Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, who crisscrossed the nation final 12 months on a Combating Oligarchy tour with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, spent over $550,000 in 2025 on non-public jet journey for himself utilizing marketing campaign funds, a Fox Information Digital assessment of Federal Election Fee (FEC) filings discovered.
Nearly all of the spending got here within the first two quarters, which cowl up till July. That can be when Sanders and AOC had nearly all of their tour stops throughout the nation.
In April, between stops on the tour, Fox Information Digital completely obtained a photograph of Sanders boarding a luxurious Bombardier Challenger non-public jet on the Meadows Area Airport in Bakersfield, California.
The supply additionally indicated seeing the New York congresswoman boarding the non-public jet as nicely.
The pair have been subsequently additionally seen in footage obtained by Fox Information Digital exiting the aircraft in Sacramento later that night, close to the place the self-identified democratic socialists hosted a second rally in in the future.
The Bombardier Challenger non-public jet the pair flew on was operated by Ventura Air Companies, which touts “one of many widest cabins of any enterprise jet obtainable in the present day” and gives “superior cabin consolation for its passengers.” In response to its web site, the non-public jet can price as much as $15,000 an hour.
In 2025, in response to Sanders’ FEC filings, he spent a minimum of $354,000 in marketing campaign funds to pay for personal jet companies by means of Ventura Jets. The opposite non-public jet corporations Sanders spent marketing campaign funds on included N-Jet and Cirrus Aviation Companies.
In response to N-Jet’s web site, the corporate prides itself on its “private contact,” including that clients will “arrive in type together with your luxurious, consolation and security all the time prime of thoughts.”
Sanders, who has been a vocal supporter of the Inexperienced New Deal, the aggressive local weather change coverage concentrating on carbon emissions and fossil gas manufacturing, and has referred to as local weather change an “existential risk” to the world, was pressed about his non-public jet use final 12 months, prompting him to inform Fox Information’ “Particular Report” host Bret Baier that “that’s the one solution to get round.”
“You run a marketing campaign, and also you do three or 4 or 5 rallies in per week. [It is] the one means you will get round to speak to 30,000 folks. You suppose I’m gonna be sitting on a ready line at United … whereas 30,000 persons are ready?” Sanders stated.
“That’s the one solution to get round. No apologies for that. That’s what marketing campaign journey is about. We’ve executed it up to now. We’re gonna do it in future.”
Sanders has a protracted historical past of utilizing non-public jets on the marketing campaign path. Throughout his failed 2020 presidential marketing campaign, the Sanders marketing campaign spent over $1.9 million on non-public jets, together with Apollo Jets and the Superior Aviation Crew, a Virginia-based non-public jet firm.
Non-public jets have confronted the ire of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez’s fellow local weather activists. In response to the 2021 Transport and Setting report, non-public jets are as much as 14 occasions extra polluting than industrial planes.
“For actual, what number of non-public jets do these CEOs want? It’s insatiable. It’s unacceptable,” Ocasio-Cortez stated in 2023, in a single instance of the New York congresswoman herself railing in opposition to non-public jets.
Fox Information Digital reached out to Sanders’ workplace and his marketing campaign for touch upon the spending however didn’t obtain a response in time for publication.
“You don’t anticipate a socialist to fly industrial do you?” quipped conservative political communications advisor Matt Gorman. “There’s no larger hypocrite than the liberal who chastises us for consuming meat and utilizing fuel stoves, but flies in non-public jets.”
Along with Sanders’ hefty non-public jet spending that got here throughout his tour with AOC, the New York democratic socialist additionally spent large sums of marketing campaign {dollars} at luxurious and “boutique” resorts in states the place the pair held their Combating Oligarchy tour.
For instance, AOC’s marketing campaign paid The Leo Kent Lodge, a boutique high-rise in Tucson, $3,165.76, across the time of a Combating Oligarchy rally that was held there, in response to an FEC submitting from April 25.
In 2025, AOC additionally spent 1000’s at luxurious resorts just like the Asher Adams Lodge in Salt Lake Metropolis, the Lodge Vermont in Burlington, The Langham-Huntington resort in Pasadena, Calif., Lodge El Convento in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the Lansdowne Resort & Spa in rural Virginia and others.
Fox Information Digital requested representatives for AOC if the congresswoman felt like she wanted to clarify her greater than $53,000 in marketing campaign spending on upscale resorts throughout the nation in 2025 however didn’t obtain a response.
Fox Information’ Deirdre Heavey and Andrew Mark Miller contributed reporting
