Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are taking their message decrying income inequality and billionaires’ involvement in government to Idaho and Montana next week, to cities represented by Republicans in Congress.
But first, the progressive heavyweights will head to downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, April 12, to a place where voters chose Sanders in both the 2016 and 2020 Democratic presidential primaries.
Sanders, I-Vermont, along with Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, are in the midst of a “Fighting Oligarchy” tour around the country, touted as an opportunity to “have real discussions across America on how we move forward to take on the oligarchs and corporate interests who have so much power and influence in this country.”
In early stops — Tucson, Arizona; Greeley, Colorado; North Las Vegas, Nevada, to name a few — the duo have railed against the Trump administration, income inequality and tech billionaire Elon Musk, who is a top adviser to President Donald Trump. They’ve drawn crowds in the thousands at their events.
Sanders, in a news release about the western leg of the tour, said he’d be visiting Republican-held districts with the message of “when we are organized and fight back, we can defeat oligarchy.”
Yet notably, Saturday’s rally at L.A.’s Gloria Molina Grand Park is in California’s 34th Congressional District, represented by Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez. In the state legislature, the area is represented by Sen. María Elena Durazo and Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez, both Democrats.
But that makes sense, said Michael Trujillo, an L.A.-based Democratic Party strategist.
L.A. gives the pair an opportunity to do some legwork ahead of the 2026 midterms or 2028 presidential election while they are on this side of the country.
“The tour, in as much as it’s about going places that are swingable for Democrats, it’s also revving up the base, and it’s also list building,” said Trujillo.
“You definitely want to go to blue cities so that way, a year from now when the elections are coming up, you can go back to those folks who signed up, who RSVP’d but didn’t show up, who signed up for newsletters. Now you have hundreds of thousands of emails that you can get five bucks from.”
Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders are experts at rallying the progressive wing of their party, said Dan Schnur, who teaches political messaging at USC and UC Berkeley.
Coming to a deep blue area will play to their strengths, he said, while the party overall struggles to navigate how to fold both that progressive wing and those in the political center under one tent.
And there’s also the backdrop that L.A. — particularly downtown L.A. — naturally provides.
On the infrastructure side, it’s a bit less cumbersome to travel to, compared to other neighborhoods in the greater L.A. area, which could draw a larger crowd. There is parking, public transportation, access to freeways.
“If you’re really passionate about him (Sanders), being on the freeway for about an hour doesn’t seem like a big sacrifice to see him live” — and maybe for the last time, said Trujillo, noting the Brooklyn-born senator is 83 years old and suffered a heart attack during the 2020 campaign.
Then there are the palm trees. City Hall’s towering tiers. Meteorologist-predicted relatively bright skies.
And despite the fact that the duo is rolling into town on a rather busy weekend for Southern California — both the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach and the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival happen this weekend — Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders have a natural ability to draw in the masses.
“They want video of much larger crowds than they’re going to draw in swing districts,” Schnur said. “They can use that video to inspire true believers around the country.”
“There’s a practical aspect of the outreach they’ve been doing in more competitive regions, but they need to motivate the base,” he added, “and show that the Democratic resistance is finally beginning to emerge.”
A spokesperson for the Sanders event did not respond to a request for comment.
But in a statement, Sanders railed against efforts to curtail Social Security and the Veterans Administration.
“The American people, whether they are Democrats, Republicans or independents, do not want billionaires to control our government or buy our elections,” Sanders said. “They do not want huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in the country paid for by massive cuts to Medicaid and other programs that working families rely on.”
Trump, in his second term in the White House, has vowed a drastic reduction in the size of government. In just the first few months of office, the administration in a frenetic pace has cut spending programs, sought to dissolve the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific research arm and initiated large-scale layoffs and buyouts within federal departments, including the Veterans Affairs Department and the Social Security Administration.
Congressional Republicans on Thursday approved a budget framework — albeit not without intra-party fighting — that will help advance the president’s overall agenda. Some House Republicans are wary that there aren’t enough spending cuts in these early plans, and members have bickered about whether proposed cuts would ultimately impact Medicaid, Social Security and other service programs.
Sanders also has been one of the most frequent and vocal critics of Musk’s involvement in the federal government. The founder of Hawthorne-based SpaceX and Tesla chief serves as a special advisor to Trump, where he helms the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, an executive order-created initiative that supporters say will scale back government fraud, waste and abuse.
Musk, meanwhile, alleged Democrats “just move around the same group of paid ‘protesters’” on X (the social media platform formerly called Twitter that Musk bought in 2022) in response to a post about Sanders’ and Ocasio-Cortez’s rallies last month.
In the 2016 presidential primary election, Sanders beat former eventual nominee Hillary Clinton 51.3% to 47.7% in California’s 34th Congressional District. (Clinton, however, won the state.)
In 2020, Sanders took the state of California in the Democratic presidential primary and overwhelmingly won the 34th. Then, Sanders nabbed 53.7% of the vote. Presidential winner Joe Biden came in second, with 16.8%.
Saturday’s rally is also expected to draw non-political big names, including musicians Neil Young, Maggie Rogers and Joan Baez.
The outdoor rally starts at noon but “doors open” at 9 a.m. No bags, signs or firearms are allowed at the event, according to the event description. Food trucks will be available.
The pair head to Bakersfield and Folsom on Tuesday, April 15. They’re in Nampa, Idaho the day prior, and in Missoula, Montana on April 16.
Originally Published:
