Pro-Israel billionaire Bill Ackman donates $1 million to stop New York mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani

Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman has donated $1 million to a political action committee formed to oppose progressive New York Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, according to US media reports.

The contribution, one of the largest yet in the race, intensifies the battle between the Wall Street elite and a growing left-wing movement challenging the city’s political establishment.

Politico reported on Wednesday that Ackman’s money went to Defend NYC, a super PAC founded by former Trump adviser Jason Meister to prevent Mamdani’s rise.

The group has been running ads and outreach campaigns warning that Mamdani’s economic proposals - including higher taxes on the wealthy and rent freezes - would "cripple" the city’s recovery.

Ackman, the founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, has long been an outspoken voice for free-market capitalism.

He has also positioned himself as one of Wall Street’s most vocal defenders of Israel, donating to pro-Israel organisations and using his social-media platforms to denounce what he calls "anti-Israel extremism" in universities and political movements.

Since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023, Ackman has led a campaign against pro-Palestinian activism on American campuses.

He has repeatedly accused elite universities, including his alma mater Harvard, of tolerating antisemitism, and has used his influence as a major donor to pressure administrations to discipline student groups and staff critical of Israel. 

In December 2023, he demanded the resignation of Harvard’s president over the university’s handling of Gaza protests and later called for a purge of diversity, equity and inclusion programmes that he linked to "anti-Israel bias".

Critics accused the billionaire of using his considerable wealth and power to crack down on free speech and opposition to Israel's crimes against the Palestinians. 

Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist assemblyman representing Queens who could become New York's first Muslim mayor, has been a sharp critic of Israel’s war on Gaza and of US complicity in it, calling it a genocide against the Palestinian people.

He has also urged New York’s leaders to end city partnerships with firms profiting from Israeli military operations and has joined rallies calling for an immediate ceasefire.

The Democrat hopeful has also said he would enact the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant on Benjamin Netanyahu for crimes against humanity and war crimes if the Israeli prime minister visits New York.

The contrast between the two men could hardly be starker.

Ackman, who is worth an estimated $4 billion, became a leading financial backer of centrist and business-friendly Democrats after falling out with the party’s progressive wing. He has previously praised former governor and mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo and expressed frustration with what he sees as the "populist, anti-capitalist drift" of New York’s left.

Mamdani, meanwhile, has built his profile through grassroots housing and labour activism, drawing support from tenant unions, community organisers, and anti-war groups.

"Bill Ackman cannot stand the idea of New Yorkers being the ones to choose their next mayor, so he’s doing the only thing he knows how: throwing money at this race. Zohran defeated the billionaires once, and he’ll do it again because we can’t be bought and New York City is not for sale," Dora Pekec, spokesperson for Mamdani’s campaign, told Politico.

Ackman’s allies insist his spending reflects concern for New York’s fiscal health rather than personal ideology. In a recent interview, Meister, who chairs the super PAC, said donors like Ackman were motivated by "a desire to protect jobs, law and order, and growth" from "radical experiments in socialism".

The Guardian previously reported that real-estate interests and major investors have channelled millions into efforts to undermine candidates like Mamdani, whose platforms threaten their profits.

Mamdani’s campaign has used the episode to rally support, portraying it as evidence of elite panic over a movement rooted in working-class solidarity and moral outrage at both local inequality and foreign wars.