Native New Yorker and billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, founder and chief executive of the investment management company Pershing Square Capital Management, is an outspoken critic of Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who has said “billionaires shouldn’t exist” and has proposed raising taxes by 2 percent for those earning more than $1 million.
Ackman has reportedly spent $1.25 million in advertising campaigns to try to stop the Democratic Socialist Mamdani from being elected Mayor next week.
After Argentinian President Javier Milei‘s party won a critical midterm election on Monday, Ackman wrote on social media, “Argentina rejects socialism while NYC embraces it. The world is upside down. Let’s stop it in NYC before it is too late.”
Argentina just needed a $40 billion bailout. https://t.co/BmW3cJ8mhn
— Melanie D’Arrigo (@DarrigoMelanie) October 27, 2025
Democratic New Yorkers are slamming Ackman for the comparison. As Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health — an organization advocating for universal, single-payer healthcare — replied: “Argentina just needed a $40 billion bailout.”
Another replied, “We just bailed Argentina out with $40B that will never be paid back. That’s socialism on steroids.”
[Note: On Monday, while the federal government enters the fourth week of a shutdown and SNAP benefits are about to expire for millions of Americans, President Trump said he might send more money to Argentina, on top of the $40 billion already used to bail out the South American country.]
In the video below from Bloomberg TV, Ackman warns about the perils of Mamdani’s potential electoral victory while speaking in Saudi Arabia — an absolute monarchy based on Islam where the king is chief of state, head of government, and the commander in chief of the military, and where no officials at the national level are elected.
“Having a socialist mayor would be catastrophic”
Bill Ackman, CEO of Pershing Square, tells the FII event in Saudi Arabia that he is firmly against Zohran Mamdani’s campaign to be the mayor of New York https://t.co/JkvN2sFpOw pic.twitter.com/wPQSShh5CG
— Bloomberg TV (@BloombergTV) October 28, 2025