The Queens assemblymember has pulled in more out-of-state donations than Cuomo and Lander combined, signaling a national appetite for his brand of progressive politics.

Zohran Mamdani at a campaign rally at Terminal 5 on June 15. (Facebook/ZohranKMamdani)

Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s appeal seems to be spreading beyond the boundaries of the five boroughs, as the democratic socialist from Queens leads in the number of non-resident donations to his campaign. 

When it comes to out-of-state contributions, the progressive assemblymember and mayoral hopeful has soared past his competition by a ratio of four-to-one, according to a City Limits analysis of publicly available campaign finance data. 

Of the three Democrats leading the polls in the primary race for mayor, Mamdani received 4,494 out-of-state contributions. Ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo follows with 1,030 such donations and sitting Comptroller Brad Lander isn’t far behind at 933, as of June 9, the last day for which data are available. 

Cuomo still leads in general fundraising, having brought in about $4 million in campaign contributions. Lander has received almost $1.8 million, and Mamdani trails him at $1.7 million. 

Mamdani has attracted significant attention since announcing his run for office last October. His proposals for bold policies aimed at affordability—freezing the rent, city-owned grocery stores, free buses—and adept use of social media have helped him stand out in a crowded primary.

Once thought to be a long shot candidate, some recent polls have shown Mamdani closing the gap between himself and the expected frontrunner, Cuomo. His high number of out-of-state donors is indicative of a public enthusiasm that more conventional politicians like Cuomo and Lander struggle to muster, said Sandeep Kaushik, a political consultant and moderate Democrat in Seattle. 

Even though they wouldn’t be constituents, these donors see Mamdani as a standard bearer for a larger, more national movement. Kaushik pointed to the candidate’s social media savvy, as well as recent endorsements by other progressive lawmakers like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, as potential drivers of non-local donations. 

“You just start creating all this national buzz, and that buzz translates into dollars,” Kaushik said.   “Mamdani is young and charismatic and a person of color who is speaking in broad thematic terms about very easy-to-understand issues, that may not actually be particularly viable or practical or attainable, but speak to the aspirations of left-progressive voters.”  

City Limits reached out to several out-of-state donors who said they felt Mamdani offered a genuinely new kind of politics. 

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Katherine Cochrane, 34, works as a wine purveyor in Washington state, and donated $25 to Mamdani’s campaign. She remembered being impressed by the assemblymember’s hunger strike in support of striking taxi cab drivers during her time living in New York. 

“Instead of just doing politics, he was actually just doing the job,” she said. 

Cochrane, who left New York City for Washington due to the city’s rising cost of living, thinks Mamdani is the only candidate who could make New York affordable enough for her to return. 

“I haven’t felt like there has been someone to turn things around in a while,” Cochrane said. 

Christopher Welbourne, 31, is a custodian in Alaska who donated $25 to Mamdani’s campaign. Unlike Cochrane, Welbourne has no relationship with New York. He said he contributed because he feels this mayoral race affects national politics more than any other local election in the country.

“[C]ontributing to a mayoral run there has larger potential impacts to me as a U.S. citizen than if I were to try offering support to a mayoral candidate in a smaller city,” Welbourne said in an email. 

Dr. Babur Lateef, 53, is an ophthalmologist in Virginia who donated $100 to Mamdani’s campaign. Lateef doesn’t believe Mamdani will accomplish even half of his campaign promises. But he thinks that’s still better than the status quo.

“Will he get free transit? No. Will he have free buses? No freaking way! It’s not gonna happen. Nobody gets it,” said Lateef. “But can you have some sort of stabilization on rent? That all makes sense.” 

While Mamdani may be winning in out-of-state donations, that’s no guarantee of wider victory. When Andrew Yang ran for mayor in 2021, he received about 17,000 out-of-state donations to his campaign, around 13,000 more than Mamdani, and more than any other candidate in the race that year. Yang still lost that election.  

And though Mamdani leads in the number of out-of-state donors, Cuomo leads him in the total dollar amount of funds raised. The former governor has collected nearly $660,000 from non-New Yorkers, as of June 9. This is nearly three times the amount as Mamdani. And the average amount given by out-of-staters to Cuomo is more than 10 times larger than what’s given to Mamdani—about $640 on average compared to around $50.

But for some of his supporters, Mamdani doesn’t need to win the election to find success. What’s important to them is that they’ve been offered an alternative to mainstream politics. 

Oliver Turiano, 25, is a musician in New Jersey. He donated $15 to Mamdani’s campaign. He hopes that whether Mamdani wins or not, his effort will show the Democratic Party how to run a campaign that inspires people. 

“A win for Zohran, or even a close race, which I think it will be, is a blueprint for the Democratic Party. Look: run economic populist, run young,” said Turiano.

To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

The post Mamdani Outpaces Rivals in Out-of-State Donors appeared first on City Limits.

By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER

WASHINGTON (AP) — A close ally of fugitive Jalisco New Generation boss known as “El Mencho” for years orchestrated a prolific drug trafficking operation, using a semi-submersible and other methods to avoid detection, and provided weapons to one of Mexico’s most powerful cartels, prosecutors say.

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On Friday, José González Valencia, was sentenced in Washington’s federal court to 30 years in a U.S. prison following his 2017 arrest at a beach resort in Brazil while vacationing with his family under a fake name.

González Valencia, 49, known as “Chepa,” along with his two brothers, led a group called “Los Cuinis” that financed the drug trafficking operations of Jalisco New Generation, or CJNG — the violent cartel recently designated a foreign terrorist organization by the Trump administration. His brother-in-law is CJNG leader Nemesio Rubén “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, whom for years has been sought by the U.S. government.

Meanwhile, El Mencho’s son-in-law, Cristian Fernando Gutiérrez Ochoa, appeared in the same courtroom earlier Friday to plead guilty in a separate case to a money laundering conspiracy charge. Gutierrez Ochoa was arrested toward the end of the Biden administration last year in California, where authorities have said he was living under a bogus name after faking his own death and fleeing Mexico.

Together, the prosecutions reflect the U.S. government’s efforts to weaken the brutal Jalisco New Generation cartel that’s responsible for importing staggering amounts of cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl into the U.S. — and track down its elusive leader. The Trump administration has sought to turn up the pressure on CJNG and other cartels with the foreign terrorist organization designation, which gives authorities new tools to prosecute those associated with cartels.

“You can’t totally prosecute your way out of the cartel problem, but you can make an actual impact by letting people know that we’re going to be enforcing this and showing that Mexico is being cooperative with us and then ultimately trying to get high level targets to sort of set the organization back,” Matthew Galeotti, who lead the Justice Department’s criminal division, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

FILE – The letters “CJNG” for the group’s formal name, Jalisco New Generation Cartel, covers the facade of an abandoned home in El Limoncito, in the Michoacan state of Mexico, Oct. 30, 2021. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)

Trump’s Justice Department has declared dismantling CJNG and other cartels a top priority, and Galetotti said the U.S. in recent months has seen increased cooperation from Mexican officials. In February, Mexico sent 29 cartel figures — including drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who was behind the killing of a U.S. DEA agent in 1985 — to the U.S. for prosecution.

The Trump administration has already charged a handful of defendants with terrorism offenses since designating CJNG and seven other Latin American crime organizations as foreign terrorist organizations in February. Galeotti said several additional indictments related to CJNG and other cartels remain under seal.

“We are taking a division-wide approach to this,” Galeotti said. “We’ve got money laundering prosecutors who are not just focused on the cartels themselves … but also on financial facilitators. So when we’re taking this broad approach … that’s why I think we’ve had some of the really significant cases that we’ve had, and we’ve seen a very significant pipeline.”

González Valencia pleaded guilty to international cocaine trafficking in 2022. Authorities say he went into hiding in Bolivia in 2015 after leading “Los Cuinis” alongside his brothers for more than a decade. He was arrested in 2017 under the first Trump administration after traveling to Brazil, and was later extradited to the U.S.

“Los Cuinis” used “air, land, sea, and under-the-sea methods” to smuggle drugs bound for the U.S., prosecutors say. In one instance, authorities say González Valencia invested in a shipment of 4,000 kilograms of cocaine that was packed in a semi-submersible vessel to travel from Colombia to Guatemala. Other methods employed by “Los Cuinis” include hiding drugs in frozen shark carcasses, prosecutors say. He’s also accused of directing the killing of a rival.

He appeared in court wearing an orange jumpsuit and listened to the hearing through an interpreter over headphones. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell sealed part of the hearing, keeping the press and public out of the courtroom while lawyers argued over the sentence. It was not clear why the judge determined it had to be sealed. González Valencia’s lawyer declined to comment after the hearing.

In the other case, Gutiérrez Ochoa was wanted in Mexico on allegations that he kidnapped two Mexican Navy members in 2021 in the hopes of securing the release of “El Mencho’s” wife after she had been arrested by Mexican authorities, prosecutors have said. Authorities have said he faked his own death and fled to the U.S. to avoid Mexican authorities, and “El Mencho” told associates that he killed Gutiérrez Ochoa for lying.

“El Mencho’s” son, Rubén Oseguera — known as “El Menchito” — was sentenced to March to life in prison after his conviction in Washington’s federal court of conspiring to distribute cocaine and methamphetamine for U.S. importation and using a firearm in a drug conspiracy.

By COLLIN BINKLEY, AP Education Writer

A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to keep Harvard University from hosting international students, delivering the Ivy League school another victory as it challenges multiple government sanctions amid a battle with the White House.

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The order from U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston preserves the ability of Harvard to host foreign students while the case is decided.

Harvard sued the Department of Homeland Security in May after the agency withdrew the school’s certification to host foreign students and issue paperwork for their visas. The action would have forced Harvard’s roughly 7,000 foreign students — about a quarter of its total enrollment — to transfer or risk being in the U.S. illegally. New foreign students would have been barred from coming to Harvard.

The university called it illegal retaliation for rejecting the White House’s demands to overhaul Harvard policies around campus protests, admissions, hiring and other issues. Burroughs temporarily halted the action hours after Harvard sued.

Less than two weeks later, in early June, Trump moved to block foreign students from entering the U.S. to attend Harvard, citing a different legal justification. Harvard challenged the move and Burroughs temporarily blocked that effort as well.

The stops and starts of the legal battle have unsettled current students and left others around the world waiting to find out whether they will be able to attend America’s oldest and wealthiest university.

The Trump administration’s efforts to stop Harvard from enrolling international students have created an environment of “profound fear, concern, and confusion,” the university said in a court filing. Countless international students have asked about transferring from the university, Harvard immigration services director Maureen Martin said.

Trump has been warring with Harvard for months after it rejected a series of government demands meant to address conservative complaints that the school has become too liberal and has tolerated anti-Jewish harassment. Trump officials have cut more than $2.6 billion in research grants, ended federal contracts and threatened to revoke its tax-exempt status.

In April, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demanded that Harvard turn over a trove of records related to any dangerous or illegal activity by foreign students. Harvard says it complied, but Noem said the response fell short and on May 22 revoked Harvard’s certification in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program.

The sanction immediately put Harvard at a disadvantage as it competed for the world’s top students, the school said in its lawsuit, and it harmed Harvard’s reputation as a global research hub. “Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard,” the suit said.

The action would have upended some graduate schools that recruit heavily from abroad. Some schools overseas quickly offered invitations to Harvard’s students, including two universities in Hong Kong.

Harvard President Alan Garber previously said the university has made changes to combat antisemitism. But Harvard, he said, will not stray from its “core, legally-protected principles,” even after receiving federal ultimatums.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By JULIE CARR SMYTH

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A northeast Ohio man was arrested Thursday on allegations that he threatened and spewed antisemitic epithets at Republican U.S. Rep. Max Miller while the two were traveling on an interstate highway near Cleveland.

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Police in Rocky River said Feras S. Hamdan, 36, of Westlake, voluntarily turned himself in with counsel present and is awaiting an appearance in municipal court. A message was left with his lawyer seeking comment.

Miller, who is Jewish, called 911 while driving on Interstate 90 on his way to work Thursday. He reported that another driver was cutting him off, making profane hand gestures, showing a Palestinian flag and shouting death threats targeted at him and his 1-year-old daughter.

After an interview with police, Miller filed a complaint against Hamdan alleging aggravated menacing and sought a criminal protective order. Local police continue to investigate with assistance from the U.S. Capitol Police, the Ohio State Highway Patrol, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Attorney’s office and the Rocky River prosecutor.

The Ohio Jewish Caucus praised Rocky River police and extended their thoughts to Miller and his family, noting the incident followed by just days the politically motivated shootings in Minnesota, which left two people dead and two others injured.

“Enough is enough,” the all-Democratic legislative alliance said in a statement. “There is no place for this type of violence — whether it be political, antisemitic, or ideological — whatsoever. We believe we can solve our differences with humility, not hatred.”