Mamdani Outpaces Rivals in Out-of-State Donors

The Queens assemblymember has pulled in more out-of-state donations than Cuomo and Lander combined signaling a national appetite for his brand of progressive politics Zohran Mamdani at a campaign rally at Terminal on June Facebook ZohranKMamdani Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani s appeal seems to be spreading beyond the boundaries of the five boroughs as the democratic socialist from Queens leads in the number of non-resident donations to his campaign When it comes to out-of-state contributions the progressive assemblymember and mayoral hopeful has soared past his competition by a ratio of four-to-one according to a City Limits analysis of publicly available campaign finance statistics Of the top three Democrats leading the polls in the primary race for mayor Mamdani received out-of-state contributions Ex-Gov Andrew Cuomo follows with such donations and sitting Comptroller Brad Lander isn t far behind at as of June the last day for which figures are available function use strict window addEventListener message function a if void a content datawrapper-height var e document querySelectorAll iframe for var t in a content datawrapper-height for var r i r e i i if r contentWindow a source var d a information datawrapper-height t px r style height d Cuomo still leads in general fundraising having brought in about million in campaign contributions Lander has received almost million and Mamdani trails him at million Mamdani has attracted substantial attention since announcing his run for office last October His proposals for bold policies aimed at affordability freezing the rent city-owned grocery stores free buses and adept use of social media have helped him stand out in a crowded primary Once thought to be a long shot candidate several current polls have shown Mamdani closing the gap between himself and the expected frontrunner Cuomo His high number of out-of-state donors is indicative of a community enthusiasm that more conventional politicians like Cuomo and Lander struggle to muster reported Sandeep Kaushik a political consultant and moderate Democrat in Seattle Even though they wouldn t be constituents these donors see Mamdani as a standard bearer for a larger more national movement Kaushik pointed to the candidate s social media savvy as well as newest endorsements by other progressive lawmakers like Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Vermont Sen Bernie Sanders as promising drivers of non-local donations You just start creating all this national buzz and that buzz translates into dollars Kaushik reported Mamdani is young and charismatic and a person of color who is speaking in broad thematic terms about very easy-to-understand issues that may not literally be particularly viable or practical or attainable but speak to the aspirations of left-progressive voters City Limits reached out to several out-of-state donors who mentioned they felt Mamdani offered a genuinely new kind of politics RELATED READING The Mayoral Primary Candidates Plans on Homelessness Environment and For Immigration Communities Katherine Cochrane works as a wine purveyor in Washington state and donated to Mamdani s campaign She remembered being impressed by the assemblymember s hunger strike in aid of striking taxi cab drivers during her time living in New York Instead of just doing politics he was literally just doing the job she declared Cochrane who left New York City for Washington due to the city s rising cost of living thinks Mamdani is the only candidate who could make New York affordable enough for her to return I haven t felt like there has been someone to turn things around in a while Cochrane declared Christopher Welbourne is a custodian in Alaska who donated to Mamdani s campaign Unlike Cochrane Welbourne has no relationship with New York He revealed he contributed because he feels this mayoral race affects national politics more than any other local voting process in the country C ontributing to a mayoral run there has larger prospective impacts to me as a U S citizen than if I were to try offering patronage to a mayoral candidate in a smaller city Welbourne reported in an email Dr Babur Lateef is an ophthalmologist in Virginia who donated to Mamdani s campaign Lateef doesn t believe Mamdani will accomplish even half of his campaign promises But he thinks that s still better than the status quo Will he get free transit No Will he have free buses No freaking way It s not gonna happen Nobody gets it mentioned Lateef But can you have particular sort of stabilization on rent That all makes sense function d u ac var s d createElement 'script' s type 'text javascript' s src 'https a omappapi com app js api min js' s async true s dataset user u s dataset campaign ac d getElementsByTagName 'head' appendChild s document 'u kmqsczew vunxutxmd' While Mamdani may be winning in out-of-state donations that s no guarantee of wider conquest When Andrew Yang ran for mayor in he received about out-of-state donations to his campaign around more than Mamdani and more than any other candidate in the race that year Yang still lost that electoral process And though Mamdani leads in the number of out-of-state donors Cuomo leads him in the total dollar amount of funds raised The former governor has collected nearly from non-New Yorkers as of June This is nearly three times the amount as Mamdani And the average amount given by out-of-staters to Cuomo is more than times larger than what s given to Mamdani about on average compared to around But for specific of his supporters Mamdani doesn t need to win the referendum to find success What s essential to them is that they ve been offered an alternative to mainstream politics Oliver Turiano is a musician in New Jersey He donated to Mamdani s campaign He hopes that whether Mamdani wins or not his effort will show the Democratic Party how to run a campaign that inspires people A win for Zohran or even a close race which I think it will be is a blueprint for the Democratic Party Look run economic populist run young explained Turiano To reach the editor contact Jeanmarie citylimits org The post Mamdani Outpaces Rivals in Out-of-State Donors appeared first on City Limits