That the extremely rich donor class involved in American politics might give out large sums of money to people they don’t necessarily agree with but instead just want stuff from is not, obviously, any sort of revelation. Though perhaps the practice has diminished somewhat in recent years as the parties have pushed apart on the normalcy-fascism spectrum, there are still plenty of examples of our millionaire and billionaire overlords raining donations down across candidates and parties, hoping only for the proverbial foot in the door of the office of whatever one of those recipients finds itself on top.
And yet. And yet it is rare, among those impossibly rich, consequence-shielded Masters of the Universe, to hear the sort of glaring, absurdist honesty that investor Mark Gorton offered up to the New York Times in the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s dominant win in the New York mayoral primary this week. “I feel like people misunderstood my $250,000 for Cuomo for real enthusiasm,” Gorton said.
Relatable! Relatable as hell! Whomst among us has not thrown a quarter of a million dollars toward a candidate we considered only vaguely palatable? A candidate that, apparently, might be reasonably considered our third choice in the primary, considering that we now are willing to support the winning Democrat in the November general election only because Brad Lander, our first choice in Tuesday’s primary, cross-endorsed him in direct and explicit opposition of the guy we gave the quarter-million dollars to? Whomst!
Perhaps Gorton is more inclined toward openness and honesty than most, as the founder of the golden age file-sharing program LimeWire — well, along with Tower Research Capital, “one of the leading computerized trading firms in the world.” This willingness to just say, out loud, how the pay-to-play schemes of the ultra-rich in politics works, is notable nonetheless.
“It was basically, ‘Oh, looks like Cuomo is coming back. We don’t want to be shut out. Let’s try and get on his good side,” he said. Okay!
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