PACs supporting Mamdani raised cash from lefty establisment

Zohran Mamdani’s campaign has been receiving suspiciously timed donations from his media pals and contributions from progressives tied to communist China.

With less than a month to go before the mayoral election, the Democratic Socialist candidate’s political action committees have raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations.

Among them is one from Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor and publisher of The Nation, who gave the New Yorkers for Lower Costs PAC $25,000 through Mayberry LLC, a private company she controls.

The contribution was received on September 16, shortly after vanden Heuvel’s magazine published an exclusive interview with the mayoral candidate, which appeared online August 12.

Vanden Heuvel conducted the interview along with the magazine’s executive editor, John Nichols, at an Afghan cafe in Queens according to the magazine, which advertised the interview on the cover of its September issue.

The October issue of the magazine features a Mamdani endorsement written by former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio.

Vanden Heuvel said the magazine endorsed Mamdani in the Democratic primary in May, and continues to support his vision for New York City. “When I make contributions, it is in a personal capacity,” she said in a statement.

Vanden Heuvel’s sister, Wendy vanden Heuvel, a producer and actor who lives in San Francisco, gave $25,000 to OneNYC, a super PAC set up in July by entrepreneur Yasser Salem to support Mamdani.

Like her sister, Wendy vanden Heuvel made her contribution through a private company —Persephone Group LLC. Records show the company was incorporated in Delaware in 2009.

Other contributors to Mamdani PACs include Shanti Singham, the sister of China-based tech millionaire Neville Roy Singham, who has contributed tens of millions to radical groups. He is also currently under investigation by various Congressional committees probing his ties to the Chinese Communist Party and groups such as the People’s Forum, ANSWER Coalition and the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

Shanti Singham gave the New Yorkers for Lower Costs PAC $1,000 in June.

Her husband, Daniel Goodwin, donated $3,500 to the same group. Shanti Singham has lectured at the East China Normal University in Shanghai, where her brother lives. She is also a professor emerita of history and Africana Studies at Williams College.

Goodwin is a former executive of Thoughtworks, the software company his brother-in-law sold for $785 million in 2017.

Their daughter Alicia Singham Goodwin, 33, is behind the “Jews for Zohran,” a campaign designed to soften the socialist candidate’s anti-Israel rhetoric.

The group is working with current city Comptroller Brad Lander and Rep. Jerry Nadler to persuade more Jewish pols — such as Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Dan Goldman — to back Mamdani for mayor.

The New Yorkers for Lower Costs PAC has also received cash from Israel critic and professor Sara Rahnama, who donated $75,000 in June.

The Morgan State University professor, director of the school’s program on the Middle East and North Africa, wrote a column last year about how Israel weaponized rape and fear of Muslim men to justify violence in Gaza. She questioned the incidence of widespread rape against Israeli women captured during the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist strikes.

“Tropes linking Muslim men to monstrous forms of violence, including sexual violence, speak to longstanding fears about them within Europe and the US,” she wrote. “There is a long history of the use of these fears to further violence against Muslims.”

Rahnama is married to tech investor Idris Mokhtarzada who donated a total of $90,000 to the PAC in June, according to public records.

New Yorkers for Lower Costs spent $1.3 million on the candidate leading up to the June 24 primary, and have also raised another $1 million. Among the biggest donors was California-based and philanthropist and billionaire Elizabeth Simons, who donated $250,000 in August.