Zohran Mamdani speaks at a rally in Queens on Saturday, November 1, during the final stretch of the campaign. (Photo: Meghnad Bose)
Former Governor of New York and mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo’s billionaire donors have launched an expensive eleventh-hour effort to disparage his electoral opponent, Zohran Mamdani, splurging on attack ads against the Democratic nominee. The late surge drove independent campaign expenses in this election over the $50 million mark on Thursday, with more than $12 million spent in the second half of October alone.
Independent expenses are those made by groups such as super PACs, and the groups are not supposed to coordinate with a candidate’s campaign. However, over the course of this NYC mayoral election, Cuomo’s campaign was hit with two separate penalties totalling $1.3 million for suspected coordination with Fix The City, a super PAC backing him.
Since early voting began on October 25, two billionaire-backed, anti-Mamdani super PACs—Fix The City and Defend NYC—have shelled out over $2.6 million in campaign ads, out of which nearly $2 million has been spent on attacking the Democratic nominee.
An analysis by Drop Site News shows that as of Thursday, independent expenses backing Cuomo were more than seven times the amount of money put behind Mamdani. Cuomo has exceeded Mamdani by a staggering $36 million in outside support. The difference highlights just how much independent expenses can skew the overall financial support behind a candidate.
Subtracting independent expenses, the Mamdani and Cuomo campaigns are on a more even financial footing, partly due to matching funds from the city. Mamdani’s campaign has had $17 million at its disposal, of which $13 million came from public funds, while Cuomo’s campaign has had $14 million available, of which $8 million was from public funds.
Yet, once the independent expenses are added, the total amount backing Cuomo or targeting Mamdani totals $56 million—close to two and a half times of the amount backing Mamdani or attacking Cuomo.
The largest super PAC supporting Cuomo, Fix The City, has alone spent $28 million, or 55% of all independent expenses in the election. The super PAC has already raised an additional $7.2 million, which is likely to be infused in the days leading up to polls closing on November 4.
The $51 million in independent expenses in this NYC mayoral race, with still a few days left for polls to close, is already 160% of the total independent spending amount in the 2021 election. In 2017, independent spending was less than $250k, and in 2013, the amount was just over $8 million.
Graphs depicting campaign spending versus independent expenditures between Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo in the New York City mayoral race (Graphs made by authors)
Graph depicting differences in total spending between Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo (left) and graph depicting amount Fix The City has spent on Andrew Cuomo’s campaign compared to total independent expenses (right) (Graphs made by authors)
Billionaires who support Cuomo and the messages they buy
Super PACs targeting Mamdani have been boosted in recent days by big-buck donations from several billionaires.
Michael Bloomberg, former NYC Mayor and billionaire, contributed $1.5 million to Fix The City on Wednesday, four days into early voting. This latest contribution took the total amount he has given to Fix The City, the biggest anti-Mamdani super PAC, to $9.8 million. In 2023-2024, Bloomberg was the single biggest individual contributor to Democrats, backing them with more than $60 million, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission data by OpenSecrets.
On Tuesday, a week from Election Day, Ronald Lauder, former chairman of The Estée Lauder Companies, and his wife Jo Carole Lauder, contributed $500,000 to Fix The City**,** taking their total contributions towards the super PAC to $1.5 million. Ronald is also a Trump donor, and in March this year, he gave $5 million to a pro-Trump PAC named MAGA Inc. Ronald is also the longtime president of the World Jewish Congress. On its website, WJC states, “Since the October 7th terrorist attacks against Israel, we have intensified our efforts to defend the Jewish state in the hallways of the United Nations in New York to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, and around the globe, WJC advocates for Israel.” The WJC website calls Israel “a beacon of democracy and innovation in a volatile region” and says the country contributes to global progress in fields such as humanitarian aid.William P. Lauder, Ronald’s nephew and chair of the board of directors of The Estée Lauder Companies, has contributed $1 million to Fix The City. And William’s brother Gary, managing director of Lauder Partners, also contributed $25,000 to Fix The City.The four members of the Lauder family have spent over $2.5 million to target Mamdani and back Cuomo in the mayoral race.Joe Gebbia, cofounder of Airbnb, who was appointed by the Trump administration to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and as a chief design officer at the National Design Studio earlier this year, donated $1 million each to both Fix The City and Defend NYC on October 15.
Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge fund manager of Pershing Square Capital and a prominent supporter of Donald Trump, contributed $1 million to the anti-Mamdani super PAC Defend NYC on October 14, and $250,000 to Fix The City on October 15 taking his total spending to $1.75 million.
In the lead-up to the mayoral primary in June, Mamdani had accused Fix The City of artificially lengthening and darkening his beard in a mailer attacking him. Mamdani, a Muslim candidate, had called the act “blatant Islamophobia.” Fix The City had spent nearly $9,000 on that mailer.
The latest infusion of big money in the general election has largely been spent on ads vilifying Mamdani on the airwaves and across social media. Some of these last-gasp efforts have taken an unconventional approach. After two days of early voting, a text message sent by Defend NYC, backed by billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, called Cuomo “flawed” but urged New Yorkers to vote for him “to stop communism from coming to NYC.” The following day, the same super PAC sent out a text which began with a tweet that said “Cuomo murdered my husband and I am voting for him. That’s how bad things are in New York”—one of two messages on which a combined million dollars was spent by Defend NYC. The message went on to say, “We know what she means… And if she can do it, you can do it too. If you do, we will defeat Mamdani together.”
A text message blast sent by Defend NYC on October 28, 2025.
On Monday, Defend NYC spent $250,000 on a text message blast that said “🚨President Trump weighed in! 🚨He said what we already know: This race is between Andrew Cuomo or Zohran Mamdani and Cuomo is the ONLY choice for mayor. Cuomo is flawed but we have to do our civic duty and vote for him to stop communism from coming to NYC.”
A day later, Fix The City spent $1.15 million on a television ad that called Mamdani’s ideas “radically dangerous”.
The spending patterns of outside groups backing Cuomo and Mamdani show two drastically different approaches: while groups backing Mamdani have spent an overwhelming proportion of their resources on positive messaging about his agenda, those backing Cuomo have spent close to half of their resources in attacking Mamdani.
Groups favorable to Mamdani spent 83% of their money on efforts listed as supporting him, and only 17% on expenses classified as opposing Cuomo, according to a Drop Site analysis of data shared by the New York City Campaign Finance Board. In stark contrast, independent spending favorable to Cuomo focused considerably on attacking Mamdani, with 42% of the funds, or around $18 million, spent on targeting the Democratic nominee. Only $1.8 million, or 3.5% of the independent expenditures, were categorized as either supporting or opposing Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee.
The latest polls show Mamdani ahead of Cuomo, with the Democratic nominee holding a double-digit lead. With less than a hundred hours to go before polls close on Tuesday, the flow of the big bucks into the election is unlikely to stop.
In the final stretch of this race, it’s money versus Mamdani.
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