Mamdani has backers on Wall Street. It's their bosses who are boosting Cuomo for NYC's next mayor.
New York’s Wall Street elites are signing massive checks to support Andrew Cuomo’s mayoral race, while some of the rank-and-file are donating to Zohran Mamdani in hopes that someday their much smaller paychecks can land them an apartment without roommates.
Business Insider’s analysis of donation data and conversations with donors on Wall Street shed light on this divide ahead of Thursday night’s first general election debate.
Almost 80% of higher-earning, front-office workers, like investment bankers or hedge fund managers, donated to Cuomo and affiliated groups. The Mamdani camp won out among nearly every other job function, receiving direct donations from almost 90% of back-office donors like those in operations, human resources, tech, and research.
Take Jane Street, a highly secretive trading group. Sixteen of its employees donated to both candidates for a total just over $10,000. Only one — a trader — boosted Cuomo, writing a $5,000 check. The other fifteen, mostly software engineers, gave an average of just over $350 each to Mamdani.
When America thinks of Wall Street, it pictures investment bankers decked out in collared shirts and Patagonia vests. Many workers in the financial industry aren’t cutting big deals — they’re making under $200K. They donated $25 here and $110 there because they appreciate Mamdani’s focus on cost of living. Even for those making six figures in finance, rents are high.
It was a ‘hot commie summer’ in the back offices of Wall Street
Wall Streeters showed up for Mamdani in slightly greater numbers, but with smaller checks.
Across more than 400 financial companies, 397 workers donated directly to Cuomo’s campaign versus 401 to Mamdani’s. Cuomo’s donors had deeper pockets, giving 88% of the total dollars donated, with an average donation per employee of $1,006, compared to Mamdani’s $131.
When factoring in PAC spending, the pro-Cuomo and anti-Mamdani dollar disparity is even larger: 95% of the more than $9 million the industry donated went to support Cuomo, who has his own affordability plan but has also stressed crime and subway safety during his campaign.
Mamdani got less than 5% the donations that came from managers and investment professionals, compared to two thirds of donations given by all other roles. Tech workers in finance were particularly supportive of Mamdani compared to other departments, giving him 88% of their donations.
The wealth gap between front and back office is relative. A hypothetical administrative assistant earning roughly $83,000 a year may be debating whether he can afford a big enough home for two kids, but he’s not struggling to feed his family. But compared to an early-career investment banker earning nearly $300,000 and on a trajectory toward $1.25 million when they become a managing director, there is a large financial gulf. The assistant’s salary would go far in other cities, but in New York, back-office support workers told Business Insider tha their relative positions mean they relate more to Mamdani’s middle-class base than to their bosses.
They told us that’s not about political parties — he is the Democratic nominee, and Cuomo, a Democrat, is running as an independent — it’s all about cost of living.
“The emphasis on affordability was especially appealing to me,” said one donor, a lifelong New Yorker who once worked in a non-investment role on Wall Street and canvassed for Mamdani.
“Even as someone working in finance, rent is crazy,” said this donor, adding that she’s seen coworkers and neighbors increasingly priced out and pushed to the suburbs.
Mamdani has run on promises to freeze prices of rent-stabilized apartments, make city buses free, and provide free childcare for all New Yorkers. He proposes paying for this by increasing taxes on residents who make more than $1 million a year and raising the corporate tax rate statewide by 4.25% — which would require state approval. Wall Street bosses have warned that electing him would drive companies to leave the world’s financial capital.
“I’m supporting Zohran because I want a mayor who prioritizes the needs of the working and middle class,” a creative worker at a Wall Street firm said. “Those have always been my priorities as well. Working on Wall Street doesn’t change that at all.”
We looked at firms that invest, manage, or transfer financial assets and those that create the infrastructure needed to make this possible. This includes hedge funds, like Citadel, whose CEO Ken Griffin wrote a $50,000 check to an anti-Mamdani PAC, or Third Point, whose CEO Dan Loeb donated more than $350,000 to Cuomo and related PACs. Loeb tweeted after Mamdani’s primary win that it’s “officially hot commie summer.”
Billionaire hedge fund investor Bill Ackman on Wednesday gave $1 million to an anti-Mamdani PAC, following $500,000 in donations earlier this year to pro-Cuomo PACs. Ackman wrote on X in September that Mamdani has “no experience, none, in managing a business, let alone the most consequential and largest city in our country.” Cuomo, “is an experienced leader that cares deeply about our city who has the relevant experience and skills necessary to lead and greatly improve NYC,” he added.
We also looked at investment banks, including JPMorgan Chase, whose chief Jamie Dimon said that Mamdani was a “Marxist” at an event earlier this summer, before saying on Tuesday he would help Mamdani if he were elected, and payments firms like the large credit card companies. It also includes real estate investors, like Stephen Ross, chairman of Hudson Yards developer Related Companies, who gave $50,000 to a pro-Cuomo PAC. Real estate brokers and services firms were excluded from the analysis.
Looking at firms’ donations themselves rather than their employees, 23 financial companies contributed more than $2 million to pro-Cuomo and anti-Mamdani PACs, and none to Mamdani.
“Older guys that have houses in Greenwich are still going to want to keep their houses in Greenwich, so they’re not willing to go put their balls on the line. But younger people do; they have 40 more years of living, and are you going to live it in a Trump-dominated world?”
There were some outliers among Wall Street’s high rollers. For example, two wealth advisors at Merrill Lynch, the private wealth arm of Bank of America, donated a total of $7,000 to pro-Mamdani PACs, and two of the three brothers who founded budgeting app Rocket Money gave a total of $189,000 to a pro-Mamdani PAC.
The divide on Wall Street
The donors we spoke to said they don’t talk politics at work very much and are left to pick up on hints of their coworkers’ affiliations.
Those who support Mamdani said they assume they’re in the minority. They’re far from alone in the city, though: A Quinnipiac University poll conducted from October 3 to 7 of 1,015 likely New York City voters found that Mamdani held a 46-33% lead over Cuomo.
“I think it’s always been kind of a fiction that where someone works is a key factor in how they vote, or what party they support, or what political candidates they support,” Morris Pearl, a former managing director of BlackRock and the chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, a group of wealthy individuals who advocate for changes to the US tax system, said.
Pearl sees folks falling into two categories: Those who may not want to pay more in taxes, and those who are “more aware that living in a city filled with people who can’t afford their basic needs is not going to be good for even the rich people either.”
Beyond politics, Anna Tavis, clinical professor and chair of the Human Capital Management Department at NYU’s School of Professional Studies, said that Mamdani represents a different expectation of leadership, “regardless of what his views are, but kind of more appealing as a person, very media savvy, connecting with the people.”
She added that many younger workers want their leaders to be more transparent and address the issues they care about, rather than protect the status quo.
“Both sides, interestingly, I think want to get to the right place,” Tavis said. “They want to be successful, they want their companies to succeed, et cetera, et cetera, but they believe in the different ways of accomplishing that.”