In rare cases a major political contest comes along where a strident ideologue is the clear front-runner. This frees donors to spend as their heart dictates and allows the rest of us a look into who they are and what they really want for America. This is what has happened in the 2025 New York City mayoral race.
Big money donors with a public history of funding moderate Republican or Democratic candidates are often privately much more ideologically conservative or liberal than the politicians they bankroll in partisan primaries. The reason for the discrepancy is strategic: moderate candidates are often presumed to be the best bet for beating the other party’s candidate in a general election. So, wealthy donors often use their brains, and ignore their heart, when they write those big checks.
While hiding what they really believe from the public record isn’t their intent, it is nonetheless the result.
Zohran Mamdani, an unapologetic left-wing socialist, won the New York City Democratic mayoral primary this summer and became the presumed winner of Tuesday’s general election in the Democratic stronghold. Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the epitome of establishment Democratic Party ideology and family pedigree, lost to Mamdani in the primary, but jumped back in as an independent for the general election.
Simplifying matters further, Republican Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels and a fixture in New York City culture for decades, will siphon off support from donors who cannot stomach the agenda of either Democrat.
The Capital Research Center was created to identify and profile the money and influence driving American public policy. Regardless of which man becomes the next New York City mayor, the campaign finance reports from this race provided us a unique opportunity to accomplish this mission.
This new report– Socialism, capitalism and the NYC mayoral donors–profiles the donors to each of the three candidates.
A PDF of the report is linked below.
***
