Socialist Zohran Mamdani brags about hitting $8 million fundraising cap—more than half of all individual donations came from outside NYC

With two months to go before New York City's mayoral election, socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani has hit $8 million, his fundraising cap for the election, the candidate announced on Friday. The candidate posted a video asking people to stop sending him money and instead give him time with canvassing and campaign work. However, over half of the donations made between June and August were made outside of New York City. 

"We can’t take any more of your money,” Mamdani said in the video. “Truly, you need to stop. Thanks to you, we've raised the maximum amount of money we can spend in this race: $8 million. And you've done it with more than two months to go until the election."

Mamdani was able to take advantage of the city's matching funds program, which gives an eight to one match for smaller donations. According to the New York City Campaign Finance Board disclosures, there were 19,480 individual donations made between mid-June and mid-August this year. However, 10,836 of those donation records were made outside of New York City.  

During that time frame, the total donations that were given to Mamdani outside of the Big Apple without public matching totaled $966,216.34. The donation total without public matching inside New York City totaled $938,001.41. 

Mamdani, who beat out others in the Democratic primary in a run for mayor of the Big Apple, has been in the lead in polling between himself, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, New York Mayor Eric Adams, GOP candidate Curtis Sliwa, and others. However, some polls showing a head-to-head match-up between Cuomo and Mamdani have indicated that the former governor has a good shot to win against the socialist candidate in the general election if all other candidates were removed.

Cuomo, who is in second in polling when all candidates are considered, has raised around $1.5 million in campaign funding, per the New York Times. Mayor Eric Adams, who is fourth place, has around $4 million in his funds. Sliwa has around $3.4 million. 

Mamdani hitting the fundraising cap comes as President Donald Trump has been moving to narrow the playing field in the New York City mayoral race. On Thursday, the president said, “I would like to see two people drop out and have it be one-on-one."

Trump has reportedly been in talks with Adams for an ambassadorship to Saudi Arabia to thin out the number of candidates.