Allies of New York City's socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani are hosting a high-dollar Manhattan fundraiser Monday night for Democratic Senate candidates James Talarico of Texas and Sherrod Brown of Ohio — two races that could decide control of the U.S. Senate. For ordinary Americans, the question is straightforward: who's buying influence over the next Congress, and what do they want in return?
The Ohio Texas Victory Fund's "special reception" charges $500 for general attendance and up to $27,000 for "champion" donors, according to the donation page. Robert De Niro is expected to introduce the candidates. Talarico is running against Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton; Brown is trying to reclaim a Senate seat against GOP incumbent John Husted.
Follow the money and the host committee tells you plenty. Controversial jeweler Alexis Bittar — a Mamdani fundraiser and transition bundler — co-hosted a similar event last week for Michigan Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed. Bittar also once called America a "s–thole" in an interview just before the nation's 250th anniversary celebration: "I have three kids and they're little and they're growing up in this s–thole." Last year, Bittar helped release the "Reclaim the Flag" documentary, in which he lamented that the Stars and Stripes had become a "symbol of aggression."
The host committee is stacked with LGBT activist power players: the Human Rights Campaign PAC, HRC president Kelley Robinson, and Shameek Bose, who sits on GLAAD's national board of directors. Bose also co-hosted a December 2025 fundraiser for Mamdani's mayoral transition. Other hosts include Shaifali Puri — wife of Daily Show comedian Aasif Mandvi, appointed to Mamdani's transition committee on legal affairs — filmmaker and Mamdani family friend Shruti Rya Ganguly, author Adriana Trigiani, and powerhouse lawyer Victor Kovner, who wrote a column last year pitching Mamdani to Jewish voters.
It's a familiar playbook: candidates from red states come to deep-blue New York to extract cash from wealthy progressive donors who have no vote in those states but plenty of money to shape their elections. Republicans have tried to tie their opponents to Mamdani's socialism all cycle. That attack line, however, got complicated last week when President Trump held a friendly meeting and press conference with the mayor at Gracie Mansion.
Neither the Talarico nor the Brown campaign responded to requests for comment.
The open question: will Texas and Ohio voters care that candidates who want to represent them are taking checks from a Manhattan network that includes a man who called their country a s–thole — or will the cash simply speak louder than the flag?
