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 – while quietly pocketing their money.
Democratic state Assemblywoman Claire Valdez – who is running to replace retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez – 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.
Valdez, 36, has also collected at least another $1,850 in donations from employees of AI companies. And her campaign — which her latest filings show had taken in $751,680 as of the end of March — is also being heavily supported by political action committees that have received hundreds of thousands of dollars directly from billionaires and other AI investors, records also revealed.
Valdez has routinely vowed to take on “the billionaire class” throughout the campaign and reject donations from people in the AI industry – and even bragged her team is vetting donations carefully.
She has also repeatedly tried to tie AI and tech billionaires to what she feels are systemic economic and environmental problems.
“AI. Fossil fuels. Private utilities,” Valdez posted May 11 on X. “The same oligarchs creating an affordability crisis are burning the planet. The solution must address both problems at once.”
The donations aren’t sitting well with some of New York’s most seasoned Democratic operatives.
“Claire Valdez is a complete hypocrite,” said a top NYC Democratic consultant.
“One day, she bashes billionaires and Big Tech then turns around and pockets their campaign cash.
“One day she’s railing against super PACs and ‘dark money;’ the next she is eagerly accepting their support. Washington is drowning in politicians who say one thing and do another. For all her holier‑than‑thou progressive rhetoric, Claire is proving she’s just one more of them.”
Valdez’s hypocrisy extends well beyond billionaires and AI.
She’s repeatedly demanded US Immigration and Customs Enforcement be abolished and has promised on her campaign website to “end for-profit detention and deportation” by tearing up federal contracts with “surveillance contractors and the ecosystem of businesses who profit off the misery of immigrant detention.”
However, records show she’s 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 to provide phone-hacking services for the agency’s investigations unit.
She’s 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.
And Valdez’s executive dad works for a company fortifying the Texas border, The Post reported last month.
Larry Valdez, works for engineering firm Parkhill Smith & Cooper, which has been responsible for a myriad of Border Patrol projects in western Texas — including a $172,000 contract for the build-out of a massive border facility on 74 acres in Marfa in 2009.
Valdez previously claimed her father had no involvement in the projects cited by The Post.
Her spokesman, Andrew Epstein, insisted Friday that Valdez is running a grassroots campaign.
“More than 20,000 people have given an average of 50 bucks to Claire’s campaign,” he said. “That’s significantly more small dollar donors than both other candidates in this race combined — and it’s not even close. No real estate money. No corporate PACs. Just the occasional class traitor.”
Valdez is running in a crowded field in the June 23 Democratic primary to replace Velázquez in New York’s 7th Congressional District, which includes parts of Queens and Brooklyn. The district has been dubbed “Commie Corridor” for its huge concentration of DSA and other far-left voters.
While she has the backing of Mamdani, US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and the DSA, Velázquez and the far-left Working Families Party are backing Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso.
