Mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani is suspending fundraising for his campaign after raking in enough money to reach the legal spending cap — becoming the first candidate in the 2025 election cycle to meet that milestone.
By law, mayoral candidates can’t spend more than just over $7.9 million during the primary election campaign.
On Monday morning, Mamdani, a democratic socialist and State Assembly member representing a section of western Queens, said he has already raised more than $8 million with projected public matching funds included. The haul comes from about 18,000 donors, a far higher number of individual contributors than any of the other candidates running for mayor this year, his team added.
To that end, he said he’s ceasing fundraising for the June 24 Democratic mayoral primary and will instead focus the final three months of his candidacy on hitting the campaign trail and drawing a contrast with the front-runner in the race, ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
“While Andrew Cuomo is borrowing Trump’s rolodex and calling up his donors, we’re fueled by working New Yorkers who are tired of corrupt politicians too corrupt to care about their wallets and their safety,” Mamdani said in a statement. “We can now turn out full attention to getting out the vote with the largest volunteer operation this city has ever seen.”
The announcement from Mamdani, who has become known for his viral social media videos and populist left-wing positions on issues like rent and transit, comes after he had a prodigious fundraising rally in the two-month reporting period that concluded March 13.
Over those two months, he raised $849,000 in private funds from more than 13,000 individual donors.
Only Cuomo — who’s polling as the favorite to win June’s mayoral primary — raised more in the period, pulling in $1.5 million from some 2,700 individual contributors.
Courting significant support from younger and left-leaning voters, Mamdani has in some polls been projected as the No. 2 contender to unseat Mayor Adams, whose reelection bid has been severely hobbled by his federal corruption indictment and surrounding scandals. Cuomo, who resigned as governor in 2021 amid sexual misconduct accusations he denies, has consistently polled in the No. 1 slot.
Mamdani has centered his policy platform on affordability. One of his most drastic policy prescriptions is his proposal to freeze rent for all stabilized tenants in the city for at least four years.
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