Zohran Mamdani blasts Andrew Cuomo for cozying up to billionaire backers for big bucks

Socialist mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday lambasted his rival Andrew Cuomo for cozying up to billionaires for cash rather than rubbing elbows with hardscrabble New Yorkers on the campaign trail.

Mamdani said Manhattan’s ultra-elite “Billionaires’ Row” — which he mockingly called “Avenue Andrew” — is where Cuomo has focused his attention in the days since Mayor Eric Adams dropped out of the race Sunday.

“While I’m fighting for Eric Adams’s voters, Andrew Cuomo is fighting for Eric Adams’ donors,” the lefty Democratic nominee said from the luxury Midtown stretch.

The sharp-elbowed, eat-the-rich attack came as sources told The Post Cuomo was fundraising for his independent comeback bid on Monday and Tuesday, including among big business leaders who’ve been fearful of Mamdani’s far-left agenda.

“Andrew Cuomo campaigned in the only way that he knows how,” Mamdani said, “calling billionaires like Barry Diller and Daniel Loeb from his daughter’s $8,000-a-month apartment, trading away whatever little integrity he has left.”

Diller, a media mogul who owns a $75 million West Village apartment, has donated $25,000 to the pro-Cuomo “Fix the City” super PAC, records show.

The hedge fund titan Loeb, a registered Democrat who lives on Billionaires’ Row, donated $35,000 to the Cuomo-backing PAC, according to records.

Those two business titans aren’t the only powerful Cuomo donors name-checked by Mamdani.

He noted that oil executive John Hess, a supporter of President Trump, also shelled out cash to Cuomo, as did Ronald Lauder — the heir to the Estee Lauder cosmetics empire and a major supporter of Israel.

Lauder also helped inspire Trump’s effort to buy Greenland — a pie-in-the-sky idea that Mamdani derided.

None of those billionaires returned requests for comment.

But corporate leaders have been “nervous” about the state of the race given Mamdani’s affiliation with the Democratic Socialists of America and some of his anti-big business positions, said Paul Zuber, executive vice president of the NYS Business Council.

“Is he a politician who happens to be a democratic socialist or a democratic socialist who happens to be a politician?” Zuber said.

“There’s a lot of unknowns on what his positions will be. Is he going to take the business community’s positions into account or not?”

A source with knowledge of Cuomo’s campaign said it blasted out an email to dozens of donors just three hours after Adams dropped out and organized a Zoom call Sunday night.

Cuomo told his fundraisers and supporters that he could thwart Mamdani and that he’s been doing everything he didn’t do during the June Democratic primary, which he lost to the socialist in humiliating fashion, the source said.

“People feel like he has momentum, I mean it may be delusional but it helps get people motivated. I think people are seeing, that there is chance here”

While Mamdani blasted billionaires with an energetic news conference, Cuomo responded with a cozier approach: a press release.

The release – titled “Hypocrisy is spelled ‘M-a-m-d-a-n-i’” – called out the Queens state assemblyman’s supposed sanctimoniousness for billionaire hedge fund heir Elizabeth Simons donating $250,000 to his super PAC. 

“Zohran Mamdani is a hypocrite who will do anything and say anything in a cynical attempt to fool voters,” Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said in a statement.

The ex-gov, during an unrelated event Tuesday, noted Mamdani’s parents own a posh estate in Uganda.

“He is a mansion boy, and he says you’re doing the bidding of billionaires,” Cuomo said. 

Mamdani’s campaign hit the city’s $8 million campaign spending cap weeks ago, in large part thanks to small-dollar donations in New York City and across the nation.

Cuomo, by contrast, has yet to hit that limit.

Left unnamed by Mamdani during his presser was billionaire Laurie Tisch, mother of Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and whose powerful family contributed more than $400,000 to Cuomo’s super PAC, records show.

Laurie Tisch declined to comment.

Mamdani said the row of billionaires backing Cuomo showed he’s hopelessly in the pocket of big money.

“What his father, Mario Cuomo, once said is that you campaign in poetry, you govern in prose,” Mamdani told reporters.

“The poetry that Andrew Cuomo is writing not only doesn’t rhyme, it had to be approved by billionaires and Donald Trump… New York City deserves better than yet another mayor bought by billionaires.”

— Additional reporting by Carl Campanile