Fearing a victory by Zohran Mamdani in November’s New York City mayoral race, Bill Ackman threw the weight of his estimated $9.4 billion personal fortune behind incumbent Eric Adams, calling on Andrew Cuomo to drop out.
The election may be run in a Democratic stronghold known for its multi-ethnic diversity, but it has grabbed headlines nationwide as the charismatic outsider Mamdani represents more than just a generational divide. As a Democratic Socialist running for office in the financial capital of the world, he threatens to upend the Wall Street-based system.
Pitted against him is a financial class that has found, in Adams and Cuomo, a pair of establishment names they hope to be capable of thwarting a Mamdani victory. After meeting with both for an hour on Tuesday, Ackman said the choice was clear.
“Mayor Adams is ready to go to battle, guns blazing with enormous energy and clarity on why Mamdani and his socialist/communist (‘We must seize the means of production’) and anti-NYPD policies would be catastrophic for NYC,” the Pershing Square hedge fund manager posted on Wednesday. “Adams is a great campaigner who can lead the grassroots effort needed to defeat Mamdani, and as mayor, he has a great platform to tell his story.”
“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),” he wrote.
“It’s whether ordinary citizens have ANY power in our ‘democracy’, or whether billionaires control it all,” he wrote in a post, citing a Fortune article. “We can’t let them win.”
Faced with public pushback, Ackman sought to temper his comments.
The left-wing Mamdani’s victory comes amid widespread discontent over an economy perceived to no longer be working for the middle class. After a wave globalization offshored blue-collar manufacturing jobs, generative AI now threatens to eliminate more white collar jobs.
