Follow-up investigation to “EXPOSED: How Politico Coordinated Damage Control for Mamdani’s $1.6 Million Campaign Finance Scandal“
Zohran Mamdani’s “grassroots revolution” was a lie. Campaign finance records reveal his supposedly working-class movement was actually powered by a $2 million elite PAC operation funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, Hollywood celebrities, and out-of-state tech entrepreneurs—spending more than his entire direct campaign raised from actual voters.
The deception becomes even more stark when examined against Mamdani’s recent public statements. Just days after winning the Democratic primary, Mamdani told NBC that “I don’t think that we should have billionaires,” claiming such wealth concentration represents “so much money in a moment of such inequality.” Yet his own political rise was powered by the very billionaire class he publicly condemns—including Silicon Valley “godfather” Ronald Conway, GitHub co-founder Tom Preston-Werner, and Hollywood elite like Steven Spielberg.
When we raised questions about dark money funding on X (formerly Twitter) on July 6, his campaign treasurer, Victoria Perrone—a compliance expert who managed $80 million for John Fetterman’s Senate campaign—responded: “What’s nonprofit dark money? We didn’t accept any of that on the campaign. Where are you getting this info?”
This investigation documents the complete financial picture behind that question.
The “Grassroots Revolution” vs. Elite PAC Reality
Unlike other mayoral candidates who ran conventional campaigns, Zohran Mamdani built his entire political brand around rejecting elite influence. Throughout his campaign, he consistently claimed to represent a “grassroots revolution” powered by working-class New Yorkers—making this his central campaign narrative and key differentiator from establishment politics.
This wasn’t incidental messaging. Mamdani’s “grassroots revolution” branding was his core political identity, promising voters an alternative to the elite-funded political system he publicly condemned. While Mamdani’s campaign raised $8,758,911 ($1,708,494 in private funds and $7,050,417 in public matching funds), campaign finance records as of July 7, 2025 reveal that the real power behind his candidacy came from a sophisticated $2 million political action committee operation.
KEY FINDING: PAC spending exceeded Mamdani’s direct campaign contributions by 18.4%, raising questions about how a candidate who built his entire brand on rejecting elite influence could require more outside PAC spending than direct voter support.
These supposedly “independent” PACs didn’t just supplement Mamdani’s campaign—they formed the backbone of his entire political operation, directly contradicting his core campaign promise to represent an alternative to elite-funded politics. The financial evidence reveals a coordinated operation between two primary vehicles.
According to NYC Campaign Finance Board (CFB) records as of July 7, 2025, the Working Families Party National PAC became Mamdani’s primary attack vehicle, spending $701,792 total: $60,955 directly supporting Mamdani, $101,221 on other ranked choice endorsements, and $539,616 attacking his primary opponent, Andrew Cuomo.
Simultaneously, the “New Yorkers for Lower Costs” PAC served as Mamdani’s primary promotional vehicle, spending $1,320,446 total: $893,877 supporting Mamdani with positive messaging, $424,069 in additional opposition research against Cuomo, and $2,500 supporting Cuomo.
Combined, these supposedly “independent” PACs spent $2,022,238—more than Mamdani’s entire direct campaign fundraising of $1,708,494. The strategic coordination becomes clear when examining spending patterns: both PACs supported the exact same candidates as the Working Families Party’s official endorsement slate, while spending nearly $1 million combined attacking the only major candidate not on that slate—Andrew Cuomo. This perfect alignment between PAC spending and party endorsement strategy raises questions about the claimed independence that forms the legal foundation for their operations.
The Elite Funding Behind Mamdani’s ‘Grassroots’ Attack Machine
Behind the Working Families Party National PAC’s $762,068.60 operation lies a funding structure that contradicts every aspect of Mamdani’s grassroots messaging. The largest single contribution came on June 13, 2025, when Leaders We Deserve PAC transferred exactly $300,000—accounting for over 39% of the PAC’s entire war chest.
Leaders We Deserve PAC’s spending patterns reveal a sophisticated consultant enrichment operation. According to independent analysis by Charles Gaba, founder of Blue24.org, which reviewed FEC filings, the PAC raised nearly $11.9 million during the 2023–2024 cycle but spent only 28% on Democratic candidates and committees, with just 19% going directly to candidates. Independent verification through OpenSecrets confirms these figures, showing 72% of funds flowed to consultants rather than supporting actual candidates.
This violates established industry standards. According to a joint 2021 report by Campaign Legal Center and Issue One, effective political fundraising operations typically spend 70% on politics rather than overhead. Their research shows that PACs spending less than 50% on political activities are considered problematic, while those spending less than 25% are flagged as highly problematic. Leaders We Deserve PAC—spending only 28% on candidates—falls well below even the “highly problematic” threshold established by these leading campaign finance watchdogs.
Expert consensus indicates that 70%+ overhead rates significantly exceed the worst documented cases and would likely trigger regulatory scrutiny if investigated.
Charles Gaba, writing for Blue24, concluded: “The biggest takeaway is that only 28% of what they raised actually went to Democratic candidates, party committees or other PACs. This is actually in line with the other PACs I’ve analyzed…which is kind of the problem.” Leaders We Deserve PAC was funded by elite donors including Phoebe Gates (daughter of Bill Gates) who contributed $75,000, Steven Spielberg & Kate Capshaw who gave $25,000, and Ronald Conway, the Silicon Valley “godfather” who invested early in Google and Facebook, contributing $300,000.
The contradiction becomes stark when you trace the money flow: while Mamdani built his campaign around rejecting elite influence, his largest PAC support came from a group that spent only 19% of its war chest on actual candidates and over $8.6 million enriching consultants. This is textbook grassroots laundering: elite money rerouted through branding-friendly political vehicles to simulate popular support while concealing the source.
Beyond the consultant-enriched funding pipeline, WFP National PAC received additional funding that reinforces the elite nature of the operation. Celebrity donors included Ben Cohen (Ben & Jerry’s co-founder) who contributed $10,000, Cynthia Nixon who contributed $10,000, Susan Sarandon who contributed $6,000, and Morgan Spector (actor) who contributed $5,000.
The PAC also received substantial contributions from out-of-state organizations: Clean and Prosperous America (Tumwater, WA) contributed $25,000 and Emgage Federal PAC (Florida-based) contributed $25,000. New York-based organizations also provided significant funding, including Alliance For Quality Education (Albany, NY) which contributed $17,000.
High-dollar individual contributors included Nancy Goroff with $25,000, Maggie Williams with $30,000, and Hazel Hutchins with $24,000, demonstrating the concentration of wealthy donors supporting the operation.
Adding to questions about organizational independence, Working Families Party PAC contributed $100,000 to WFP National PAC, creating a direct pipeline from one WFP entity to another. While technically separate entities, both PACs share overlapping personnel, donors, and branding—raising the legal question of whether their coordination complies with New York City’s independent expenditure rules.
According to NYC Campaign Finance Board filings, WFP National PAC is led by Joe Dinkin, who also serves as National Deputy Director of the Working Families Party, while its treasurer is Mike Boland, who holds the position of Chief of Staff to the national Working Families Party. The PAC’s mission statement explicitly states it exists “to support candidates endorsed by the Working Families Party,” and its spending reflects this alignment: every dollar in direct support went to candidates on the WFP’s official 2025 ranked-choice endorsement slate, while nearly $540,000 was spent attacking Andrew Cuomo—the only major candidate not endorsed by WFP.
This organizational structure raises questions about whether such institutional alignment complies with NYC Campaign Finance Rule § 5-03(e), which requires independence between campaigns and expenditure committees. The systematic coordination between party endorsements and PAC spending patterns suggests the independence may be more structural than operational.
This funding structure raises fundamental questions about authenticity: how does a $300,000 transfer from a PAC that spent 72% of its funds on consultant enrichment represent the “authentic grassroots support” that formed the foundation of Mamdani’s political brand?
The $45,697.14 Round-Trip Transaction
Beyond the consultant-enriched funding, WFP National PAC’s funding reveals additional coordination that challenges claims of independence. On June 11, 2025, Make the Road Action contributed exactly $45,697.14 to WFP National PAC. That same day, WFP National PAC reported an in-kind expenditure back to Make the Road Action for the exact same amount, labeled “Phone Bank.”
This textbook round-trip transaction raises serious questions about timing, coordination, and purpose. For this to be coincidental, the Working Families Party would have had to receive a contribution, determine a need for services, negotiate terms, and execute payment—all within hours, and down to the penny. The mathematical probability of such precise coordination occurring naturally strains credibility.
The organizational relationships make this transaction even more significant. Make the Road Action is the 501(c)(4) political arm of Make the Road New York, a nonprofit that has received $27 million+ in NYC taxpayer funds since 2010. This creates a concerning pipeline where taxpayer money flows into organizations that then fund political operations. Both organizations are part of the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) network—a major Open Society Foundations grantee, creating a clear money trail: NYC taxpayers fund Make the Road NY (501c3), which connects to Make the Road Action (501c4), which contributed to WFP National PAC, which provided political support for Mamdani.
While Open Society Foundations does not appear in the WFP PAC’s donor filings, its grantees—including CPD and Make the Road NY—played documented roles in PAC expenditures and coordinated operations. This creates a plausible funding conduit where OSF’s grants to CPD enable the coordination of affiliated groups like Make the Road, which then contribute to WFP operations supporting Mamdani. According to OSF’s public grant database, the foundation has provided direct support to the Center for Popular Democracy, which coordinates affiliated groups including Make the Road New York and Make the Road Action.
The scale of this network is substantial. Since January 2020, Soros’ contributions to political campaigns and causes total roughly half a billion dollars, with OSF publicly announcing a $20 million pledge that specifically names Working Families Party as a core partner.
NETWORK COORDINATION: The June 11, 2025 round-trip transaction illustrates how organizations within this ecosystem operate in close financial coordination, raising questions about how a “working-class revolution” operates within a half-billion-dollar progressive infrastructure network coordinated by one of America’s wealthiest individuals.
Tech Billionaires Masquerading as “New Yorkers”
While WFP National PAC served as Mamdani’s attack machine through elite funding, the “New Yorkers for Lower Costs” PAC functioned as his primary promotional vehicle, spending $1,341,155.20. The name suggests local grassroots support, but the contributor data reveals the opposite: funding heavily concentrated among out-of-state tech billionaires and wealthy donors who have no apparent connection to New York City politics or cost-of-living concerns.
The largest individual contributors perfectly illustrate this geographic grassroots laundering. Rehan Muneeb-Azhar, a donor with limited public profile from Morton Grove, Illinois, contributed $151,500, making him the single largest contributor to the PAC’s $1,341,155.20 total. Haroon Mokhtarzada (Silver Spring, MD) contributed $99,000 and Idris Mokhtarzada (Washington, DC) contributed $90,000—totaling $189,000 from the tech entrepreneur brothers who live in Maryland and Washington D.C. These aren’t struggling New Yorkers concerned about costs—they’re Harvard Law graduates who sold their first company, Webs.com, to Vistaprint for $117.5 million, and their second company, Truebill, to Rocket Companies for $1.275 billion.
Moiz Ali contributed $100,000, while Faheem Zaman also contributed $100,000. Sara Rahnama contributed $75,000. Ali’s contribution is particularly revealing since he’s the founder of Native Deodorant, which he sold to Procter & Gamble for $100 million, and like the Mokhtarzadas, he’s a Harvard Law graduate (2009) and active investor in over 100 startups. Zaman’s contribution is notable as he represents the largest New York contributor while working as Project Manager at Block (the financial services company formerly known as Square)—adding another tech industry insider to the funding base.
Additional tech billionaire influence came from Tom Preston-Werner, co-founder and former CEO of GitHub, who contributed $20,000 from Palo Alto, further demonstrating the Silicon Valley money flowing into this supposedly local New York PAC.
ELITE FUNDING CONCENTRATION: Just the top five individual contributors—Muneeb-Azhar ($151,500), Ali ($100,000), Zaman ($100,000), Haroon Mokhtarzada ($99,000), and Idris Mokhtarzada ($90,000)—provided $540,500, representing over 40% of the PAC’s $1,341,155.20 total funding.
The organizational donors reinforce patterns of wealthy, coordinated political funding. Unity & Justice Fund, the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) Super PAC, contributed $100,000 through two transactions ($25,000 on May 30 and $75,000 on June 16, 2025). MI Leaders of Tomorrow (a Michigan-based political organization) contributed $40,000, Rashida Tlaib for Congress contributed $25,000, and Medicare for All contributed $20,000. American Committee for Middle East Rights contributed $15,000, while additional organizational funding came from Illinois Muslim Political Action Committee ($10,500), No Dem Left Behind PAC ($10,000), and The Truth Project ($10,000). Combined, organizational contributors provided $252,000 in funding.
The irony becomes apparent: while Mamdani rails against “billionaire SuperPACs,” his campaign benefits from Super PAC support including CAIR’s Unity & Justice Fund. The geographic pattern reveals systematic grassroots laundering where 71.5% of the PAC’s funding came from out-of-state donors, with only 28.5% from actual New Yorkers despite the PAC’s name claiming to represent “New Yorkers for Lower Costs.” When examining the largest contributors, the majority of major funding came from wealthy individuals and organizations who don’t live in New York, have never voted in a New York election, and have no apparent stake in New York City governance—yet their money was used to influence local voters under a banner claiming to represent local concerns.
The Grassroots Laundering Operation Exposed
The forensic analysis reveals not a grassroots political movement, but a sophisticated grassroots laundering operation designed to create the illusion of organic support while obscuring the wealthy funding sources behind it. Mamdani’s “grassroots revolution”—his central campaign promise and key differentiator from establishment politics—was actually a professionally managed, elite-funded political operation that used complex PAC structures and geographic laundering to maintain plausible deniability while spending more than the campaign raised from actual voters.
This investigation, combined with previous documentation of campaign finance record alterations, reveals a systematic pattern: when financial evidence contradicts political narratives, the evidence gets altered, obscured, or laundered rather than the narrative being corrected to match reality. The treasurer’s July 6 question—”What’s nonprofit dark money?”—becomes particularly significant in this context, suggesting either unfamiliarity with the sophisticated operation supporting the campaign or an attempt to distance the campaign from documented PAC coordination.
The mainstream media bought Mamdani’s deception completely. The BBC described his campaign as having “impressive grassroots ground game” funded “without wealthy donors,” while praising his ability to connect with voters through “authenticity.” This narrative crumbles when examined against the financial reality: a $2 million elite PAC operation where 71.5% of funding came from out-of-state donors, including Silicon Valley billionaires and Hollywood celebrities.
THE ULTIMATE QUESTION: If this was truly the grassroots revolution powered by working-class New Yorkers that Mamdani built his entire political brand around, why does every aspect of its funding structure, coordination, and professional management tell a completely different story?
No Way Out: If the Mamdani campaign admits knowledge of this network, it destroys the authenticity narrative. If they claim ignorance, it exposes either incompetence or deliberate strategic blindness. Either conclusion undermines the very foundation of Mamdani’s political rise—and makes his recent condemnation of billionaires a masterpiece of political theater.
This investigation is based on Federal Election Commission filings, OpenSecrets donor databases, and NYC Campaign Finance Board records as of July 7, 2025. All amounts and dates are verified through official government sources. The forensic analysis presents documented financial relationships and raises investigative questions about the nature of grassroots political support in modern campaigns.
For our previous investigations on this story, see: “EXPOSED: How Politico Coordinated Damage Control for Mamdani’s $1.6 Million Campaign Finance Scandal” and “CAUGHT: Mamdani Campaign Finance Records Altered Twice After We Exposed $1.6M Irregularities“
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Written by,
Sam Antar
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