Ex-Hedge Fund Manager Whitney Tilson Will Run for NYC Mayor

(Bloomberg) -- Former hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson plans to run for New York City mayor, joining a crowded field of Democrats seeking to succeed the embattled Eric Adams next year.

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“We need to shake up our city government and abandon a lot of terrible ideas, which can only be done by an outsider – a businessperson, not a career politician,” Tilson said in a letter announcing his candidacy Tuesday. “We need a leader who can unify New Yorkers and bring fresh thinking.”

Tilson, 58, who used to run hedge fund Kase Capital Management, is active in New York philanthropic circles. He sits on the advisory board of Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Foundation, and serves on the board of the KIPP Academy charter school in the South Bronx.

In the lengthy letter, Tilson pledged that if elected his priorities would include cutting violent crime, addressing high housing costs, reining in spending and improving city schools.

Tilson, a longtime Democratic donor, said he had never contemplated running for any political office until three weeks ago, after Vice President Kamala Harris, whose candidacy he supported, lost the presidential election.

“I believe a major reason she – and we – lost is that Americans looked at New York City (and San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Newark, etc.) and the solid-blue states in which they’re located, where Democrats have one-party rule, and thought to themselves: ‘I don’t want any part of that. If that’s what the Democratic party is offering – high taxes, crime and cost of living, lousy schools, the woke mob running amok, etc. – I’d rather vote for Trump, in spite of my many misgivings.’ What a damning indictment!” Tilson wrote.

When one of his friends suggested he should run for mayor, he initially laughed off the suggestion, he said in an interview. But when he looked at the New York Times polling and the betting market for the current field of candidates, he figured he might have a chance.

“I don’t think I’m likely to win, but I don’t think it’s impossible,” he said, even though he won’t seek the backing of the powerful teachers union and has no experience in politics or in overseeing a large organization. Kase Capital, which he ran for almost two decades, never managed much more than $200 million.

Growing Field

Tilson is the latest potential entrant in a rapidly growing field of candidates considering challenging Adams in the June Democratic primary, which has swelled to include City Comptroller Brad Lander, former New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer and Queens State Senator Jessica Ramos, among a host of others.

Tilson isn’t the first Wall Street veteran to seek the New York City mayoralty — in 2021, former Citigroup Inc. banker Ray McGuire ran in the Democratic primary, scooping up celebrity endorsements from Jay-Z and Spike Lee, and raising millions in private contributions. But McGuire came in seventh in the primary, ultimately earning just 3% of all ballots cast in the city’s ranked-choice voting system. And of course Mike Bloomberg, owner of Bloomberg News, served three terms as mayor, from 2002 through 2013.

Unlike both McGuire and Bloomberg, who didn’t participate in the city’s public campaign financing system, Tilson said he would join the city’s public campaign matching funds program, which matches every $1 donated by a city resident with $8 in city funds, up to $250. In the letter announcing his candidacy, Tilson said he couldn’t afford to self-fund his candidacy, but he also pledged not to accept any donations from people or organizations with business before the city.

In September, Adams became the first sitting mayor in modern New York City history to be indicted on federal corruption charges. A former police captain who was elected in 2021 on a pledge to address then-swelling crime rates, Adams has since struggled with low poll ratings and an exodus of top staff.

(Updates with details from a Tilson interview in seventh and eighth paragraphs.)

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