1 week ago
15
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
Real estate titans and financiers are forming super PACs to try to defeat Zohran Mamdani. Some organizers say that they won’t succeed unless Mayor Eric Adams or former Gov. Andrew Cuomo drops out.
July 30, 2025Updated 9:08 a.m. ET
In the blood sport of New York City real estate, where comity can be hard to come by, the developers of some of the city’s most prized parcels appeared to be in agreement about one thing when they met in private this week.
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for mayor, had to be taken down.
“Our goal is anybody but Mamdani,” Marty Burger, the chief executive of Infinite Global Real Estate Partners, wrote in one of two emails sent ahead of the meeting that were obtained by The New York Times.
To help, Mr. Burger proposed that his peers start by putting in $25,000 each to a new super PAC, New Yorkers for a Better Future, or to seed other groups. He cited potential ad campaigns attacking Mr. Mamdani; spending plans to boost specific rivals; and other efforts to register and turn out thousands of voters who typically sit out Election Day.
A month after Mr. Mamdani’s primary victory stunned New York’s business elite, its leaders have begun cranking open a powerful gusher of outside spending to try to stop the man whose socialist policies they fear could sour the city’s business climate. But with fewer than 100 days to go, they are still very much searching for a unified plan that could work.
On Monday, the men whose companies run the Seagram Building and Hudson Yards joined the call for one anti-Mamdani super PAC, while leaders of a different super PAC invited donors to a $1,000-per-person fund-raiser scheduled for Thursday.
“Fighting Mamdani is expensive,” the organizer, Betsy McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor, wrote on the invitation. “But allowing him to win will cost you more.”
