AOC to endorse Bernie Sanders at Queensbridge rally

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders will receive an endorsement from U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez this weekend. AP Photo/John Minchillo.

By Jonathan Sperling

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose district includes a large swath of Queens, will endorse Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders at a rally in Queensbridge this Saturday.

The endorsement, first reported by The Washington Post on Wednesday, comes just weeks after Sanders took a break from the campaign trail following a heart attack. The rally has been billed as “Bernie’s Back” event.

“We’re looking forward to Saturday,” Corbin Trent, a spokesperson for Ocasio-Cortez told The Washington Post. 

The rally begins at 1 p.m. inside Queensbridge Park, located at Vernon Boulevard and Queens Plaza South. Doors open at 11:30 a.m.

Queensbridge Park lies just outside of AOC’s 14th Congressional District, which stretches across Queens from Astoria and Sunnyside to Corona and College Point.

First-term Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, a close ally of AOC, also endorsed Sanders earlier this week, stating in a tweet that Sanders, “isn’t fighting to win just one presidential election -- he’s fighting for the soul of our democracy.”

Sanders lead the other major Democratic presidential contenders in the amount of individual donors throughout the country and in Queens as of June 2019, according to data acquired by The New York Times. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, as well as entrepreneur Andrew Yang, also have a large amount of individual donors in sections of Queens.

Though the length of their careers differ greatly, there’s a great deal of alignment in Sanders and AOC’s policies. Both support a wealth tax in pursuit of economic equality, as well as various gun control measures, Medicare For All and immigration reform aimed at providing a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.