Zohran Mamdani’s Cozy Turn Toward NYC’s Oligarchs Exposes the Limits of His “Socialist” Brand

With just three weeks left before Zohran Mamdani is sworn in as mayor of New York City, the self-described democratic socialist is leaning hard on the very oligarchs he once claimed to be fighting.

According to a recent report in the New York Times, Mamdani has been touring a circuit of high-dollar fundraisers with corporate and financial elites, aiming to collect $4 million to fund his transition and inauguration. With the help of the ultra-wealthy, he has already brought in more than $3 million, far outpacing former mayors Eric Adams and Bill de Blasio, who each raised around $2 million for their transitions.

Mamdani’s team has not made his full event schedule public, but the Times was able to reconstruct a partial list of recent stops.

Last Tuesday night, he appeared at a sold-out fundraiser in Greenwich Village hosted by crypto billionaire Michael Novogratz, an heir to the Soros fortune and grandson of the Qualcomm founder. The next morning, Mamdani was welcomed by oil heiress Leah Hunt-Hendrix. Earlier this week, he mixed with New York’s cultural elite at a Lower East Side reception, with ticket prices starting at $1,000.

Populist Rhetoric, Oligarch Money

Mamdani’s courtship of New York’s rich and powerful stands in sharp contrast to the image he has cultivated as a champion of working-class interests. His populist attacks on “politics for the rich” have been central not just to his campaigns, but to his transition-fund fundraising emails.

“Usually, transitions rely on wealthy donors, special interests, and Super PACs,” one recent message from the Mamdani camp declared. “But we want to do this the same way we got here: with you.”

Roughly 30,000 small donors have answered that call, contributing to a transition operation tasked with sorting through 70,000 job applications and preparing new policy initiatives.

But the combination of relentless appeals to ordinary people and aggressive courting of billionaires isn’t simply bad optics or personal hypocrisy. It reveals a deeper political reality: Mamdani is operating within the same Democratic Party machinery that has long dominated New York City politics, while trying to refurbish its image by claiming that the interests of workers and those of the corporate and financial elite can somehow be reconciled.

Transition Teams: “Progressive” Faces, Corporate Power in the Back Room

That contradiction is clearest in the composition of Mamdani’s 17 transition committees, announced last month. These panels, covering areas such as education, immigration, transportation, and housing, include more than 400 members.

On paper, the lineup looks progressive. At least 10 members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) sit on the committees, alongside staff from liberal advocacy nonprofits, union officials, and left-leaning academics.

But side-by-side with these figures are high-level representatives of big business, the people who will ultimately shape policy.

The most striking example is Katheryn Wylde, head of the powerful big-business lobbying group Partnership for New York City, who is advising Mamdani on the economy transition committee.

Wylde and the Partnership already played a central role in Mamdani’s post-primary outreach to Wall Street and major real estate interests, signaling that his administration would work with them, not against them. Her appointment sends a clear message to corporate executives: despite the rhetoric about inequality and affordability, their priorities will have a direct line into City Hall.

Law-and-Order for the Corporate Class

Even before the transition committees were formed, Mamdani had already delivered on one of big business’s key demands by keeping Jessica Tisch on as police commissioner.

Tisch, a billionaire heiress, has been a central architect of the NYPD’s vast surveillance infrastructure and has overseen heavy-handed crackdowns on protesters — from opponents of the genocide in Gaza to immigrants targeted by Trump’s ICE machine under outgoing mayor Eric Adams.

Retaining Tisch — a symbol of aggressive policing and high-tech control — reassures landlords, developers, and corporate leaders that “public order” will continue to be enforced in their favor.

A Coalition Built to Contain, Not Confront, Inequality

The transition teams will help determine the key appointments and priorities of the incoming administration over the next few weeks. The names may change, but the political character is already clear: a hybrid coalition of upper-middle-class “progressives,” NGO professionals, and outright representatives of big capital.

All of this is being sold under the illusion that these forces — from billionaire donors to corporate lobbyists — can be “pushed” or “bargained with” into solving New York’s affordability crisis.

But finance capital, real estate tycoons, and corporate executives are not neutral partners. Their profits depend on high rents, privatization, and austerity. Their interests are fundamentally opposed to those of a working class that is struggling more each year to afford housing, transit, healthcare, and basic necessities.

Mamdani’s “Partnership” With Trump

Mamdani has taken that logic to its extreme by embracing President Trump as a supposed ally in addressing high prices. Two weeks ago, he met with Trump and publicly spoke of a “partnership” built around lowering costs for New Yorkers.

Since that meeting, Mamdani has avoided criticizing Trump on his social media accounts — a striking silence from a politician who once postured as a bold critic of the far right and “authoritarianism.”

This is not clever strategy. It is political cover for a deepening alliance with the same forces pushing inequality and authoritarian measures: the financial oligarchy, big landlords, and a presidency openly hostile to democratic and social rights.

Reconciling the Irreconcilable

Mamdani’s pivot toward oligarchs and corporate power is not an accident or a misunderstanding. It reflects the real function of “left” figures inside the Democratic Party: to channel anger, cool down resistance, and dress up an unpopular status quo in the language of “progressive change.”

By promising that billionaires, hedge-fund managers, real estate barons, and a far-right White House can be partners in solving New York’s crises, Mamdani is not empowering working people. He is helping to disorient and demobilize them.

Those who control the city’s wealth will never willingly accept policies that seriously cut into their profit streams or challenge their property rights. The interests of the corporate and financial elite are irreconcilable with those of the working class — a class now facing a deepening social breakdown in which even the basics of life are increasingly out of reach.