Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has taken Congress by storm, quickly becoming the de facto leader of the left-wing bloc of freshman Democrats seeking to overhaul the status quo with far-left ideas like the Green New Deal.

But behind the most influential democratic socialist in the country (sorry, Bernie) is an aide whose story is very different from the bartender background of Bronx-born Ocasio-Cortez.

Meet Saikat Chakrabarti. At 33, he came to Washington a wealthy tech entrepreneur, and now serves as the congresswoman’s chief of staff – or as he quips in his Twitter bio, “CoS to @AOC.”

The aide for months flew under the radar, but hit the headlines amid fresh accusations of possible campaign finance violations in a conservative watchdog group's FEC complaint. Far from an in-the-trenches organizer by trade, Chakrabarti was a Harvard-educated computer engineer and went on to make his riches in a number of startups in Silicon Valley, before eventually turning his attention to promoting the new wave of democratic socialists.


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