Even before securing a victory, some of his most ardent supporters are acknowledging that he’ll require assistance.

During the ‘New York Is Not For Sale’ rally at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens on Sunday, Senator Bernie Sanders addressed an enthusiastic crowd of Zohran Mamdani fans. Sanders emphasized that, given the magnitude of challenges ahead, Mamdani—a figure admired by both the senator and his followers—won’t have all the solutions.

Sanders urged, “Please do everything you can to work with Zohran to make him and his administration the best in the history of New York.”

This statement seemed to offer mixed signals rather than an unequivocal endorsement, with some interpreting it as a hint of anxiety. As one of the least experienced contenders to ever vie for New York City’s mayoral office, Mamdani will undoubtedly need guidance.

While his energy and charisma, coupled with his opponents’ weaknesses, might give him an edge in the race, the real challenge begins if he wins. At 34, Mamdani’s political background is limited, having successfully passed only three out of the 20 bills he introduced in the New York State Assembly.

So, where might he seek counsel? Team Zohran portrays him as a fresh force in America’s political landscape, disconnected from billionaire influences and other entrenched powers. His supporters, particularly those with idealistic views, describe him not as a conventional Democrat but as a Democratic Socialist.

However, he has intricate links with a web of powerful and, yes, wealthy Democrats – including Barack Obama and billionaire investor George Soros – whose influence with Mamdani may leave his rich-kicking, establishment-bashing supporters feeling a little uneasy.

Soros, the 95-year-old financier, who notoriously became known as ‘The Man Who Broke the Bank of England’ for short-selling a vast amount of sterling during the 1992 UK currency crisis, has been quietly filling the coffers of organizations backing Mamdani’s campaign.

At Sunday’s triumphalist ‘New York Is Not For Sale’ rally at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, Sanders told the crowd of ecstatic Mamdani supporters that, given the scale of the problems he faces, their icon – and his acolyte – is ‘not going to have all the answers’

Soros (pictured right with son Alex, left) has been quietly filling the coffers of organizations backing Mamdani’s campaign 

The New York Post revealed this summer that since 2016, Soros’s $25 billion philanthropy network, Open Society Foundations (OSF), had ‘indirectly funneled’ a combined $37 million to the Working Families Party and at least nine other groups whose political support helped Mamdani beat former governor Andrew Cuomo to the Democratic Party mayoral nomination.

And the links between Soros and Mamdani actually go back further.

In 2004, Mamdani’s millionaire mother, Oscar-winning film maker Mira Nair, established a school in Uganda called the Maisha Film Lab. The school, which gives scholarships to aspiring moviemakers, is partly funded by Soros’s OSF, according to the school’s website.

Soros’s group has also helped finance the academic work of Mamdani’s left-wing historian father Mahmood. Between 2020 and 2023, the Soros organization gave $620,000 to Makerere University in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, where Mamdani Sr ran the social policy research center. The latter got the largest single Soros grant of $450,000 for the ‘decolonization of knowledge in Africa and in the African academy.’

Soros – the target of numerous conspiracy theories that claim he’s a dark puppet master secretly controlling the global economy – handed over control of OSF in 2023 to his son Alex, who remains in lockstep with his father’s values and priorities.

‘While Zohran Mamdani attacks job creators and rails against wealth, the truth is he’s benefiting from millions in support form billionaires and the very non-profit network he pretends to stand apart from,’ said former Mamdani rival, New York Mayor Eric Adams of the link between OSF and the campaign.

Republican mayoral nominee Curtis Sliwa also accused Mamdani of only wanting to get rid of the billionaires ‘who don’t bankroll his radical agenda.’ He added: ‘If you’re George Soros or part of the far-left donor class, you get a free pass and a seat at the table.’

And who was running Soros’s Open Society Foundations for much of the time it was being generous to these Mamdani backers? A man named Patrick Gaspard, who was OSF’s president for three years until December 2020 and so richly rewarded he earned more than $1 million in 2020 alone.

Today, Gaspard – the Democratic National Committee’s executive director and later US ambassador to South Africa – is an informal but increasingly close adviser to Mamdani and has been for the past year.

And Gaspard isn’t just close to Soros, he’s also close to Obama, for whom he was his national political director in 2008. It’s no secret, of course, that Obama has kept a strong interest in his party’s fortunes since he left the Oval Office. It may be less well-known to Mamdani supporters, however, that the ex-president and his close former aides have been quietly building their connections to a mayoral candidate who many have compared to Obama.

Soros’s group has also helped finance the academic work of Mamdani’s left-wing historian father Mahmood 

Between 2020 and 2023, the Soros organization gave $620,000 to Makerere University in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, where Mamdani Sr ran the social policy research center

It may be less well-known to Mamdani supporters, however, that the ex-president and his close former aides have been quietly building their connections to a mayoral candidate who many have compared to Obama

After Mamdani won New York’s mayoral primary in June, other senior Democrats continued to distance themselves from a radical candidate they saw as both polarizing and, in policy terms, potentially disastrous for the party, but Obama picked up the phone to get in touch.

In what the New York Times called a ‘lengthy call’ in June, Obama ‘congratulated Mr Mamdani, offered him advice about governing and discussed the importance of giving people hope in a dark time.’

Even if Obama and wife Michelle’s energetic efforts at self-enrichment – estimates of their wealth soar as high as $135 million – can hardly endear them to ‘Tax the Rich’ Mamdani fans, the ex-president remains on balance popular among Democrats. So any kind words from him will be very helpful to a Mamdani campaign that has faced ambivalence from other establishment Democrats.

Some of Obama’s key former minions also made similar approaches to the Mamdani camp at about the same time as their former boss. Jon Favreau, Obama’s speechwriter, and former senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer got in touch with Morris Katz, one of Mamdani’s closest aides. And in July, David Axelrod, Obama’s chief campaign strategist, went so far as to visit the Mamdani campaign headquarters in Manhattan where he met the candidate and his top staff.

Axelrod told the New York Times that he was impressed, saying he found a ‘familiar spirit that I hadn’t seen in a while of just determined, upbeat idealism.’ ‘You may not agree with every answer he’s giving, or every idea he has, but he’s certainly asking the right questions, which is how do we make the country work for working people?’

Urging Democrats to embrace Mamdani rather than condemn him, Axelrod made clear that his party needed some of Mamdani’s style and shouldn’t get too hung up about his policies. Instead of dismissing Mamdani’s platform as ‘unrealistic, unaffordable and anti-business,’ Democrats should learn from him, Axelrod told the Chicago Sun Times.

In what the New York Times called a ‘lengthy call’ in June, Obama ‘congratulated Mr Mamdani, offered him advice about governing and discussed the importance of giving people hope in a dark time’

Urging Democrats to embrace Mamdani (pictured center with Sirah Wahhaj, right, and NYC council member Yusef Salaam, left) rather than condemn him, Axelrod made clear that his party needed some of Mamdani’s style and shouldn’t get too hung up about his policies 

‘The wrong response is the reflexive one: to say Democratic socialism… is a menace that will destroy us,’ he said. ‘Democratic socialism… is progressivism.’

But for all that talk of equality and equity, it’s a cozy old world in Democrat circles.

It was revealed in June that a media strategy consultancy – the Los Angeles-based Debra Schommer Media Group – which worked on past Obama campaigns and whose boss was previously director of media planning and buying for a consulting firm founded by Axelrod and fellow ex-Obama aide David Plouffe, has recently been paid more than $3 million for work on Mamdani TV ads, TV production and digital advertising.

Wide-eyed Mamdani devotees who are expecting him to make a break from the little carve-ups and cabals at the top of US politics may be in for disappointment.

‘Ordinary people get one vote,’ Bernie Sanders told the Mamdani rally on Sunday. ‘Meanwhile, billionaires get the opportunity to spend as much as they want to elect the candidates they want. That is the context in which this election is taking place.’

It just seems that some powerful millionaires and billionaires are not nearly so objectionable as others.