Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s fiancé has largely dodged the limelight, although he recurrently pops up on the congresswoman’s Instagram tales and has been by her facet for the extent of her meteoric political rise.
Meet Riley Roberts, the all-but-silent companion to the Democrats’ congressional darling, who has been on her arm since school to the 2021 Met Gala and “Tax the Wealthy” and each cease in between.
Ocasio-Cortez has a number of occasions stood up for her man – and his footwear selections – as they've gone from sweethearts at Boston College to engaged in April 2022.
How did they meet?
The 2 met whereas they have been college students at Boston College, the place Roberts was pursuing levels in sociology and finance and the long run congresswoman was finding out worldwide relations and economics.
They met at a weekly topic-based chat hosted by the college’s dean, the place Ocasio-Cortez was reportedly recognized to typically ask questions and debate. The pair dated for a time however went their separate methods for a time after school.
Ocasio-Cortez was raised by Puerto Rican-American mother and father, born within the Bronx and schooled in Yorktown in suburban Westchester County. Roberts grew up in rich space of Arizona, the son of an actual property agent.
He graduated from top-ranked Chaparral Excessive Faculty in close by Scottsdale in 2008 after successful statewide honors in public-forum debate.
After school, he constructed Internet sites for small companies. He additionally did advertising for HomeBinder, an internet home-management service.
After Roberts returned to Arizona after school, he started work as an online developer earlier than he reunited with the long run congresswoman in New York. By then, the long run member of the left-leaning “Squad” was working in meals service.
Has he helped her marketing campaign?
Roberts helped his then-girlfriend in what appeared at first like a longshot bid for Congress in opposition to Democratic Occasion powerhouse and 10-term incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley.
He hit the streets to gather signatures to place her on the poll and filmed her journey to the Board of Elections handy them in. And through her run, Roberts supplied $1,750 value of “in-kind contributions” doing work on her Web page.
Throughout his girlfriend’s marketing campaign, Roberts acquired $6,000 from Model New Congress, a political motion committee that helped launch her bid, federal election information present. The PAC was based by Saikat ChakrabartiChakrabarti, who would later develop into Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of employees.
On the similar time, her marketing campaign was paying Model New Congress LLC, an organization arrange by Chakrabarti, $18,880 for “strategic consulting.”
Phrase of that moral no-no adopted a 2018 report that confirmed Roberts listed as a staffer on Congress’ inside listing — an anomaly Chakrabarti dismissed as a typical courtesy prolonged to spouses and companions of Congress members.
“The conspiracy machine is in full impact,” Ocasio-Cortez fumed on Twitter in response.
And Chakrabarti on the time posted a convoluted clarification justifying his group’s fee to Roberts, which he mentioned was for on-line fund-raising companies.
Chakrabarti, a Wall Road and Silicon Valley veteran, based the PAC and LLC in 2017 to get left-wing Democrats elected. Of the 30 candidates his group endorsed within the 2018 midterms, solely Ocasio-Cortez received.
Within the years since she her election, Roberts has typically been seen on Ocasio-Cortez’s Instagram feeds, comparable to in 2020 the place he mentioned “combatting racism as a white particular person.”
Steve Cortes, a former marketing campaign advisor for Donald Trump, and different GOPers took concern with Roberts displaying “his gross pale male ft in public” by carrying sandals throughout a visit to Miami in 2021. AOC rushed to her love’s protection, slamming Republicans as “creepy weirdos” for his or her “obsession with Riley’s ft.”
Ocasio-Cortez confirmed they have been engaged in Puerto Rico in April 2022.
Extra reporting by Mark Lungariello, Kevin Fasick, Sydney Denmark and Dana Schuster
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