Inside El-Sayed’s Glitzy New York Fundraiser, AOC, Democrats Whoop It Up, Prepare To ‘Break the Map’

By the time Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took the stage at Monday night’s fundraiser, New York’s deep-pocketed liberals donated more than half a million dollars to Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate campaign.The event, hundreds of miles from the state Dr. El-Sayed is campaigning to represent, assembled a who’s who of New York leftists, from former mayor Bill de Blasio and “Sex and the City’s” own former mayoral candidate Cynthia Nixon to the event’s hosts, including jewelry entrepreneur and Mamdani fundraiser Alexis Bittar, R.E.M. lead singer Michael Stipe, and debarred activist attorney Steven Donziger.Mayor Zohran Mamdani was also rumored to be on the guest list, but did not show. The event at Manhattan’s swank Bowery Hotel took place the same day former President Obama announced plans to campaign with Dr. El-Sayed on October 24. If Democrats far afield of Michigan seem particularly invested in their corn-fed comrade’s Senate bid, it’s because they see his election as a bellwether for how far left they can push both their party and the country. “When we get him past that finish line, which we will,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said, “what we do is that we break open the entire political calculus in America. Period.” “If Abdul can win in Michigan, anybody can win anywhere,” she added.Children and the future were a theme of the evening, from Mr. Bittar who brought his children out to help thank the event’s cohosts, to an anecdote Dr. El-Sayed shared about how much Muhammad Ali meant to him as a young Muslim boy in the Midwest.“I’m being very open right now, right? About our generational project that we have ahead of us,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez continued. “Generational. We are here to break the map.”A win for Dr. El-Sayed, whose parents immigrated from Egypt, in a state where President Trump won in 2024, would signal new possibilities for the Democratic Party in deep red states, including candidates like Democratic Socialist Angie Nixon in Florida and Justin Pearson in Tennessee, according to the lawmaker.A victory would not only validate Dr. El-Sayed’s progressive platform, which aims to establish Medicare for all and eliminate political action committees, but would offer “consequences” to “an ascendant and fascist right wing in this country,” according to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who called for payback Monday against a conservative government she accused of picking on transgender kids, infringing on voting rights, impeding women’s bodily autonomy, “lowering our wages” and “stripping our health care.”“We need to wreck them” at the polls, she said.Dr. El-Sayed, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Mr. Bittar, each emphasized the candidate’s ethnicity and his “long name” as factors that made him an underdog candidate against a primary opponent wielding “$80 million of corporate slander” and a general election challenger they said is on-track to raise $200 million.On November 3, Dr. El-Sayed will face off against former FBI official and congressman Mike Rogers as the pair vie for retiring Senator Gary Peters’ seat.Dr. El-Sayed denounced corporate donors and President Donald Trump as the “worst symptom of our politics” which, he told the room full of millionaires, “allows corporations and millionaires and special interests to buy and sell politicians.”The New York fundraiser comes one week after Dr. El-Sayed attended a fundraiser at the Los Angeles home of Jeffrey Soros, nephew of the billionaire George Soros. In video from the event first reported by Fox News, Mr. Soros spoke of first meeting Dr. El-Sayed in 2012, when the candidate was a finalist for a Soros-funded scholarship.Shortly after, Dr. El-Sayed spoke, Human Rights Campaign president Kelley Robinson led a raise, squeezing the 700 paying attendees for more money, prompting a wave of departures.

Inside El-Sayed’s Glitzy New York Fundraiser, AOC, Democrats Whoop It Up, Prepare To ‘Break the Map’

Inside El-Sayed’s Glitzy New York Fundraiser, AOC, Democrats Whoop It Up, Prepare To ‘Break the Map’

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