Behind Zohran Mamdani, an Experienced Soros-Obama Operative
Grassroots youth rebellion? More like a 1980s Jesse Jackson re-run.
Reading the New York Times coverage and Zohran Mamdani’s social media, you’d get the idea that the 33-year-old Israel-hating socialist is a new face, a breath of fresh air, and a foe of billionaires.
Now that Mamdani has won the Democratic nomination for mayor, the news has finally come out that a key figure behind his campaign was Patrick Gaspard. Gaspard, 57, is a former political aide to Barack Obama. He also served from 2017 to 2020 as president of George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Soros is 94.
Gaspard surfaced in New York Times coverage of the campaign but was identified as a neutral party. A June 10 Times article reported that Mamdani “has also quietly met with former officials for advice, including…Patrick Gaspard, an adviser to mayors and presidents,” but noted that Gaspard was “also speaking with other candidates.” A June 13 Times article quoted “Patrick Gaspard, a top adviser to Democratic mayors and presidents who has not taken sides in the race.”
Yet in a July 1 piece, “How Zohran Mamdani Stunned New York and Won the Primary for Mayor,” the Times offers a new and different account of Gaspard’s role. Now the Times says Gaspard “quietly helped guide Mr. Mamdani” and says Gaspard participated with Mamdani in a dinner with New York Comptroller Brad Lander in which the two agreed to cross-endorse in the mayoral race. The Times reports, “The day before the final debate, Mr. Lander and Mr. Mamdani sat down at Yara, a Lebanese restaurant in Midtown, with campaign aides and Mr. Gaspard. Over plates of fattoush, hummus and eggplant, the two candidates decided they would cross-endorse each other to defeat Mr. Cuomo.”
The Times describes Gaspard as “adviser to mayors and presidents,” but the more relevant information is that he is a Soros person. Don’t just take it from me: his bio on X says, “Forever @OpenSociety.” Open Society’s tax filings indicate the $5.9 billion foundation paid Gaspard, identified as its former president, $2.2 million in 2021.
Ideologically, he is in league with Israel’s worst enemies, stoking opposition to the Trump administration’s strike against Iranian nuclear weapons-related sites:
On June 21, Gaspard posted, “This launch into Netanyahu’s war is reckless and should be fiercely opposed. Trust that Trump has no strategy. Trust Netanyahu will yank him up the ladder of escalation. There will be early declarations of victory followed by the reality that Americans are now less safe for it.”
On June 18 he posted, “Good morning Democrats - if you’re not starting the day with full throated opposition to any U.S. military support for Israel’s attack on Iran - which is aimed at regime change - you’re doing it all wrong. This should be a layup for Democrats. No one wants this war. Lock arms.”
On June 17 he posted, “As we debate danger of WMD’s in hands of rogue states, note that Israel assisted apartheid South Africa in building a nuclear arsenal while SA was under global sanctions.”
On June 12 he posted, “With this insane attack tonight, Netanyahu has checked every single box easily predicted when the Biden team gave him a blank check and air cover with use of U.S. weapons with no regard to his war crimes and his obvious need to use the moment for his own political survival.”
In other words, the guy the Times describes as “a top adviser to Democratic mayors and presidents” is really just an anti-Israel fanatic. Before the election, the Times claimed Gaspard hadn’t “taken sides.” Now that the primary is over, the Times says Gaspard “quietly helped guide” Mamdani.
As in so many of these cases, what looks like a case of some young insurgent against the billionaires is just the less visible influence of some more left-wing billionaire. Not to be overly cynical about it or to buy into antisemitic conspiracy theories about George Soros manipulating everything. That’s not at all what I am saying. Maybe Gaspard is spinning his role to claim credit in a “victory has a thousand fathers” sort of way. But there is an apparent contradiction, or inconsistency, between “has not taken sides in the race” and “quietly helped guide.” I guess it’s theoretically possible that someone can help guide a candidate without taking their side, but it’s quite a tightrope.
The old New York Observer has some good Gaspard material in a 2009 profile: “He writes poetry and considers as a personal hero Aimé Césaire, the pioneering black-pride poet and politician who taught the anti-colonialist theorist Frantz Fanon.” He used to work for Margarita Lopez, the Lower East Side New York City Councilwoman who won a tight race against Sheldon Silver’s chief of staff Judy Rapfogel in the 1990s. (Lopez, like Mamdani, was endorsed by Rep. Nydia Velazquez, who is now 73 and has been serving in Congress since 1993, or for 32 years). Gaspard “got his first taste of campaign work doing advance for the 1988 presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson,” the Observer reported.
The Observer piece even has a precedent for Gaspard pretending to be neutral while actually helping a candidate—Obama over Hillary Clinton: “Publicly, Mr. Gaspard remained neutral, but as early as January 2007, he was involved.” (It reminds me of New York City Parks Commissioner Henry Stern’s Rule 16-J, also known as the Michael Jackson rule: “They never do it once.”)
Anyone who thinks that the Mamdani campaign is genuinely new and fresh, think again.
In some sense it is a replay of the Obama campaign—a young and inexperienced but magnetic politician with an African father and a somewhat exotic name manages to beat out an older Clinton-era figure. Gaspard worked for Obama during the 2008 campaign and in the White House and then served as ambassador to South Africa.
It’s also a replay of the Jesse Jackson presidential campaign. Mamdani wasn’t even born until 1991, but you can go back and look it up—the Jew-hating rhetoric (“Hymietown,” for Jackson, “globalize the intifada,” for Mamdani), the class warfare. Here is Jackson at the 1988 Democratic National Convention: “For almost eight years we've been led by those who view social good coming from private interest, who view public life as a means to increase private wealth. They have been prepared to sacrifice the common good of the many to satisfy the private interests and the wealth of a few. We believe in a government that’s a tool of our democracy in service to the public, not an instrument of the aristocracy in search of private wealth.”
The only thing “new” about the Zohran Mamdani campaign is the candidate. People who have been around New York and Democratic politics have seen it before. And for all of Jackson’s “keep hope alive” talk, the way these things tend to end is with a lot of disappointment.
One of the other NYT articles about Mamdani seems to rebut the claim that Mamdani is proposing tax increases. According to the NYT those payment would only be voluntary:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/29/nyregion/zohran-mamdani-voters-strategy.html
"He won over progressives with a populist message of making the city more affordable, in part by asking corporations and the wealthy to pay more, and he spread his vision through viral social media videos."
It is great news that all that Mamdani plans to do is "ask corporations and the wealthy to pay more", which is much better than forcing them. This assumes, however, that the NYT article is being honest in its description of Mamdani's plans.