New York Republican Tina Forte — who has ties to indicted serial lying Rep. George Santos — announced she’s mounting another long shot campaign against progressive firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
AOC represents NY’s 14th Congressional District which includes the eastern part of The Bronx including Hunts Point and Throggs Neck and north-central Queens ranging from Astoria to East Elmhurst.
Forte garnered 27% of the vote against Ocasio-Cortez in the heavy Democratic district in 2022.
“After many discussions with family, friends, and New Yorkers throughout the Bronx and Queens, I have decided to challenge AOC for Congress in 2024,” Forte said in a statement on Twitter.
“Socialism must be stopped. AOC must be defeated,” she said.
“I don’t like what’s going on in New York,” she added during an interview Tuesday.
Forte’s has ties to fabulous fibber Santos.
During her 2022 run, Forte’s campaign paid Santos’ political consulting firm, Red Strategies USA, a total of $110,320.
Federal Election Commission records show Forte was the only Congressional candidate to report working with Santos’ firm, City & State reported.
“I worked with Santos’ firm for the first four months and then I fired them. That’s all I want to say about it. I moved on,” she told The Post.
Forte, 53, did raise $1.5 million in her losing effort against AOC in 2022.
While she ran a pro-police, law-and-order campaign last year, it emerged that her her husband and son, Joseph Galdieri, and Joseph Galdieri Jr., were convicted criminals.
Her family’s Bronx beverage distribution warehouse was at the center of a federal drug and gun bust operation in 2019—leading to guilty pleas entered by her husband and son, The Daily Beast reported .
![Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000012194258.jpg?w=1024)
“One of my three children, Joseph, made some very poor decisions. In 2019 at 25, he committed a nonviolent marijuana offense and possessed a firearm. Joseph paid the price, in fines, attorney fees, and time behind bars,” Forte wrote in a statement to The Daily Beast last September.
“As for my husband, he was unaware of our son’s crimes. He was only roped into the charges because of my son utilizing our business location for a single delivery of marijuana,” Forte told The Daily Beast last September.
Forte, who runs her own political T-shirt business and has three kids and three grandchildren, said she supports some criminal justice reforms, including backing a federal law legalizing marijuana for recreational use. Possession and the licensed sale of weed is now legal in New York, but it’s still an illicit drug under federal law.
![Rep. George Santos](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000012422924.jpg?w=1024)
Federal prosecutors last month charged Santos with embezzling $50,000 in campaign money to buy designer clothing and pay personal expenses.
He is also accused of cheating his way to COVID unemployment benefits and lying to Congress on financial disclosure forms in which he claimed to be a millionaire, the indictment said.
Santos pleaded not guilty, has refused calls from fellow Republicans to resign and claims he’s a victim of a “witch hunt.”
The openly gay GOP lawmaker — who was elected last year to represent New York’s 3rd District in Long Island and Queens — made headlines last year after copping to elaborate lies about his education, work experience, and family history before he was voted in.
Barring other revelations, Bronx GOP chairman Michael Rendino said he doesn’t expect Forte’s link to Santos to impact her candidacy.
“I like Tina. She did a good job last time,” he said.