Balthazar owner Keith McNally among NYC millionaires backing socialist Zohran Mamdani for mayor
McNally — who owns more than a dozen eateries in Manhattan including Minetta Tavern, Pastis and Morandi — called the democratic socialist 'fantastic' on Instagram, adding: 'More so, when my affluent, paranoid friends tell me Mamdani's dangerous.'
6 Zohran Mamdani is the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor.
Paul Martinka for NY Post
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The restaurateur joins left-leaning financiers, corporate lawyers and other business leaders who are aligning behind Mamdani — despite his platform to tax wealthy to pay for his expansive social programs, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Mamdani became the front-runner to lead the nation's center of capitalism by shocking former Gov. Andrew Cuomo to win the Democratic primary for mayor last month.
His policy proposals include free public buses, a freeze on regulated rents, universal childcare starting at six weeks old and a pilot program for city-run grocery stores.
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6 Restaurateur Keith McNally, best known for owning and operating several iconic eateries including Balthazar, has praised Mamdani.
Instagram/@keithmcnallynyc
Yet a growing faction of millionaires sees Mamdani as a necessary force to address the city's deepening income inequality — and are willing to pay their 'fair share' to elect him over current Mayor Eric Adams, who will run as an independent.
James Hueston, a 27-year-old venture capitalist, is part of a group of younger, upwardly mobile professionals, many in finance, who are backing Mamdani's campaign.
'In my eyes, I should absolutely be paying my fair share for the people that need it,' Hueston told the Journal, adding that his views don't represent those of his employer.
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6 Kathryn Wylde, president and chief executive officer of Partnership for New York, said she recently met with Mamdani.
Bloomberg via Getty Images
'I don't think that he's increasing taxation for the sake of it. I think that he's doing it to fund very explicitly good policies.'
Voting data show that about a third of the city's wealthiest residents supported Mamdani in the primary. Many donors — particularly from Wall Street and large law firms — have remained anonymous, citing concerns about being ostracized by colleagues or clients.
One executive at a major bank told the Journal she feared for her safety and that of her family if her support became public.
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Campaign finance records confirm that Mamdani received contributions from a trader at Jane Street Capital, a managing director at Deutsche Bank and several employees at Goldman Sachs.
6 Ahmed Haque, CEO of Didactic Labs, said that he is supporting Mamdani.
Linkedin/Ahmed F. Haque
While critics like billionaires Bill Ackman and Dan Loeb have denounced Mamdani's agenda and thrown their financial might behind Adams, others have offered words of encouragement.
Bradley Tusk, a venture capitalist who ran Michael Bloomberg's third campaign for mayor, wrote on LinkedIn that New Yorkers should 'do what we can to help him succeed.'
These unusual alliances may stem from a belief that Mamdani's proposals are either politically constrained or morally necessary. Some backers assume that Albany's control over taxation will prevent the most aggressive parts of his agenda from being enacted.
Others argue that his focus on small businesses, transit equity and public health infrastructure could improve quality of life across the city.
'His qualifying comments have identified the capitalist system as promoting income inequality. A lot of people in business agree with him on that,' said Kathy Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, a major business group.
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Wylde met with Mamdani in September and recalled him saying, 'I'm not in favor of government taking over your business.'
6 Mark Gorton, CEO of Tower Research, told the Journal he supports Mamdani's plan for free buses.
Sportsfile via Getty Images
Wylde, who did not offer an endorsement, added that Mamdani 'has already acknowledged that the housing crisis is only going to be addressed if there's an increase in private supply. So he's not just talking about social or socialized housing solutions.'
Mamdani has also faced intense criticism from Jewish leaders and pro-Israel groups for defending the slogan 'globalize the intifada,' supporting BDS and sponsoring the 'Not on Our Dime!' Act, which aimed to block New York charities from aiding the Israeli military or settlements.
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After the October 2023 Hamas attack, Mamdani condemned Israeli actions but did not explicitly criticize Hamas, further fueling accusations of bias.
Some supporters said Mamdani's immigrant background and Muslim identity also influenced their decision to back him, particularly in contrast to Cuomo, who left office in disgrace over allegations of sexual harassment.
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President Trump's threat to deport Mamdani, a naturalized citizen born in Uganda, has further energized parts of the city's diverse business class.
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Even Mamdani's ads have struck a chord with entrepreneurial voters. In one campaign spot, he promises to cut red tape for street vendors. In another, filmed in a neighborhood bodega, he pledges to simplify permitting processes for small businesses.
'For immigrants coming to this country, these small businesses represent the single path for upward mobility that they have,' Ahmed Haque, CEO of Didactic Labs, told the Journal.
'Overall, they are far more open to Mamdani's message because the high costs of New York City are forcing them out of the city.'
6 James Hueston, a 27-year-old venture capitalist, said he would gladly pay more in taxes.
Linkedin/James Hueston
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Mamdani's coalition includes both immigrant entrepreneurs and prominent investors.
Mark Gorton, CEO of Tower Research, told the Journal he supports Mamdani's plan for free buses and brushed off warnings that wealthy residents would leave the city if taxes rise.
'New York is a pretty special place,' he said. 'It's very hard to go somewhere else. And are you going to do it for an extra 2%?'
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Los Angeles Times
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- Los Angeles Times
California Democrats may target GOP congressional districts to counter Texas
California Democrats led by Gov. Gavin Newsom may upend the state's mandate for independently drawn political districts as part of a brewing, national political brawl over the balance of power in Congress and the fate of the aggressive, right-wing agenda of President Trump and the GOP. The effort being considered by state Democratic leaders is specifically intended to reduce the number of Republicans in California's congressional delegation, retaliation for the ongoing actions by GOP leaders in Texas to unseat Democratic representatives in its state, reportedly at Trump's behest. 'I think this whole thing is a horrible idea all the way around … and I don't think people fully understand the ramifications of what they're talking about,' said Republican redistricting expert Matt Rexroad. 'Once we get to the point where we're just doing random redistricting after every election … redistricting won't be used as a tool to reflect voter interests. It will be used to just bludgeon minority political interests, whether it be Republican or Democrat, after every election.' Newsom already has been in talks with Democratic legislative leaders and others about reconfiguring California's congressional district boundaries before the 2026 election. Doing so probably would require a statewide ballot measure to scrap or temporarily pause the voter-approved, independent California Citizens Redistricting Commission charged with drawing the boundaries of congressional districts based on logical geography, shared interests, representation for minority communities and other facets. In 2010, Californians voted to create the commission to take partisan politics out of the redistricting process for Congress, two years after they did so for the state Legislature. Newsom said California may have to take the emergency action if Texas and other GOP-controlled states this year decide to redraw their congressional districts to ensure that Republicans keep control of Congress in the upcoming election. Redrawing of congressional districts typically occurs after the decennial census to reflect population shifts across the nation. 'So they want to change the game,' he said last week. 'We can act holier-than-thou. We can sit on the sidelines, talk about the way the world should be, or we can recognize the existential nature that is this moment.' Redistricting experts in both parties agree that reverting to partisan redrawing of congressional lines in California would make several GOP incumbents vulnerable. The state's congressional districts could be reconfigured to increase the share of Democratic voters in districts currently represented by Republicans, or in a way that forces Republican officeholders to face off against one another. Rexroad sees a scenario in which Republicans are so packed into districts that the party would have only three safe seats. Only nine of the state's 52 congressional districts are currently represented by the GOP. Democratic redistricting expert Paul Mitchell said five of nine GOP-held districts could be flipped. He said Democrats are in a good position to gain seats because of California's history of nonpartisan redistricting. In Texas, by comparison, districts already are gerrymandered to favor Republicans. In California, 'Democrats haven't had partisan line-drawing since the '90s,' he said. 'So there's all this partisan gain left on the table for decades. If you ever do crack open the map, there's just many available to bolster' the party's existing grip on the delegation. Rexroad warns that there would be unintended consequences, including weakening safe Republican districts in Texas and leading to a broken system in which lines are redrawn after every election to benefit whichever party controls the White House or various legislative bodies. Before the creation of the independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, California was similar to most other states. Political districts were created by state lawmakers of both parties who often prioritized incumbent protection and gerrymandered oddly shaped districts, such as the infamous 'ribbon of shame,' where a 200-mile coastal sliver of a congressional district between Oxnard and the Monterey County line disappeared during high tide. Former U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder said such districts are why he started the National Democratic Redistricting Committee with former President Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) in 2017. 'Because of our work, we now have the fairest national congressional map the country has seen in a generation, one that allows both parties to compete for the majority in the House,' Holder said Wednesday at a 'Stop the Texas Takeover' virtual event hosted by the redistricting committee. That could fall by the wayside, however, if some states crack open their redistricting process for partisan gain and states controlled by the opposing party retaliate by doing to the same. California Democrats are considering trying to revisit the independent line-drawing after President Trump and his administration urged Texans to redraw their districts in a way that probably would improve the GOP's ability to hold control of Congress in next year's midterm election. The House is narrowly divided, and the party that wins the White House often loses seats in the body two years later. The loss of a handful of GOP seats would stymie Trump's plans, potentially making him a lame duck for two years. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called for a special session of the state Legislature that includes redistricting and began Monday. On Tuesday, Abbott said the decision was prompted by a court decision last year that said the state no longer has to draw 'coalition districts,' which are made up of multiple minority communities. 'New maps will work toward insuring that we will maximize the ability of Texas to be able to vote for the candidate of their choice,' he said in an interview with Fox 4 Dallas-Fort Worth. 'This is shameless, shameless, the mid-decade redistricting that they're doing at the orders of Donald Trump,' Pelosi said Wednesday at the 'Stop the Texas Takeover' event. 'And this is what we're doing in California. We're saying to the Texans, 'You shouldn't be going down this path. We go down this path, we'll go down together.'' 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Asked about Texas, she demurred, saying she was focused on California. State Democrats, who also opposed the creation of the commission, cheered the potential response to Texas. 'Trump and Republicans — from D.C. to Texas — are attempting to rewrite the rules of our democracy,' said Rusty Hicks, chairman of the California Democratic Party. 'With so much at stake, California may be left with little choice but to fight fire with fire to protect and preserve our democracy.' Times staff writer Taryn Luna in Sacramento contributed to this report.
Chicago Tribune
a few seconds ago
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Editorial: With a month to go before CPS must approve a budget, leaders' lack of seriousness is on display
When can a budget crisis not fairly be called a crisis? Perhaps when the crisis is something that's been obviously coming for months, if not years, and demanded action long ago. Members of the Chicago Board of Education appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson, as well as the interim Chicago Public Schools CEO hired out of Johnson's administration, are calling for Gov. JB Pritzker to order a special session of the legislature to bail out a district facing what it says is a $734 million budget hole for the coming school year. The requests for the special session came this week, a little over a month before the Aug. 28 deadline for the school board to finalize its budget. Needless to say, there won't be a special session. Pritzker and the Democratic leaders of both the House and Senate have made it clear repeatedly that the state itself is tapped out and can't furnish hundreds of millions to bail out CPS. That school board President Sean Harden, who serves as the mayor's chief CPS mouthpiece, would seek a special session at this late stage is revealing of how unserious Johnson and his allies are about properly managing a system that by any measure is tremendously bloated. The time for legislative sessions, special or otherwise, was months and months ago. The mayor, in fact, didn't include a CPS bailout among his requests for help from Springfield in the past spring session — precisely because he knew it would go nowhere and might jeopardize his other asks. So, as Johnson has demanded in vain for over a year, Harden and other mayoral allies on the board once again are talking about taking on hundreds of millions more in high-priced debt just to get through the next school year without having to make meaningful budget cuts. And, unlike in the spring, when a minority of school board members took advantage of a supermajority requirement for budget amendments and rejected Harden's request for authority to go deeper into debt, this time around Harden needs only a simple majority to add more liabilities to the balance sheet of the nation's largest municipal junk-bond issuer. Meeting that threshold likely won't be a problem. Eleven of 21 board members are Johnson appointees. Of the 10 elected in November, seven consistently have resisted Johnson and Harden's reckless financial maneuvers to date. But that's not enough opposition to stop CPS from lurching substantially further toward insolvency if Harden and interim school Superintendent Macquline King choose that route. For CPS, there's a short-term issue and there's a long-term issue. Both should concern every Chicagoan. Over the longer haul, the district will have to consolidate a large number of schools and rationalize its workforce. 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The CTU/Johnson strategy from the beginning has been to do next to nothing about a foreseeably dire budget situation — in fact, make it significantly worse — and wait until the crisis got so acute that the state or some other benefactor would swoop in to the rescue. That's fiscal and managerial malfeasance. Why should it be rewarded? Oh, yes. The children. Perhaps the most pernicious facet of this game-of-chicken strategizing is that hundreds of thousands of Chicago students rely on CPS, and the city's future depends in no small part on giving those kids a good education. By now, a majority of Chicagoans have caught on to CTU's true purpose, which is to bolster its membership ranks no matter how low CPS' student population drops. That doesn't stop union leaders, of course, from attempting to paint those who reject the never-ending requests for hundreds of millions or even billions in tax increases as cold-hearted opponents of educating Chicago's kids. But the rhetoric increasingly doesn't land, especially given how CTU's very own former organizer sits on the fifth floor. We feel terrible for the families who will bear the brunt of the likely cutbacks to come. But this challenging upcoming school year unfortunately is the price we will have to pay for epic mismanagement. Once they see no knight in shining armor coming to the rescue, these unserious people tasked with running our schools finally must take some accountability and begin the process of making difficult decisions about the future of CPS within the means available to support it.
Chicago Tribune
a few seconds ago
- Chicago Tribune
Heidi Stevens: As our land literally burns, we don't owe the president quiet subservience
On July 23 — three weeks into a month that saw close to 100 million Americans living under heat alerts, 17 million people living under flash flood warnings and Oregon's massive Cram Fire barreling toward its 100,000th acre burned — the United Nations' highest court declared climate change an 'urgent and existential threat.' 'The human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is essential for the enjoyment of other human rights,' World Court Judge Yuji Iwasawa said in the court's advisory opinion. The court ruled that countries must, under international law, address climate change by working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Trump administration just drafted a plan to do the opposite. Under a new proposal sent to the White House, the Environmental Protection Agency would rescind 2009's 'endangerment finding,' which scientifically validates that greenhouse gases threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations. That finding is what allows — and compels — the federal government to limit the toxins that pollute our air and contribute to climate change. Rescinding that finding is what allows — and compels — the federal government to look the other way while the world, quite literally, burns. The EPA proposal would also, according to the New York Times, rescind limits on tailpipe emissions, freeing up the transportation sector — the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. — to spew more of the toxins that have been linked to smog, respiratory problems, cardiovascular issues and climate change. Make pollution great again. Every week, there's a new example of the upside-down logic at work in the White House: platitudes that say one thing, policies that portend another. Oregon's Cram Fire is one of 40,934 wildfires that have burned in the United States in 2025. At least 135 people were killed in Texas flash floods over the July 4 weekend, including at least 27 counselors and young girls at Camp Mystic Christian summer camp. Weather disasters have cost the United States billions of dollars so far this year. An urgent and existential threat, indeed. But the very people we elected to serve us — and save us — are working to drown out the science and the solutions that would slow the climate's deadly march. President Donald Trump would rather protect us from Rosie O'Donnell, who he called a 'threat to humanity.' He wants to strip the actress of her U.S. citizenship, claiming she is 'not in the best interests of our Great Country' because of her longtime criticism of Trump. Is this a tactic to distract us from the Epstein files? From the lawsuits against the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency? From any number of issues that don't place this administration in a flattering light? Sure. Possibly. Still, it's worth noting that threatening O'Donnell — or Bruce Springsteen, or Beyoncé or Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City — because they've criticized the president and his policies is a dangerous and wildly ill-informed approach. Criticizing the president of the United States is very much in the best interests of our great country. It's actually in the vital interests of our great country. A country that doesn't allow citizens to criticize their leaders is not a democracy. It's not where liberty or justice flourish. Criticizing the president — whatever party he belongs to — is one of the most American things you can do. The Founding Fathers believed that so strongly they codified it in the First Amendment. There are reams of court cases upholding a citizen's right to criticize the U.S. government. But you shouldn't need to check a single one to know this is all wrong. Check your gut. In a haunting guest essay in the New York Times, former U.S. ambassador to Hungary David Pressman writes about watching the rise of a strongman in Hungary and seeing the parallels all around him here. 'After years watching Hungary suffocate under the weight of its democratic collapse,' Pressman writes, 'I came to understand that the real danger of a strongman isn't his tactics; it's how others, especially those with power, justify their acquiescence.' That acquiescence doesn't happen overnight. Or by accident. So it's worth noting — and resisting — when dissent is threatened with punishment, including outright banishment. So much of what makes this nation great is at risk of disappearing: our ingenuity, our moral authority, our willingness to work toward a better, healthier, more equitable version of ourselves — a version that comes closer to the ideals set out by, if not always lived out by, our Founding Fathers. So much of what needs our urgent attention, meanwhile, is going unaddressed. The president serves the people. The people don't serve the president. And the people certainly don't owe the president quiet subservience. Not when so much of what we hold dear, so much of what's precious and vulnerable, so much of what we live for and love, is at stake.
