Nothing says “tax the rich and build social housing” quite like a Democratic Socialist who just locked in a six-figure taxpayer salary turning to GoFundMe because he cannot cover his own rent.
Brian Romero, the Democrat nominee for New York’s 34th Assembly District in Queens, is sailing into Albany with no Republican opponent after crushing his primary. The job pays $142,000 a year plus per diems. Yet while he waits to be sworn in, the former legislative aide briefly posted a crowdfunding page asking strangers for $2,000 to help with rent and groceries. When the New York Post asked about it, the page vanished.
Romero had left his senior adviser role with state Sen. Kristen Gonzalez earlier this year after ethics guidance forced the move once he became a candidate. State payroll records show he pulled down $106,469 last year. He lives with his partner in a Jackson Heights apartment that costs about $2,600 a month. He claims he saved for the transition, exhausted those savings while hunting consulting work, and could not collect unemployment.
So he did what any good socialist does when personal responsibility collides with ideology: he asked other people to pay.
“As many of you know, I had to leave my full time job in the legislature when I got on the ballot for our Assembly race. I’m excited that we won and I saved for months to get by but I’ve now depleted my savings as I’m close to closing down some consulting gigs.”
That was the pitch on the now-deleted page. It raised more than $1,000 from 13 donors before Romero pulled it down, called the whole thing “a mistake,” and insisted he returned the money. Friends, he said, stepped in instead.
Jordan Libowitz of Citizens for Ethics in Washington told the Post he could not recall another lawmaker-elect publicly soliciting living expenses while waiting to collect a government paycheck.
This is the same Brian Romero who is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, the crowd that treats private property like a moral failure and government redistribution like a sacrament. He talks endlessly about affordability, taxing the wealthy, and publicly owned housing.
He once lived in NYCHA housing. He has the lived experience. Yet the moment the safety net of a government job is temporarily interrupted, the man who wants to redesign the economy for everyone else cannot manage his own household budget for a few months.
Scripture is clear on this point. The Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Thessalonians 3:10, “For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.”
The principle is not cruelty. It is the recognition that dignity and provision begin with personal effort, not perpetual dependence on someone else’s labor. Romero’s brief experiment in digital panhandling reveals the opposite instinct: the state, or the crowd, or the comrades, must always fill the gap.
New York already pays its legislators more than any other state. The $142,000 base salary is no secret. Romero knew the timeline. He knew the rules that required him to leave his prior post. He still chose to run.
Now the voters of a deep-blue Queens district will send him to Albany to decide how billions in tax dollars are spent, while his own temporary cash-flow problem was treated as a community obligation.
The page is gone. The money, he says, was never kept. The lesson remains. When socialists run out of other people’s money in their own lives, they reach for the same solution they prescribe for the country. Only this time the donors got to see the ask before the delete button was hit.
Romero will almost certainly take the oath and collect the paycheck. The rest of us get to watch another champion of the working class discover that the working class is expected to work.
