A far-left radical who made millions as a Silicon Valley software engineer and then worked on Wall Street before going into politics just ran into a political brick wall.
Saikat Chakrabarti worked on the Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) presidential campaign in 2016 before founding Justice Democrats to push the party to the far left. His signature victory was helping Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D) oust a party boss in New York in 2018.
‘We’re thinking about kind of, like, how much of myself I’m pouring into this and how much of myself we want to make sure that we’re, you know, pouring into the task at hand.’
Now he’s known for spending the most money in the primary race for California’s 11th district — and failing to even compete.
Despite outspending his main competitor $9.2 million to $3.9 million, Chakrabarti was able to garner only about 15% of the vote and was boxed out of the general election.
State Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat, got the most votes at 41.3%, while San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan (D) progressed to the next election stage with 28.6% of the vote.
Chan was able to soundly defeat Chakrabarti despite spending only $650,000, or about 7% of the massive spending by Chakrabarti. As of Wednesday afternoon, the final tally for the primary has not been reported, but the election has been called for Chan and Weiner by NBC News and others.
Chakrabarti worked as the chief of staff to Ocasio-Cortez for a time before branching out on his own. In that time, he was accused of illegally funneling money to her campaign through payments to her boyfriend.
Ocasio-Cortez denied the allegations but did not answer directly if the description of the transfer of money was accurate.
She also shrunk back from endorsing Chakrabarti in the campaign to replace 86-year-old Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who is retiring from the seat after winning it 20 times.
“I think for me overall it’s more about I’m trying to think about the role that I am trying to play more broadly in these things,” she said in April when asked about a possible endorsement for her former chief of staff.
RELATED: Ocasio-Cortez tosses her former chief of staff under the bus over Pelosi feud
“We’ve got 435 seats in Congress, right? And there is this kind of moment where it’s like when — and not just with this race, with any race — once you go in, then it’s like, what about this? What about this, what about this one? And I’m one person with, you know, a pretty amazing crack but also lean team,” she added helpfully.
“And so we’re thinking about kind of, like, how much of myself I’m pouring into this and how much of myself we want to make sure that we’re, you know, pouring into the task at hand,” she continued.
She went on for almost another minute.
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