In the final, crucial days before New York City selects its next mayor, a cloud of legal suspicion has been deliberately cast over the campaign of frontrunner Zohran Mamdani by a tax-scamming dark money political organization.
The source of this conspicuous cloud is a conservative watchdog group, the Coolidge Reagan Foundation, which has filed largely unfounded criminal referrals alleging that Mamdani’s campaign illegally accepted foreign money.
The allegations point to a total of just over $13,000 in small contributions from approximately 170 donors who listed addresses outside the United States.
The Mamdani campaign employs a “rigorous compliance process” to weed out prohibited donations, and it has already refunded the majority of these contributions, asserting that many of the donors were, in fact, U.S. citizens or permanent residents living abroad, which is perfectly legal.
Among the donations were $5 from a university student in England and other small-sum contributions, and the largest was $2,100 from a Dubai-based investor.
What the complaints highlight these bogus transgressions as a “sustained pattern,” the Mamdani campaign showed they are part of a routine compliance issue that is being rectified.
The campaign notes that 31 of the 170 donors have already proven their citizenship or legal status, and the remainder have mostly been refunded.
In the view of these super-wealthy complainants, his biggest crime is that Mamdani wants to make life affordable for ordinary New York City working people. Wall Street executives find it objectionable that a candidate for elected office wants to make it possible for underpaid people who clean their toilets, deliver their packages, and serve their lunches to have a safe and clean way to get to work.
The group leveling these accusations, the Coolidge Reagan Foundation, is no stranger to political combat. The right-wing group uses tax-deductible charitable contributions to lodge complaints against Democratic political candidates and organizations.
The tax-free fund filed complaints against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, Florida Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others.
The self-declared watchdog group has not taken on the political corruption of prominent Republicans, such as President Donald Trump.
While lawsuits to block these transactions were dismissed as moot after his presidency, a 2024 House Democrats alleged that at least $7.8 million in foreign payments were made to Trump’s businesses, including hotels and other properties during his first two years in office.
The Coolidge Reagan Foundation’s chairman is Shaun McCutcheon, an Alabama businessman who is the same citizen who, in the 2014 Supreme Court case McCutcheon v. FEC, successfully struck down federal aggregate limits on campaign contributions.
This legal victory was a landmark decision that opened the door for wealthier donors to contribute millions of dollars to joint fundraising committees, effectively allowing a single check to be split among numerous candidates and party committees.
The foundation’s current focus on a comparatively minuscule $13,000 in potentially problematic donations stands in stark contrast to its chairman’s role in dismantling a key pillar of campaign finance law designed to prevent the influence of vast wealth in politics.
While the conservative political group shines a spotlight on Mamdani’s $13,000, the financial engine of his chief rival, disgraced former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, operates with comparatively little scrutiny.
Cuomo’s campaign has raised almost $6 million, a sum that dwarfs Mamdani’s fundraising.
More significant, however, is the colossal war chest of the super PAC supporting Cuomo, Fix the City, which has raised an unprecedented $33 million—the most by any super PAC in New York City history.
This super PAC is buoyed by massive contributions from billionaires, including $5 million from former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and $500,000 from Stephen Wynn.
Wynn, a former finance chairman for the Republican National Committee, was, in a striking parallel to the allegations against Mamdani, ordered by the Department of Justice in 2021 to register as a foreign agent for China, a case that was later dismissed.
Like Cuomo, Wynn was forced out as the top executive of his hotel and casino business over allegations of sexual improprieties.
Other major Fix the City donors include oil CEO John B. Hess, hedge fund billionaire William “Bill” Ackman, and Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone, figures more typically associated with bankrolling Republican causes.
This creates a stark tableau: a candidate accused of a technical violation involving thousands of dollars from small, international donors is opposed by a political machine fueled by tens of millions from American billionaires, one of whom has himself been at the center of a foreign influence probe.
It’s against the law for U.S. candidates and political committees to accept contributions from foreign nationals. Laws also place strict limits on donation amounts and prohibit the laundering of contributions to get around legal caps.
For the most part, such donations have been policed by campaigns and the Federal Election Commission, with only the most egregious examples being targeted by federal law enforcement.
The AP identified only two Trump donors out of more than 200 living abroad whose U.S. citizenship was listed as “verified” in the Republican president’s campaign finance reports.
Trump received over 1,000 contributions from 150 donors who omitted key identifying details such as their city, state, address, or country.
Trump also received at least 90 contributions from people who omitted their full name, are listed as “anonymous” or whose donations include the notation “name not provided.”
The integrity of an election hinges on the faith of the voters.
In this New York City mayoral race, that faith is being tested by a stark contradiction.
The same forces that championed a legal framework unleashing nearly unlimited domestic wealth into the political arena are now sounding the alarm over a fraction of that sum arriving from overseas.
The fundamental question for every New Yorker is not merely about the source of a campaign’s funds, but what—and whom—our system of finance is truly designed to protect.