New York City Democratic Socialists of America leader Gustavo Gordillo has repeatedly presented his family’s rise in America as a classic immigrant success story — but newly surfaced records are raising questions about just how humble those beginnings really were.
“My parents came here, they had nothing,” Gordillo, 38, told the New York Times earlier this month. He has offered a similar account elsewhere, including during a July appearance on Fox News, where he said his father’s first job in the United States was at Wendy’s and his mother worked as a house cleaner.
The story of Gordillo’s family, however, appears considerably more complicated. A 2021 obituary for Gordillo’s paternal grandfather, Manuel Gordillo, identifies him as the first member of the family to immigrate to the United States. Manuel earned a medical degree from San Marcos University in Lima, Peru, before coming to the United States in 1958 as a medical resident.
He became a U.S. citizen in 1964 and went on to build a long career as a psychiatrist in the Cleveland area, according to the obituary. He ultimately retired at 87. Manuel and his wife, Ruth, had nine children, including Gordillo’s father, also named Gustavo. Public records, reviewed by the New York Post, indicate that Gordillo’s father went on to found DraftPros, a telecommunications engineering firm that reportedly generates some $90 million a year from clients including AT&T and Verizon.
The discrepancy is particularly notable because Gordillo has made working-class identity a central part of his political persona. The Yale-educated socialist is the co-chair of NYC-DSA and has presented himself as a union electrician while advocating an aggressively anti-capitalist agenda.
However, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 3 said Gordillo was terminated from its apprenticeship program in March after a “prolonged absence from and failure to participate in required work and classes.” Gordillo therefore never completed the apprenticeship required to become a fully credentialed electrician. His X profile nevertheless continues to identify him as a “union electrician.”
After leaving the apprenticeship, Gordillo and fellow DSA co-chair Grace Mausser successfully pushed the organization to provide each of them with a $95,000 annual salary and benefits.
That decision came as Gordillo described the demands of his work and political activism to DSA members, according to the Post.
His personal housing situation has also raised questions about the image he has cultivated.
Gordillo lives in a nearly 2,000-square-foot Bedford-Stuyvesant row house that his parents purchased in 2019 through an LLC for just under $1 million. The property is now valued at roughly $1.5 million and has undergone an estimated $1.4 million in renovations, according to reporting by the Post. The home was purchased for Gordillo and his brother, according to his father.
Gordillo has simultaneously faced a separate housing dispute in Brooklyn. A former landlord sued him after alleging he failed to pay $5,000 in rent on a Crown Heights apartment where he was living while the family-owned townhouse underwent renovations. The case remains pending, and no judgment has been issued.
The controversies have put New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a fellow socialist and political ally of Gordillo, on the defensive. Mamdani has declined to call for Gordillo’s resignation, instead saying that the DSA is responsible for choosing its own leaders. “The D in DSA stands for Democratic,” Mamdani said. “I leave it up to the organization in its own voting who it’s electing as its leaders.”
For Gordillo, however, the questions are increasingly centered on the gap between the life he appears to have lived and the working-class biography he has presented to the public. The available records tell the story of a family whose first American immigrant was a highly educated physician who built a successful medical career, followed by a son who became an engineer and wealthy businessman.
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