Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.Lev Radin/Pacific Press via ZUMA Press
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For a couple weeks, I’ve been getting negative campaign mailers for a New York City council district I don’t live in. I’m not really sure why. Maybe there was a data-entry error. Maybe someone’s used an outdated map. Maybe someone hates me.
They’re the sort of mailers you tend to get if you live in a major city these days. Paid for by an innocuous-sounding group called New Yorkers for a Better Future, they attack the incumbent council member—a Democratic-Socialist—for supporting drug injection sites and decriminalizing prostitution, and backing calls to defund the police. The incumbent “doesn’t care about our community,” the flyer reads. And there, at the bottom, is a legally required disclosure of one of the PAC’s largest donors: William A. Ackman.
You know, Bill.
The Trump-backing, DEI-bashing, billionaire hedge-funder who does not live in this immigrant-heavy, largely Asian and Latino outer-borough district either—despite all that language about “our community.” He purchased a posh Upper West Side penthouse a few years back. And, from what I can tell, he spends a lot of time in the Hamptons. If X were a real place, he’d probably live there. But he still funneled $250,000 toward this group. And that disconnect makes him a perfect symbol for this week’s elections in America’s biggest blue city.
In a lot of ways, as I’ve reported, the city’s Democratic primary elections are the first big test of the party’s post-November reset. The choice in the mayoral race between former governor Andrew Cuomo and a succession of challengers led by assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, is, in part, about what exactly you think Democrats have been getting wrong in the places they govern. But it’s also about money. Mamdani had a lot of it—almost $9 million, with most of it coming from public matching funds. But Cuomo’s super-PAC, Fix the City, raked in nearly three times what the assembly member could spend—with big checks from corporations and billionaires. Those funds have filled mailboxes and saturated the airwaves in the election’s final weeks.
There’s a funny little wrinkle to all this spending, though. You sometimes hear people say that politicians should have to dress up like NASCAR drivers, in outfits emblazoned with the logos of their corporate benefactors. Well, New York City kind of does that. Every piece of literature or advertising from a political action committee has to include the names of the three largest donors to the group. Has this dampened the influence of money in politics within the five boroughs? It doesn’t really look like it. Still, every piece of Cuomo literature voters got from Fix The City had to include the disclaimer that it was paid for by DoorDash ($1 million), along with Ackman ($500,000), and former mayor Michael Bloomberg ($8.3 million).
There were more interesting names if you scratched the surface. Media mogul Barry Diller and Netflix chairman Reed Hastings gave a quarter of a million. Home Depot co-founder and Republican mega-donor Ken Langone gave $100,000. Pro-Trump hedge-funder Dan Loeb gave $350,000. James and Kathryn Murdoch offered $50,000 apiece. So did Stephen Ross, who lives in the borough of West Palm Beach, Florida and owns the Miami Dolphins. Alice Walton, of the Bentonville, Arkansas Waltons, pitched in with a humble offering of $100,000. Both Greenwich, Connecticut’s Jeff Wilpon, and the man he sold the New York Mets to—Stamford’s Steve Cohen—were good for $25,000. Another pro-Cuomo PAC, Sensible City, received a big check from Trump-backing hedge-funder Ken Griffin, who lives in Miami by way of Chicago.
If Mamdani’s campaign is trying to demonstrate the power of organizing and viral campaigning, Cuomo’s is just a big blunt object—one that tells a different story about how politics and power work. These donors from the worlds of real estate, finance, media, and “philanthropy” each have their own peculiar politics. But faced with the prospect of a progressive or leftist mayor, the things that unite them have proven stronger than the things that divide them. Across different backgrounds and zip codes (if not tax brackets) they came together in an inspiring show of class solidarity.
In one attack ad paid for by Fix the City, which the PAC paid $220,000 to run, a voter stands on a subway platform rattling off Mamdani’s promises of “free everything.”
“Who’s gonna pay for all that,” he asks. “The tooth fairy?”
But it wasn’t such a mystery after all. Mamdani was proposing for the city’s wealthiest residents to foot the bill. The advertisements asked who would be paying for everything. And there, in the list of donors at the end, they answered the question too.
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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!
“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.
No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.