Thread by @JewhadiTM

Political action committee behind Ocasio-Cortez's victory facing backlash nypost.com/2019/04/06/pol… via @nypost

A controversial political action committee that helped propel Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to her stunning victory in Congress, has come under fire from some of the other progressive Democrats who sought its support.

David Hildebrand, who was committed to running a grassroots campaign against incumbent Sen. Dianne Feinstein in California, sought out the group which was also helping dozens of other progressives in elections across the country last year.

But after an interview with Justice Democrats, Hildebrand said they muscled him out of the race, choosing a female candidate to run in last June’s primary against Feinstein.

“I had support in my community and was nominated by many people,” he told The Post.

When Hildebrand asked Justice Democrats why they were backing Alison Hartson, a former school teacher and campaign finance reform activist, they told him they needed a woman to run in the race against Feinstein.

“Their process is allegedly one where candidates are nominated to their organization,” he told The Post. “I had numerous nominations, she wasn’t even in the race.”

Other candidates, including federal senate and congressional hopefuls, who were backed by the group claim that Justice Democrats raised money in their name, and then used the cash to back other progressives, including @AOC, who was on the board of Justice Democrats until recently

“There was no transparency,” said a campaign worker who volunteered for a candidate for federal senator and did not want to be identified.

“People gave up their damn lives to run and then were stuck with huge bills. Once they [Justice Democrats] got the people recruited, they asked them to sign memos that would specify what percentage of funds raised by the candidates would go to Justice Democrats.”

The PAC and Brand New Congress are currently the subject of an FEC complaint, which accuses Ocasio-Cortez and Saikat Chakrabarti, her chief of staff, of funneling nearly $1 million in contributions from the PACs into private companies Chakrabarti controlled.

Justice Democrats did not return repeated requests for comment — and on Saturday, @AOC denied her link to the group.

“Yeah, um, this is a separate PAC, it’s not one that I founded or anything like that,” she told The Post at a constituent event in Woodside.

“But what we’re really experiencing is the same thing we’ve been experiencing for the last few months, which is special interest groups filed bogus ethics complaints and they routinely lead to nowhere,” she said. “So that’s just another one of these.”