Hedge-fund billionaire Bill Ackman plans to bankroll a New York City mayoral campaign, arguing that his affluent associates are poised to flood the election with money in an effort to defeat Democratic Socialist frontrunner Zohran Mamdani.
Ackman said he was “gravely concerned” because he believed the left-wing candidate’s policies would be disastrous, triggering an exodus of the wealthy that would endanger New York’s public services by hollowing out its tax base.
Arguing that his own support of President Trump would automatically disqualify anyone Ackman might put forward, the activist investor said he was making a public appeal: Anyone capable of taking down Mamdani in the Nov. 4 election should step forward and volunteer.
“Importantly, there are hundreds of millions of dollars of capital available to back a competitor to Mamdani that can be put together overnight (believe me, I am in the text strings and the WhatsApp groups) so that a great alternative candidate won’t spend any time,” he wrote.
“So if the right candidate would raise his or her hand tomorrow, the funds will pour in.”
It’s unclear whether New Yorkers would honor such a candidate. The recent intervention by Elon Musk in Wisconsin’s state supreme court election indicated the voting public does not always respond well to billionaires using their money to sway races.
New York mayoral races are notoriously unpredictable due to the city’s chronically low turnout. In 2017, for example, Bill de Blasio won reelection with only 14% of registered voters coming out to support him.
A large influx of New Yorkers heading to the voting booth because they are as concerned as Ackman could easily affect the outcome. If Cuomo can hold on to enough fundraisers, political pundits also point out, it’s possible he could run as an independent like Adams, splitting the left vote and spoiling the race.
Ackman, however, argued all these factors would support the emergence of a centrist candidate looking to position themself on the national stage. It could even be another businessman like Bloomberg, he suggested, although Ackman in an earlier post appeared to indicate he would not seek to run himself.
“For the aspiring politician there is no better way to get name recognition, build relationships with long-term donors, and to showcase oneself,” the hedge fund manager wrote, pitching the campaign like a business deal. “The risk/reward of running for mayor over the next 132 days is extremely compelling as the cost in time and energy is small and the upside is enormous.”
Huh. I wonder why he just doesn’t vote for the other person. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work? Isn’t that what poor people do? I was told voting was important… /s
That got tossed overboard by Citizens United. Money is free speech, and for most cases money is a big bag of votes.
Billionaires are against Mamdani, eh? Something tells me he is the right guy for the job then.
I mean, this guy must live in an insane bubble if he doesn’t understand that this will help Mamdami more than if he had endorsed them. I am sure NYC voters will just rally around a guy who, through funding, owns its allegiance to billionaires.
Surely this billionaire Trump supporter cares about the interests of democratic voters
What a “centrist” guy this billionaire Trump supporter is.
An amazing endorsement from Ackman.
Surely, the billionaires have the common people’s best interests at heart, right?
Right?!?!
Tl;dr: New Yorkers should elect Zohran Mamdani as their mayor, and should re-elect him as long as he chooses to serve.
Got it. Locked in. Never been clearer.
Thanks Bill Ackman!
The racist republicans currently have the president of hells angels a biker gang responsible for coordinated killings, meth trafficking and sales. The gerontocracy of DNC is frightened and the GOP know this shift is their fault. Let it rain.
Always follow the money. Why are GOP and billionaires afraid and against this man who pledges to help the poor and struggling working class? Because they obviously have an interest in keeping the poor and struggling in the status quo conditions in which they live.
If helping the poor didn’t hurt their bottom line, they wouldn’t pay to keep it from happening.
I don’t think it’s just the money, but that people who have leisure time also have time to think deeply.
why vote when legal bribes work this well?
Always vote, despair after. Don’t hand them an easy win.
Because they massively outspent Zohran in the primary and still lost. Vote because you can still overcome this. They want us to give up and think we can’t. Don’t do their dirty work for them
Wow they outspent him by 4:1?
Yep, and even larger can be overcome too. If you look AOC’s 2018 primary upset, she was outspent by over 10x
Insane outspending can be overcome. Obviously it makes the fight harder, but money is not everything
the left-wing candidate’s policies would be disastrous, triggering an exodus of the wealthy
Is that a promise? Look dude I’m already sold on him, you don’t need to keep selling him
That is what they always claim, don’t they? You can’t tax the rich, they’ll leave!!
Cool.
Where?
Where will they leave to? Europe? Good luck, taxes are way higher there (not enough , though) either way, you’ll be gone from what made you rich in the first place. You’re not going anywhere
Florida. We have no income tax, an increasing population of millionaires, mosquitos, alligators and homeless people.
Ohh! What’s not to like? 😵💫
They’ll go to some red state where fascist stormtroopers keep their boots on the necks of the poor… (ok yeah florida)
These guys were the first against the wall, come the revolution.
Whenever I see anything like this I remember my days working for large American companies and how difficult it was, even as a senior engineer, to get spending approval for anything. Like, even a $20 replacement headset I had to keep resubmitting applications for for three weeks because the managers had a policy of rejecting every first request on the theory that if it was important enough to spend company money on, it was important enough to fill in the form twice.
The point being, these sorts of people do not hand out a single penny without running the numbers and realising that the cost of rigging an election multiplied by the probability of success, is still lower than what they’ll financially gain from it going a certain way.
or what they will financially lose if people start realizing there is a better way to live in a different financial system
This mother fucker claiming that wealthy are paying their share of taxes is jokes lmao and implying that the money actually is applied properly is also
Hollowing out the tax-base? Of what? Billionaires who have turned tax evasion into a sports championship?
In most places in the world, tax is primarily paid by the working people, not by the rich.
Which obviously leaves them with to much money that they squander on anti-citizen political campaigns like this. When they have the money for bribery on that level, they have the money to pax taxes like everyone else.
Billionaires trying to buy elections
Usually they don’t even have to try.
What a crook.
Literally buying elected officials.
A true enemy of the people
Zohran should drop a diss track collab with Kendrick on Spotify. No amount of billionaire money could combat that.
Lots of articles say that Ackman is a real bloodthirty piece of crap, a famously petty crybully, and a supremecist. So I can see why he’d be against Zohran Mamdani.
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/crybullyism-bill-ackman-ruling-class/ https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/bill-ackman-war-harvard-mit-dei-claudine-gay.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzkY3NA_ZkQ
His daughter was in the social-studies department just like her father, and rowed crew, too, but she had chosen to write her thesis on “The Concept of Reification in Western Marxist Thought,” having come to very different conclusions than her father had about how the world should work. Ackman said it felt as though she “had been indoctrinated” into a cult.
It’s only “indoctrination” when the system of preference isn’t capitalism. They’d never admit capitalism breeds its own cult.
Yeah ofc, he’s a billionaire.
Nobody who massively exploits people for their own disgusting privilege is ever a good person.
