The collision of wealth and ideology in New York City’s turbulent mayoral race reached a new pitch this week after Elizabeth Simons, daughter of the late hedge fund titan James Simons, made a $250,000 contribution to the pro-Zohran Mamdani super PAC New Yorkers for Lower Costs.
The gift, revealed in campaign finance disclosures, represents the single largest donation received by the socialist nominee’s outside support group, which has already amassed close to $2 million from nearly 300 contributions. As The New York Post reported on Wednesday, the Simons gift not only bolsters Mamdani’s longshot mayoral bid but also underscores the paradox of billionaires’ heirs fueling the campaign of a candidate who has openly called for the abolition of billionaires altogether.
Elizabeth Simons serves as chairwoman of the board of directors of the Heising-Simons Foundation, the philanthropic vehicle she co-founded with her husband, Mark Heising. The foundation, headquartered in California, has poured hundreds of millions into progressive causes ranging from climate research to criminal justice reform.
The fortune behind that largesse traces directly back to her late father, James Simons, founder of the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies and one of the most successful investors in modern history. With a net worth estimated at $31.4 billion at the time of his death last year, Simons was as celebrated in philanthropy as he was in finance.
He and his wife Marilyn gave more than $1 billion to Stony Brook University, part of the SUNY system and the school where he had once been a mathematics professor. That landmark donation—the largest ever to an American public university—cemented the Simons name as a philanthropic powerhouse.
Now, Elizabeth’s $250,000 to a pro-Mamdani group marks a new, more overtly political channeling of the family’s fortune. As The New York Post report noted, the figure dwarfs most individual contributions to the socialist nominee’s cause and signals a growing willingness by wealthy heirs to bankroll candidates who openly denounce the structures that made such fortunes possible.
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic socialist assemblyman from Queens who stunned the city’s political establishment by defeating Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary, has fashioned his campaign around class warfare rhetoric.
“I don’t think that we should have billionaires because, frankly, it is so much money in a moment of such inequality,” Mamdani declared on NBC’s Meet the Press in June, shortly after his upset victory. “What we need more of is equality across our city and across our state and across our country.”
As The New York Post report observed, the remarks reverberated far beyond New York. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, himself an heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune and one of the wealthiest governors in American history, fired back: “Look, how much money you have doesn’t determine what your values are.”
The irony of Mamdani’s position now comes full circle, with Elizabeth Simons’ quarter-million-dollar contribution giving the socialist nominee’s campaign a significant financial boost.
The flow of big money into New York’s mayoral contest has not been limited to Mamdani’s backers. Indeed, the super PAC landscape has become a central battlefield in the race, with each major candidate attracting millions in independent support.
Fix the City, the super PAC aligned with Andrew Cuomo’s campaign, reported a staggering $26 million raised, including a recent $100,000 donation from Alice Walton, the Walmart heir known for her enthusiastic support of charter schools.
Despite that formidable war chest, Cuomo’s attempt at a political comeback faltered. As The New York Post report indicated, Mamdani’s insurgent campaign captured the Democratic nomination, leaving the former governor to mount an independent run on a third-party ballot line.
Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, meanwhile, is also seeking re-election as an independent, buoyed by his own network of supportive PACs. Adams, who skipped the Democratic primary, has attempted to frame himself as the steady hand amid political turbulence, though his approval ratings remain battered by corruption scandals and rising public discontent.
The cumulative effect, as The New York Post report put it, is a mayoral contest shaped as much by the largesse of wealthy donors and super PACs as by grassroots political movements.
Elizabeth Simons’ contribution encapsulates a broader paradox at play in progressive politics: the channeling of vast inherited wealth into campaigns and organizations that vocally denounce the very existence of billionaires.
Critics argue this dynamic reveals the superficiality of anti-wealth rhetoric, as candidates like Mamdani rely on the largesse of precisely the class they claim to oppose. “It’s a curious spectacle,” one political strategist told The New York Post, “when a billionaire’s heir is the largest donor to a campaign devoted to abolishing billionaires.”
Supporters counter that Simons’ contribution demonstrates a principled alignment with redistributive values. From this perspective, her philanthropy is not contradictory but consistent: a deliberate attempt to reallocate the benefits of extraordinary wealth toward causes aimed at dismantling inequality.
Either way, the optics are undeniable. A socialist candidate who has built his brand on railing against billionaires is now being buoyed by the wealth of one of Wall Street’s most successful dynasties.
For Mamdani, the challenge ahead will be sustaining the momentum of his upset primary victory against Cuomo. His grassroots base, animated by issues of housing, healthcare, and economic justice, has shown remarkable organizing power.
But as The New York Post report observed, his ability to govern—or even to win the general election—will depend on navigating an electorate far broader than the socialist movement that carried him through the Democratic primary. Independent voters, centrist Democrats, and disaffected Republicans will all play a crucial role in November’s contest.
Cuomo’s independent candidacy, alongside Adams’ bid for reelection outside the Democratic Party, sets the stage for a fractured vote that could yield unpredictable results. In this chaotic landscape, the influx of super PAC cash, including Simons’ $250,000, may prove decisive in shaping the outcome.
Elizabeth Simons’ entrance into the New York mayoral race through her super PAC donation also signals the enduring influence of the Simons family in public life. From James Simons’ pioneering success in quantitative finance to the family’s record-shattering philanthropic gifts, the Simons name carries weight not just in academia and science but increasingly in politics.
As The New York Post report noted, the donation situates Elizabeth within a lineage of billionaire heirs using their wealth to advance progressive political causes, much as the heirs of the Disney, Pritzker, and Walton fortunes have done in recent years.
The $250,000 donation from Elizabeth Simons to a super PAC backing Zohran Mamdani is more than a campaign finance footnote. It is a microcosm of the contradictions shaping New York’s mayoral race—and, more broadly, American politics.
On one side is Mamdani, the avowed socialist who insists billionaires should not exist. On the other is Simons, the daughter of a billionaire hedge fund legend, channeling her inheritance to propel his message.
As The New York Post has highlighted repeatedly, these contradictions underscore the strange new alliances emerging in an era defined by populism, polarization, and profound inequality.
The result is a political tableau as unpredictable as it is emblematic of New York: a socialist firebrand fueled by the fortune of one of Wall Street’s richest dynasties, squaring off against an ex-governor with a war chest of $26 million and an embattled incumbent clinging to power.
In the end, New Yorkers may once again find themselves asking a familiar question: in this city, where wealth and politics collide, who really holds the power—the billionaires, the activists, or the voters?
1 comment:
Not so shocking. Remember that lots of German industrialists supported the Nazis because they thought a stronger Germany would enrich them further and with their financial clout, they'd be able to contain Hitler, y"sh. Oops.
The saame thing here. She thinks that if she supports this menuval, she'll be exempted when he comes for the other billionaires.
In a way, it's like how our ancestors would sin, then set aside and offer a sin offering as a payment for that sin.
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