Bernie Sanders railed against millionaires and bought three houses.
Now his Brooklyn successor is pulling the same trick.
What the man living rent-free in his father’s million dollar townhouse just told Fox News about your right to invest will leave you speechless.
Yale Graduate Lists Himself as a Union Electrician While Daddy Pays the Rent
Gustavo Gordillo, 38, is the co-chair of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America – the largest DSA chapter in America, with over 14,000 members.
He graduated from Yale with an art degree.
He lists his occupation on social media as a “union electrician.”
His parents, Peruvian immigrants who built a successful construction and engineering business, purchased the Bed-Stuy rowhouse through a family LLC in 2019.
His father renovated it into a luxury single-family home – the exact kind of conversion the DSA rails against for “reducing housing inventory.”
https://twitter.com/foxnewspolitics/status/2090131551657021777?s=20
The property is now worth roughly $1.4 million.
Gordillo pays no rent.
In July, Gordillo sat down with Fox News and declared that the DSA doesn’t “think that anyone should have a constitutional right to double-digit returns on their investment.”
His father’s business generated exactly those returns – the ones that paid for Gordillo’s $1.4 million home.
The Script Is Getting Old
New York City Councilwoman Joann Ariola said it plainly on X.
“Nothing says working class like a $1.4M townhouse your daddy bought you,” she wrote.
Councilwoman Vickie Paladino went further, pointing out that Gordillo’s parents didn’t just buy him a home – they converted it from a two-family property into a luxury single-family residence.
“Exactly the kind of ‘greed’ the DSA rails against on a daily basis,” Paladino wrote, “and reducing valuable housing inventory by one more unit, which is supposedly something the DSA cares very deeply about.”
This isn’t a minor inconsistency.
Gordillo has built his entire public identity around the idea that wealthy property owners are the enemies of working-class New Yorkers.
In February he complained that millionaires weren’t leaving New York fast enough, arguing that lower-income residents and minorities were being priced out while the rich stayed put.
https://twitter.com/queens_parents/status/2090210423672877520?s=20
He was giving that speech from a $1.4 million home.
His father’s business – the one Gordillo never mentions in his working-class electrician persona – is called Draftpros Inc., an engineering and consulting firm that generated the family wealth funding his revolutionary lifestyle.
When the New York Times asked him about the gap between his affluence and his ideology, Gordillo said the democratic socialist project seeks to “build a world” where his parents’ success story is “not exceptional.”
Translation: his dad earned it the wrong way, and Gordillo is going to fix that – from the brownstone his dad bought him.
The Pattern That Never Changes
Manhattan Institute senior fellow Rob Henderson put it best on X, quoting Dostoevsky: “In The Possessed, it was the sons of rich boomers who were the most in love with socialism. Not the poor. The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
He’s right.
This is the oldest story in American politics.
The DSA’s own membership data shows the organization is 85% white and barely 4% blue-collar workers – a movement of elite professionals cosplaying as the working class.
https://twitter.com/KareemRifai/status/2090257223339630799?s=20
The people screaming loudest about redistributing wealth are almost always the ones who already have it and got it through the very system they claim to despise.
Gordillo didn’t build anything.
His father did – the immigrant success story, the construction business, the Peruvian family that came to America with nothing and turned it into a $1.4 million Brooklyn property.
That’s the American dream.
And Gordillo’s entire political career is dedicated to making sure the next family from Peru can’t do it.
Sources:
- Robert Schmad, “Socialist bigwig blasts the wealthy while living in $1.4M Brooklyn brownstone,” Fox News, August 19, 2026.
- New York Post, “Anti-rich DSA leader Gustavo Gordillo lives it up in posh $1.5M NYC pad paid for by millionaire parents,” August 18, 2026.
- AMAC Newsline, “Mamdani’s Champagne-Socialist Allies Masquerade as Working-Class Heroes,” August 2026.
- Washington Times, “Not so socialist: DSA leader lives in $1.5 million NYC row house purchased by his parents,” August 19, 2026.
- City & State New York, “Bernie Sanders spawned unnumbered socialists. NYC-DSA co-chair Gustavo Gordillo was one of them,” January 28, 2026.