Billionaires Flail About Trying to Beat Mamdani; Wall Street Journal Describes Shambolic Plan to Spend $20 Million

Hopefully some schadenfreude will lighten up your Friday. A Wall Street Journal exclusive account describes how billionaires and Zionists are besides themselves with the prospect that simply throwing money behind opponents to Zohran Mamdani in his bid to become New York City mayor is not likely to succeed. But that isn’t stopping them from trying.

Mind you, this desperation is clarifying. The odds are pretty good that the moneybags could stymie a lot of Mandani’s plans, like putting rent freezes on rent controlled apartments (which do provide for increases but only roughly in line with inflatIon). Keep in mind that New York City mayors have much less autonomy than other big city mayors. As a result of the New York City bailout of the 1970s, many measures require the approval of the State Assembly, such as the pricing and management of the MTA.

And he’s never been in an executive position. He might turn out not to be very good at the job.

So the freakout seems to be over the very real prospect that New York City voters will again confirm that they was government intervention to shore up living standards for the poor and middle income, and are additionally disgusted with the genocide in Gaza. And of course, if Mamdani wins, even if the opposition to his initiatives proves to be insurmountable, he’ll still have a highly visible bully pulpit for hammering home his messages.

The disproportionate reaction to Mamdani’s primary success is having a Streisand effect, calling attention to how AIPAC is used to calling the electoral shots and revealing who is on their meal ticket:

One of the biggest benefits of Zohran Mamdani's mayoral run is that it is a masks off moment for the NY Democratic Party machine in front of the millions of normie NY Dems who support Mamdani. I'm seeing people talk about AIPAC who never mentioned it before. pic.twitter.com/K6hdjHyZSB

— Prof Zenkus (@anthonyzenkus) July 10, 2025

It’s also exposing the extent of Islamophobia in some circles:

Wow 100s of Silicon Valley folks signed an open letter saying they support demonizing Muslims and Islamic culture. Masks off, hoods on. https://t.co/qvONX0z7Ix

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) July 10, 2025

But what this Wall Street Journal piece shows in particular is the enormous consternation with the fact tha a political candidate and voters are so far successfully defying their divine right to rule, and their usual remedy, of throwing money at the problem, is unlikely to work. Another impediment is that so many big egos are involved that too many can’t bring themselves to give up on their preferred alternative to Mamdani in the interest of settling on one champion so as to improve their odds of beating him.

Key bits from the Journal’s account, New York’s Financial Crowd Rushes to Build Anti-Mamdani War Chest:

A new independent expenditure group named “New Yorkers for a Better Future Mayor 25” is launching a campaign against Mamdani, with at least $20 million….

It is far from the only group that donors are mobilizing to defeat Mamdani, with several more targeting millions of dollars. Those considering funding, or raising money, include some of the biggest names in politics, including Pershing Square CEO Bill Ackman and former Trump adviser and New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

“How do we stop this guy?” said Bo Dietl, who’s planning on raising about $10 million with Giuliani through a separate group….

JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon at an event Thursday called Mamdani “more a Marxist than a socialist” and said the campaign’s talking points were “the same ideological mush that means nothing in the real world.”

To translate: in right wing/corporate Democrat parlance, Marxist is pretty much the same as Communist except a stronger presumption of craziness.

Back to the article:

Political strategists and financiers say the opening weeks of the general election have been chaotic. They complain the anti-Mamdani bulwark lacks a positive message. And a candidate. And enough voters to win. They worry the flood of outside money could backfire, and make voters suspicious of special interests…

Amid all this confusion, strategists and backers say, donors don’t want to blow their money on a dead-end campaign.

“You have to turn out people to vote. This is the only place in which people without money actually have the same influence in the outcome,” [Columbia professor] Fuchs added.

The article does not point out how low turnout is in mayoral primaries and their general election. Mayor Adams won with only 11% of the votes of registered voters.

A slew of donors are scrambling on anti-Mamdani efforts behind the scenes to find a path to block his path to City Hall, normally all but assured for the Democratic nominee.

Ackman, who had supported Cuomo and President Trump, had already pledged on social media to back current Mayor Eric Adams in the general election and looked to rally anti-Mamdani forces. The Pershing Square CEO has talked to the New Yorkers for a Better Future Mayor 25 about donating, according to people familiar with the matter, and had previously donated $250,000 to an affiliated organization with a similar name that opposed progressive New York City Council candidates.

Real-estate developer Gary Barnett, who said he is supporting Adams has pledged $250,000 to the group. Its treasurer, Jeff Leb said the group is “currently polling the race to assess the most effective strategy.”

Even with the smoke of a corruption scandal, the bigger issue with Adams is that he ran on the promise of improving policing and instead seems to have spent most of his time at nightclubs. So his appeal is questionable. A fresh article in THE CITY also points out Eric Adams’ Chances of Getting Public Campaign Matching Funds Just Got Worse.

The article continues:

Even though Mamdani, a 33-year-old assemblyman from Queens, won the primary, he still faces serious challengers in the general election. Cuomo was his most potent threat for the nomination, but Mamdani now faces three independents—Adams and former Assistant U.S. Attorney Jim Walden as well as Cuomo—alongside Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, a perennial candidate….

Both Adams and Cuomo have so far refused to drop out of the race, making it difficult to form a unified front against Mamdani. Cuomo, for instance, has been ahead of Adams in polls since the primary election. But as the incumbent, Adams has still been considered as a better candidate by some in the wealthy donor class.

Aside from Cuomo carrying the taint of his sexual harassment allegations, he’s also under a cloud for sending old people during Covid back to nursing homes and probably hastening their demise, with those suspicions heightened when Attorney General of New York Letitia James found that Cuomo had understated New York nursing home deaths during Covid-19 by as much as 50%. That generally does not sit well with their children and grandkids.

The article finally gets around to the policy idea that the big moneybags find most threatening, further rent restrictions.

Major investors in the real-estate industry, which are most to be impacted by policies like a rent freeze on regulated apartments, have been raising money for Adams in Manhattan and the Hamptons.

Dark horse proposals are another sign of desperation:

Some donors are hoping for a write-in campaign, floating business-friendly names like Dimon. (He wasn’t interested, according to a person familiar with the matter). Other donors, though, are taking a wait-and-see approach.

The long-standing, not sufficiently well-recognized conundrum is that New York City’s tax base has long been unduly dependent on a comparatively small number of very rich people. Barrons reported in the early 1980s that 10,000 provided 1/2 the city’s tax revenues. But it was still the place to be for the securities industry and for many other professions, as well as for the arts and arts patronage. And one part of the deal was that the taxes were high to pay for a good public transportation system (to get all the worker bees in, such as back office personnel) and robust policing, as well as, by US standards, generous social services. The rich tolerated a certain level of anti-wealthy rhetoric because they knew their fundamental deal with the city was not set to change much.

Now there’s not much reason for financiers to operate from New York City. Big hedgies have their servers so-located with the NYSE’s servers in Mahwah, NJ. Work from home has greatly thinned out the vibrancy of midtown, and with it, revenues like sales tax proceeds from small businesses that depend on commuter traffic. Yet the deal for those on the bottom has eroded as not just rents but other expenses, particularly health care, keep creeping up, making it even harder to be not just a modest income person but even what was once middle class in the five boroughs. So Mamdani is pushing for a better deal from a comparatively small number of super-rich who don’t want to share and can whinge about the fallen state of New York City as justification.

Scott Greer (hat tip Li) gave a longer-form explanation:

Mamdani’s core supporters are drawn more from the “post-college professionals” rather than the immigrants. His victory party was filled with young, college-educated whites. There weren’t many fresh-off-the boat migrants in the crowd. These immigrants voted for Mamdani, but they aren’t the vanguard of his revolution. It’s an element that I would call “lumpenbourgeoisie.”

These are middle-class types who feel thwarted in some way. Some may have decent jobs, but still struggle to pay rent living in NYC or another big city. Others are NEETs (not in employment, education, or training) who live with their parents and have no job at all. They think they will not obtain the level of security as their parents, and they don’t see much of a path to advance. They may have a college degree, but it’s no ticket to the American dream. They’re in a precarious position and are open to radical ideas. They don’t have much to lose, so why not try socialism? It will at least own the chuds they despise.

Marxists have deployed the term “lumpenbourgeoisie” before, but they use it to describe native elites who back colonial rule. It’s derived from “lumpenproletariat,” which connotes the criminal and vagabond elements of the working class. These are people alienated from the rest of the proletariat and turn to dishonest work or no work at all. Marx and Engels took a dim view of this element, viewing them as a counter-revolutionary force against the proper proletariat. Later leftists, such as Frantz Fanon, saw these elements in a more positive light, claiming they would be the leading agents of the revolution. “It is among these masses, in the people of the shanty towns and in the lumpenproletariat that the insurrection will find its urban spearhead,” Fanon declared in The Wretched of the Earth. “The lumpenproletariat, this cohort of starving men, divorced from tribe and clan, constitutes one of the most spontaneously and radically revolutionary forces of a colonized people.”

Gangbangers and hobos don’t seem to be leading socialism today. It’s rather the alienated elements of the bourgeoisie most eager for it.

We’ve left aside the Zionist hatred of Mamdani which is serving as an excuse for some for the ferocity of their sentiment; it might look unseemly otherwise.

In typical France circa 1788 fashion, the Mamdani-haters don’t seem to recognize the degree to which he is has become the focus of deep-seated frustration with Democratic party incumbents generally:

CNN's chief data analyst says the takeaway of Mamdani's win is that "Democrats right now are out for blood — they want to take out their party leaders."

"Democrats who say they want to replace their party leaders, 62% nationally say yes, compared to just 24% who say no." pic.twitter.com/Rm5sqEfUGA

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) June 29, 2025

Admittedly the rich plotters against Mamdani do recognize that their campaign could backfire, but still seem unable to contain their worst impulses:

Looks like Mamdani is finished. pic.twitter.com/T5JvhD2dYl

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) July 9, 2025