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Popular children’s YouTube educator Ms. Rachel backed a dozen progressive Democratic candidates on Friday, including former Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., and Michigan U.S. Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed, using her audience of more than five million followers to promote candidates she believed cared about children.
“I think all kids and people should have medical care. I don’t think anyone needs a billion dollars ever, I think all kids should be safe from violence,” Accurso said in a post on Instagram.
Accurso’s slate covered House and Senate contests in eight states. It also included Vermont Rep. Becca Balint, Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson, Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon and former Tennessee state Rep. Justin Pearson.
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“These are the folks I believe care about all kids,” Accurso said.
Bush, who is seeking to reclaim her former St. Louis-area seat from Rep. Wesley Bell in Tuesday’s Democratic primary, is a Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member. In early July, Bush said in a post on X that she was proud to be re-endorsed by the DSA.
“Together, we’ll work to abolish ICE, deliver Medicare for all, end wars overseas, and achieve true economic justice,” Bush said.
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El-Sayed rejected the socialist label during a Tuesday interview with MS NOW host Jen Psaki despite him receiving endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., El-Sayed spoke at six DSA events between 2017 and 2020.
“I’m simply not a socialist … I’ve studied a lot of the solutions that I fight for,” El-Sayed said to Psaki. “Things like Medicare-for-all, things like rethinking the way that our financial system implies that corporate CEOs are more interested in a quarterly bottom line than they are in the long-term sustainability of their business.”
El-Sayed’s campaign platform calls for Medicare-for-all, taxing billionaire wealth and banning corporate money in politics.
A federal filing also listed a $3,000 payment from Accurso to his campaign ahead of Tuesday’s Michigan primary against Rep. Haley Stevens. The filing did not specify whether the payment was a contribution or a loan.
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Accurso also connected her endorsements to the influx of what she described as outside money in Democratic primaries.
“I think politicians shouldn’t attack each other and I don’t think big groups should be able to use millions to attack candidates,” Accurso said.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) previously criticized Accurso’s financial support for El-Sayed, whose platform calls for an arms embargo against Israel.
NRSC spokeswoman Samantha Cantrell addressed the two in a statement to the New York Post in July.
“Abdul El-Sayed and Ms. Rachel are one and the same, forcing their socialist, they/them, anti-America agenda on our children,” Cantrell said.
Accurso has increasingly used her platform, which includes a YouTube channel with more than 20 million subscribers, for political advocacy.
In June, Accurso visited Delaney Hall, an immigration detention facility in Newark, New Jersey, and traveled to Washington to urge Congress to end family detention and separation.
Accurso said on Wednesday that she is involved with politics because she cares “so much about kids and families everywhere,” and said she could not watch them suffer and “not stand with them” in an Instagram post where she simultaneously endorsed El-Sayed.
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Fox News Digital reached out to Accurso, Bush, the DSA and El-Sayed for comment, but did not immediately receive a response.