membership Surges

Less than a week after Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist, refused to condemn his party’s local co-chair, Gustavo Gordillo, for falsifying key biographical details he gave The New York Times, Mr. Gordillo has been rewarded with a full-time party salary for the first time.Mr. Gordillo and his New York City Democratic Socialists of America co-chair Grace Mausser will each receive $95,000 annually plus benefits after the chapter voted Saturday in favor of a resolution titled “Full-Time Paid Leadership Pilot: Organizing a Socialist Agenda through Mayoral and Electoral Coordination.” The resolution specified that even with the new expenses, the chapter is still expected to carry a monthly surplus of $17,000 following a 500 percent increase in recurring donations. In eight years, New York’s Democratic Socialist chapter has grown past one-hit wonder status when Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes emerged in 2018, to see 21 party members take office from City Council to Congress. Ms. Mausser has served for two terms on a volunteer basis, maintaining a day job at a nonprofit while overseeing the operation that powered Mr. Mamdani to victory last year and fielded winning candidates in this summer’s Democratic primaries. Mr. Gordillo, on the other hand, who posts on X as @uniongustavo and describes himself there as a “union electrician,” reportedly never completed a required internship and failed to pay his dues, according to reporting by The New York Post. “After learning of Mr. Gordillo’s prolonged absence from and failure to participate in required work and classes, the trustees of the Joint Apprentice Training Committee terminated Mr. Gordillo from the program,” the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers said in a statement earlier this month.The tabloid has pilloried Mr. Gordillo ever since The New York Times heralded him as “an American success story” in a profile that failed to verify several facets of his tale. For instance, Mr. Gordillo described his parents as having arrived in the U.S. with “nothing” and landing their first jobs “in fast food and cleaning houses.”Mr. Gordillo’s father, also Gustavo, is founder and CEO of the Florida-based telecommunications infrastructure design and construction firm DraftPros with estimated annual earnings of $90 million. His paternal grandfather, who immigrated from Peru, was a psychiatrist in Ohio.Mr. Gordillo’s employment status since leaving the electrical internship has been unclear, as has been his living situation. His family owns a townhouse worth $1.5 million in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood that is currently undergoing extensive renovations — a project that was temporarily delayed after the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission initially declined to greenlight the remodel. No union workers appear to be employed on the project, according to the Post.The owner of a Crown Heights apartment where Mr. Gordillo told The Times he resided as a tenant filed to evict him earlier this year for unpaid rent. When asked if Mr. Gordillo should be removed from his position as New York City’s DSA co-chair in light of his unraveling narrative at a press conference last week, the mayor said that was up to the party’s voting members. When pressed in a follow-up, Mr. Mamdani refused to answer, offering a smile and “Thank you.” Both co-chairs are up for re-election in November. A representative for NYC-DSA’s press team declined to answer questions from The New York Sun regarding Saturday’s vote.

Democratic Socialist Chair Wins Salary as Party Membership Surges

Democratic Socialist Chair Wins Salary as Party Membership Surges

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