Inside the Well-Funded, Likely Doomed Plan to Stop Mamdani
Before launching in early July what he promised would be an all-out effort, one he would see “through the end, to the final day,” to keep Zohran Mamdani from winning the mayor’s office, Republican political megadonor John Catsimatidis had a phone call with the Democratic nominee himself.
“I said to him, ‘Look, you’re a very nice guy and, you know, a very smart guy,’” the 76-year-old billionaire owner of the Gristedes supermarket chain told me. “And he says to me, ‘Oh, when you get to know me, you might like me.’” Catsimatidis had called me from D.C., where he was attending the Senate confirmation hearing for Kimberly Guilfoyle’s nomination as ambassador to his beloved Greece. “I try to be a very civilized person. I’ve hired company executives for 40, 50 years, and, you know, he’s a nice kid, but he’s 33 years old. He’s not qualified. He’s a great debater and a great orator, but can he run the city?”
The fear that he cannot is shared by Establishment politicians, financiers, and real-estate developers, among others. It’s true that Mamdani would be the youngest mayor in a century. Most political and business elites are at best uncomfortable with the idea of turning the city’s reins over to a democratic socialist whose leadership experience, prior to a scant three terms in the State Assembly, consists of co-founding the Bowdoin branch of Students for Justice in Palestine. The greater fear, however, may be that Mamdani could succeed in running the city how he’s promised, which, in the eyes of the oligarchs, would mean letting criminals run as free as the buses, welcoming in terrorists, and garnishing Wall Street Christmas bonuses to fund collectivized farming.
On Monday, July 7, these concerns led Catsimatidis, the self-anointed mastermind of the movement to stop Mamdani, to summon a squad of would-be Municipal Avengers for a midtown press conference. It was a bit of a broken-wing crew, consisting of former governor David Paterson, who left office 15 years ago and whose tenure was mired in controversy; the shock jock Sid Rosenberg, who spoke at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally; and Richard Weinberg, a character basically unknown to the city’s political class who was once chief counsel to Peter Vallone, former City Council Speaker.
The plan? To do nothing, they said. For now, at least. They aim to wait until September, see who among Mamdani’s competitors in the general election is polling the highest, and coalesce around that person — whether that’s Andrew Cuomo, who lost to Mamdani by 12 points in the Democratic primary; Eric Adams, the incumbent, who currently has an eye-watering negative-34 approval rating; or Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee and Guardian Angels founder who lost the 2021 mayoral election to Adams by nearly 40 points. The scheme, such as it is, was concocted by Jim Walden, a wealthy attorney who is also running for mayor and currently sits in fifth place, polling at one percent.
The strategy almost makes sense. While current polls show Mamdani leading the field, they also show him carrying only 35 percent of the vote. Get two of his three top opponents to drop out for the good of the city, and the non-Mamdani electorate would stave off the red menace.
But in a city of 8.5 million, it is hard to find three people less likely to take one for the team than Sliwa, Adams, and Cuomo. All three have been civic figures since at least the 1980s. Each one views the prize of City Hall as some combination of their rightful due and a chance at redemption.
“What do all three of these people have in common?” said one political operative who has worked with each. “They are all egomaniacal sociopaths. And to imagine that any of them would step down for the so-called greater good is to pretend that they are three completely different people.”
It’s hard to imagine a sharper contrast than that between Mamdani and the team laying out their plan to impede him: Since the primary, he had been blitzing the town, speaking directly to New York’s teachers union, to community groups, to hotel workers. Meanwhile the city fathers were standing athwart the choice of Democratic voters, yelling “stop.”
In the weeks since Mamdani’s shocking win, Adams, Sliwa, and Cuomo have in fact been ferociously attacking one another, vying for the lead position in taking on the young lefty. The argument in Sliwa’s favor is that he, unlike Adams and Cuomo, actually won a primary this year (in an unopposed race). For Cuomo, it’s that the polls show him the closest on Mamdani’s heels (this is why his camp tacitly supports the Catsimatidis plan). Adams is currently in fourth place, behind even Sliwa, but to his campaign chair, Frank Carone, the sitting mayor is the only plausible option: “It’s really the height of arrogance to ask the second Black mayor, who has a record of success, to do a poll and then somehow ask him to move out of the way to somebody who just lost in a convincing fashion.”
While the stop-Mamdani effort may be doomed, the city’s elite — many of whom have until now been blissfully unaware of the folkways of local politics — are preparing to pour cash into the fight. In recent days, political operatives have described a feeding frenzy among colleagues racing to get a cut of the new dumb money. Most of the more established, knowledgeable players, however, are keeping their distance, believing that the overall probabilities favor Mamdani and figuring that it’s better to be on the side of the likely new mayor than a scrum of misguided, discontented billionaires.
“I would just say that a lot of these guys are really feeling their feelings right now,” said one operative who advises big-money donors. “They are showing up late to this and are unaware of the expertise they don’t have, and they are not behaving rationally.”
Billionaire financier Bill Ackman may be one example. After the primary, Ackman originally promised on X to fund a “charismatic, intelligent, articulate, handsome, charming, young yet more experienced” centrist as a write-in candidate. According to one person familiar with the machinations, he was referring to Congressman Ritchie Torres, who was not interested. In a comment, Torres’s director of communications said, “There is no universe in which the Congressman would ever consider a write-in campaign for Mayor,” adding that “Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic nomination fair and square.” Ackman has now pledged support for Adams.
“I really don’t understand it,” said another operative. “Here you have all of these guys who are worried about what Mamdani would mean for their bottom lines and their business, but they are also just willing to light money on fire.”
In September, if the non-Mamdani candidates decide they want to fall in line for the Catsimatidis plan, redirecting votes won’t necessarily be easy. Thanks to New York’s arcane laws, there are only a few ways that a candidate can be removed from the ballot at such a late date, including if they die or move out of state. Since the first is harmful to one’s future political prospects, operatives say that financiers should consider finding cushy jobs for candidates somewhere in Connecticut or New Jersey.
For now, a $25 million Cuomo super-PAC is considering retooling to focus on bringing moderates to the polls. Unification remains theoretical. But if there is anyone who can make it happen, it is probably Catsimatidis, who among his other holdings owns the radio station 77 WABC, where Sliwa hosts a show. He’s also close to Adams, and he may have incentives to dangle for Cuomo: The megadonor said he supported the idea of a Cuomo presidential bid. He additionally has Trump’s ear, which could certainly come in handy. (The president praised him during his most recent Cabinet meeting, referring to him as “a great guy, a rich guy,” who was concerned “his stores are going to be taken from him” under Mamdani’s plan for city-owned groceries.)
When we spoke, Catsimatidis was vague about how all this would play out. “What’s the name of that song? ‘See You in September,’” he said. “Something will happen. Hey, God saved America.” He was referring to Trump surviving assassination attempts and winning reelection. “We saved the free world. Now we have to save New York.”