At least 26 billionaires have spent millions trying to stop Mamdani from becoming New York’s next mayor on Tuesday. More surprising are the two billionaires who stepped up to support the frontrunner.
Last week, Forbes combed through campaign finance records to find the billionaires spending to stop Zohran Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist who says billionaires should not exist, from becoming mayor of America’s largest city. That analysis identified 26 billionaires or billionaire families who had poured over $22 million in total into the race trying to stop the New York assemblyman who’s leading in the polls. (Since then, Mike Bloomberg has donated another $1.5 million to a group backing Mamdani’s rival, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo).
More surprising is the fact that, as of Oct. 27, there are at least two billionaires pulling for Mamdani.
The first is Elizabeth Simons, the daughter of the late hedge fund billionaire Jim Simons (d. 2024) who shares a $32.5 billion fortune with her stepmother Marilyn and two siblings. She cut a check for $250,000 to New Yorkers For Lower Costs, the main independent group backing Mamdani’s campaign, in August.
Elizabeth’s donation comes as part of a long family history of political giving. Jim Simons, who started his career as a codebreaker and a math professor before founding hedge fund Renaissance Technologies in 1982, was an investment legend known for automated quantitative models and his exclusive Medallion Fund, which averaged 30% returns annually after fees. He was worth an estimated $31.4 billion when he died in April 2024—and was a major Democratic donor, pumping over $100 million into federal races between 2015 and 2024.
An Atherton, California resident, Liz Simons earned degrees in journalism and education from the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University, respectively, before going into teaching. She worked in Spanish-bilingual and English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms. She is now active in the nonprofit world, serving on the boards of progressive groups like the Marshall Project and the Foundation for a Just Society (the latter founded by her sister, Audrey) and volunteering at The Beat Within (a magazine by and for incarcerated youth). She also heads the Heising-Simons Foundation, which has given away almost $1.3 billion since 2007 to groups working on climate change, education, human rights and science. Like her father, Liz has signed the Giving Pledge, committing to donating a majority of her fortune to charity.
Sending Mamdani some financial reinforcement isn’t the first time Liz has waded into politics. A review of federal election records show more than $25 million in contributions to Democrats since 2015, including about $10 million in the 2024 cycle. She’s already sent almost $900,000 to the DCCC and DSCC, the official Democratic campaign arms for House and Senate races, this year.
GitHub cofounder Tom Preston-Werner, 45, is Mamdani’s other billionaire backer; in April, he sent New Yorkers For Lower Costs a check for $20,000. Preston-Werner, also a Bay Area resident, started the software development platform in 2008 and became a billionaire after Microsoft bought the company for $7.5 billion in 2018; his net worth is about $1 billion today, Forbes estimates. He now runs a venture capital firm called Preston-Werner Ventures.
Unlike Simons, Preston-Werner has a more sparse political giving history. An analysis of Federal Election Commission records suggests that he and his wife, Theresa, have given about $2 million in federal races since 2019. On his blog, Preston-Werner, also a Giving Pledge signatory, highlights additional donations in 2020 to Covid-19 relief ($1 million) and racial justice efforts ($250,000). Their foundation has distributed $28 million since 2019, a review of tax records shows. Neither donor replied to requests for comment.
The two billionaires’ contributions, which together represent about 10% of all the money New Yorkers For Lower Costs has taken in so far, pit them against a posse of Mamdani’s billionaire foes that includes Democratic stalwarts (Michael Bloomberg, Reed Hastings) and Trump allies (Joe Gebbia, Steve Wynn) alike.
While Simons and Preston-Werner may be the only billionaires backing Mamdani, he has attracted other notable donors. That includes Haroon and Idris Mokhtarzada, the D.C.-area brothers who cofounded the Maryland-based personal finance company RocketMoney and today serve as CEO and CTO, respectively. Haroon sent $99,000 and Idris donated $90,000. Another famous donor is Hollywood star Jane Fonda—who used to be married to billionaire Ted Turner and lives in Georgia and donated $1,000. City resident and actress Cynthia Nixon, who challenged Andrew Cuomo for New York’s governorship in 2018, chipped in $5,000.
Both Fonda and Nixon are known for their political activism in addition to their acting.
From Left: Stephane Cardinale/Corbis/Getty Images; Marc Piasecki/WireImage/Getty Images
In terms of donations to their actual campaigns, which are capped at $2,100, Mamdani has received fewer private funds than Cuomo—$4 million to Cuomo’s $5.9 million. But he’s made up for it thanks to city matching funds that favor candidates who receive smaller donations from more people. Mamdani’s campaign for mayor has attracted over 40,000 donors with an average donation of $98, the lowest of any campaign. Cuomo’s has brought in about 10,000 donors with an average contribution of $593, the second-highest.
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