A Queens pol running for Congress backed by NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the rest of the Democratic Socialists of America has repeatedly railed against billionaires and the artificial intelligence industry \u2013 while quietly pocketing their money.<\/p>\n
Democratic state Assemblywoman\u00a0Claire\u00a0Valdez\u00a0\u2013 who is running to replace retiring Rep. Nydia Vel\u00e1zquez \u2013 accepted $7,000 in donations in January from Silicon Valley-based billionaire AI investor and software developer Tom Preston-Werner and his wife Theresa, records show.<\/p>\n
Valdez, 36, has also collected at least another $1,850 in donations from employees of AI companies. And her campaign \u2014 which her latest filings show had taken in $751,680 as of the end of March \u2014 is also being heavily supported by political action committees<\/a> that have received hundreds of thousands of dollars directly from billionaires and other AI investors, records also revealed.<\/p>\n State Assemblywoman\u00a0Claire\u00a0Valdez\u00a0(D-Queens) \u2014 who is running for Congress backed by NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the rest of the Democratic Socialists of America \u2014 has repeatedly railed against billionaires and the artificial intelligence industry, while quietly pocketing their money. LightRocket via Getty Images<\/p>\n Valdez has routinely vowed to take on \u201cthe billionaire class\u201d<\/a> throughout the campaign and reject donations from people in the AI industry \u2013 and even bragged her team is vetting donations carefully.<\/p>\n She has also repeatedly tried to tie AI and tech billionaires to what she feels are systemic economic and environmental problems.<\/p>\n \u201cAI. Fossil fuels. Private utilities,\u201d Valdez posted May 11 on X.<\/a> \u201cThe same oligarchs creating an affordability crisis are burning the planet. The solution must address both problems at once.\u201d<\/p>\n The donations aren\u2019t sitting well with some of New York\u2019s most seasoned Democratic operatives.<\/p>\n \u201cClaire Valdez is a complete hypocrite,\u201d said a top NYC Democratic consultant.<\/p>\n Valdez is running to replace retiring Rep. Nydia \u00a0Vel\u00e1zquez. CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images<\/p>\n \u201cOne day, she bashes billionaires and Big Tech then turns around and pockets their campaign cash.<\/p>\n \u201cOne day she\u2019s railing against super PACs and \u2018dark money;\u2019 the next she is eagerly accepting their support. Washington is drowning in politicians who say one thing and do another. For all her holier\u2011than\u2011thou progressive rhetoric, Claire is proving she\u2019s just one more of them.\u201d<\/p>\n Valdez\u2019s hypocrisy extends well beyond billionaires and AI.<\/p>\n She\u2019s repeatedly demanded US Immigration and Customs Enforcement be abolished and has promised on her campaign website to \u201cend for-profit detention and deportation\u201d<\/a> by tearing up federal contracts with \u201csurveillance contractors and the ecosystem of businesses who profit off the misery of immigrant detention.\u201d<\/p>\n However, records show she\u2019s received donations totaling $3,250 from employees who work for ICE vendors, including $1,000 from a researcher at Magnet Forensics, which has a $3 million contract <\/a>to provide phone-hacking services for the agency\u2019s investigations unit.<\/p>\n She\u2019s also taken another $250 from Kyle Cushing, a San Diego-based software developer at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, the defense contractor behind MQ9 Reaper and MQ1 Predator drones used in ICE border surveillance.<\/p>\n Valdez has the backing on socialist NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani. ZUMAPRESS.com<\/p>\n And Valdez\u2019s executive dad works for a company fortifying the Texas border, <\/a>The Post reported<\/a> last month.<\/p>\n Larry Valdez, works for engineering firm Parkhill Smith & Cooper, which has been responsible for a myriad of Border Patrol projects in western Texas \u2014 including a $172,000 contract for the build-out of a massive border facility on 74 acres in Marfa in 2009.<\/p>\n Valdez previously claimed her father had no involvement in the projects cited by The Post. <\/p>\n Her spokesman, Andrew Epstein, insisted Friday that Valdez is running a grassroots campaign. <\/p>\n \u201cMore than 20,000 people have given an average of 50 bucks to Claire\u2019s campaign,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s significantly more small dollar donors than both other candidates in this race combined \u2014 and it\u2019s not even close. No real estate money. No corporate PACs. Just the occasional class traitor.\u201d<\/p>\n Valdez is running in a crowded field in the June 23 Democratic primary to replace Vel\u00e1zquez in New York\u2019s 7th Congressional District, which includes parts of Queens and Brooklyn. The district has been dubbed\u00a0\u201cCommie Corridor\u201d\u00a0for its huge concentration of DSA and other far-left voters.\u00a0<\/p>\n While she has the backing of Mamdani, US Sen. Bernie Sanders\u00a0(I-Vt.) and the DSA,\u00a0Vel\u00e1zquez and the far-left Working Families Party are backing Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Queens pol running for Congress backed by NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the rest of the Democratic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64808,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,4681,1670,36658,36659,23248,3090,36660,464,465,21156],"class_list":["post-64807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-billionaires","tag-congress","tag-democratic-primary","tag-democratic-socialists-of-america","tag-ice","tag-metro","tag-nydia-velazquez","tag-politics","tag-us-news","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}