Democrats are in the midst of a fun and terrifying transformation. Hating Trump is no longer sufficient to win elections in blue states. Democratic primary voters—specifically the party’s core constituency of college-educated white professionals—are demanding candidates who also hate Israel and capitalism. The 2028 presidential race is going to be an absolute clown show.
The least surprising aspect of the Democratic Party’s lurch toward left-wing radicalism is the pampered, privileged backgrounds of the politicians, donors, and operatives leading the charge.
Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City
Mamdani, 34, attended an elite public high school in New York before graduating from Bowdoin College (annual tuition: $74,000) with a degree in Africana studies and launching his short-lived rap career. He has never worked a real job. His father is a Harvard-educated Columbia professor who specializes in “post-colonialism.” His mother is a Harvard-educated filmmaker.
The anticapitalist, anti-anti-terrorist mayor married his wife, a Hamas-adjacent activist who also makes art, at his family’s ritzy private compound on Lake Victoria in Uganda.
Graham Platner
Widely hailed as an avatar of working-class anxiety, Platner is the grandson of a renowned architect best known for designing a $20,000 easy chair. His father, a real estate lawyer who served as an assistant district attorney in Maine, loaned him $200,000 to buy a house.
Though technically unemployed and living off disability benefits, Platner runs an oyster farm that primarily supplies his mother’s restaurant. He briefly attended the Hotchkiss School (annual tuition: $79,350).
Before a credible rape allegation derailed Platner’s campaign, a New York Times poll showed him trailing Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine) among working-class voters by 30 points.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.)
The shamelessly ambitious congressman has been at the forefront of his party’s left-wing transformation. “Free advice to the Israelis: It’s not a good idea to detain long-shot presidential candidates,” he told the New York Times after an overseas publicity stunt to distract from his enthusiastic support for an accused rapist. Earlier this year, he cosponsored a “wealth tax” bill with Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.).
Khanna, whose Silicon Valley district is one of the country’s wealthiest, is married to the daughter of a Cleveland auto parts magnate who utilizes an array of financial strategies the congressman has denounced as “wealth hoarding.” Khanna’s two children, who are still in elementary school, own stakes in three private golf courses, among other investments. His wife, who does not work, once bought a Range Rover that cost more than her husband’s annual salary.
The Khannas own a $6 million, 8,000-square-foot mansion in Washington, D.C., which they are selling in order to move closer to their children’s elite private school in Northern Virginia. A Washington Free Beacon financial analysis found that the family’s net worth could exceed $340 million.
Morris Katz
The widely celebrated Mamdani adviser is also credited with launching Platner’s candidacy. Katz, 27, is heir to a garment-industry fortune. His grandfather, Harry Jay Katz, was a notorious womanizer once described as a “playboy prince of darkness” with a “multi-million dollar trust fund.” His father is a playwright, and his mother is the celebrated author of left-wing picture books for toddlers.
Daniel Moraff
Moraff, 34, has degrees from Brown and Yale. His grandfather, Seymour Ginsburg, founded the predecessor to Toys “R” Us and served as the toy chain’s first president. Moraff helped Katz recruit Platner, whom the pair of trust-fund wunderkinds regarded as a “historic figure” destined to lead a socialist “revolution.” Like the former candidate, Moraff has also faced allegations of sexual misconduct. His fiancée’s engagement ring “opens up to a tiny comb” she uses to brush his beard.
Will Neff
Neff, 36, cohosts a podcast with anti-American influencer Hasan Piker. Last year, he accompanied Piker on a trip to China, where the “swagged out white boys” repeatedly praised Mao Zedong. Neff, a former BuzzFeed producer and son of a corporate executive who worked for the Rockefeller family, captained the squash team at the prestigious Blair Academy (annual tuition: $81,950).
Democratic donors
Inherited wealth is a key source of funding for left-wing politicians and affiliated activist groups. MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, have donated billions in support of left-wing causes such as “racial equity,” “climate justice,” and whatever it’s called when prosecutors repeatedly decline to punish criminals.
Alex Soros, the 40-year-old son of billionaire financier George Soros, is constantly taking selfies with prominent Democrats at his penthouse in Manhattan. “So proud to be a New Yorker!” he wrote after Mamdani won the mayoral election. “The American Dream continues!”
Leah Hunt-Hendrix, the “anti-elite” granddaughter of billionaire oil tycoon H.L. Hunt, helped Mamdani raise $4 million to fund his mayoral transition. An early supporter of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Hunt-Hendrix summered in the West Bank while completing her Ph.D. from Princeton under Professor Cornel West. She owns a Maltipoo named after Malcom X.
Pierce Delahunt (they/them) uses his share of the family outlet mall fortune to fight “intersectional oppression” by funding “anticapitalist” organizations. The self-described “Social Emotional Leftist Educator” earned his master’s degree from the Institute for Humane Education.
Fergie Chambers is the great-grandson of James M. Cox, the former Ohio governor and Democratic presidential nominee who founded what is now Cox Enterprises. After selling his share of the company for hundreds of millions of dollars, Chambers started a Marxist commune in Massachusetts that lasted a few years before going defunct. He fled the United States in 2024 amid a criminal investigation into his funding of violent anti-Israel protests.
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