AOC, Beto O’Rourke Raises $ 5 Million for Texas, Dems Staff Houston Food Bank

New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined several Democratic lawmakers at a Houston food bank on Saturday, while she and former deputy Beto O’Rourke have accumulated about $ 5 million in total so far to help Texans who struggle through winter storms.

Millions of Texas residents remain without water or heat, which has led current and former Democratic members of Congress to lead fundraising campaigns through ActBlue.

On Sunday morning, Ocasio-Cortez raised $ 4 million for relief teams across the state of Texas and joined Democratic MPs Sylvia Garcia, Sheila Jackson and Al Green at a food bank in Houston on Saturday. Donations from the ActBlue fundraising campaign will be split between the Houston Food Bank, Feeding Texas, Family Eldercare, the Bridge Homeless Recovery Center and Ending Community Homeless Coalition (ECHO), said Ocasio-Cortez.

Meanwhile, O’Rourke, who shared the ActBlue donation campaign on social media, praised the volunteers for making “more than 300,000” calls on behalf of elderly citizens “who need warmth, water, food and shelter (and some basic care) ). “

“THANK YOU SO MUCH THANKS to the volunteers who made more than 784,000 calls to seniors in Texas today,” O’Rourke tweeted on Saturday.

Early Sunday morning, he announced in another tweet the last total collected from him: “Thank you for helping us raise $ 1 million so far to help the Texans with food, shelter and water!”

The outpouring of charitable efforts by O’Rourke and Ocasio-Cortez formed a stark comparison to Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who has faced a torrent of criticism since photos of him surfaced on a flight to Cancun, Mexico, when the state fell into a state of deep freeze standstill. Speaking with the Inside the Hive podcast, O’Rourke discussed Cruz’s political mindset: “[He] tried to overturn a legal, legitimate and democratically decided election, conspired with seditionists, [and] he was very responsible for those who were killed in the insurrection, in the attempted coup of 6 January. This guy wants nothing to do with the government, or at least our way of him. “

Many critics of Cruz noted that the Republican senator voted against New York’s receipt of federal funds in the wake of the devastation of Hurricane Sandy in 2021, but his state is now begging for federal aid.

“Ted Cruz voted against Sandy’s relief in New York. New York Congresswoman @AOC has just raised more than $ 3 million for organizations in Texas. The two parties are not the same,” noted political analyst Brian Taylor Cohen on Saturday.

On Saturday, the White House announced that President Joe Biden declared that there is a major disaster in Texas, allowing federal assistance to help state and local recovery efforts.

O’Rourke and Ocasio-Cortez are continuing to share ActBlue fundraising links on Sunday, which allows donors to donate to a wide range of charities and homeless organizations based in Texas.

Newsweek he reached out to O’Rourke and Ocasio-Cortez representatives on Sunday morning.