Inside the Well-Funded, Likely Doomed Plan to Stop Mamdani
Someone
has to fold.
By David Freedlander, a features writer
covering New York and national politics
July
12, 2025
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Photo-Illustration:
Joe Darrow; Photos: Getty Images
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.”
