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A prominent super PAC aimed at taking down mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani tried to pass off stock photo models as everyday New Yorkers in a series of ads — but the images weren’t fooling anyone.
New Yorkers for a Better Future’s photo fail targeted social media users with ads painting the Democratic nominee as nice but not up to the challenges of the job — but ironically the supposedly average city slickers had appeared in other paid promotions.
“He sounds nice. But Mamdani has zero experience,” says a woman in one of the ads identified as Robinette, 55, from the Bronx — but the same photo of Robinette is seen on a website providing information to caregivers of dementia patients.
Another ad shows a woman, Ling, 51, from Chinatown, asserting, “He’s a good man with bad ideas. That’s why I won’t vote for Mamdani.” Yet, the same woman is featured on a website in a completely different ad.
The super PAC is backed by Capitol Partners’ Jeffrey Leb and other real-estate bigwigs like Silverstein Properties.
The group has brought in nearly $2 million in donations since October — but has failed to move the needle on driving votes away from the Queens socialist who critics have slammed for radical left policy proposals and a longshot pushes to increase the corporate tax and hike taxes on the wealthy.
“Are we still supposed to listen to these ‘titans’ of industries who are fearful of Mamdani killing the city while they can’t manage to do anything without being a national embarrassment?” a Democratic operative asked The Post.
A PAC supporting candidate Andrew Cuomo, Fix the City, which has raised over $27 million since the former governor announced his candidacy as made similar missteps.
Shortly before the primary, Mamdani called out the Bill Ackman-backed group for allegedly sending out draft campaign mailers that intentionally darkened and lengthened his beard.
An August report by government watchdog group Citizens Union found that despite $46 million dollars being spent through PACs across seats in the city’s primary races — most of the groups’ preferred candidates did not win their prospective seats.
“They failed. In most competitive races where Super PACs invested heavily in support of
or in opposition to a specific candidate, their preferred candidate lost,” the report read.
Now with Mamdani leading the polls in November’s general election by a commanding 20-percentage points — it appears some mega-spending groups have been backed into a corner.
“After months of backroom scheming and millions of dollars in real-estate-backed money, all the billionaires can come up with are stock images and fake quotes,” said Mamdani spokesperson Dora Pekec,
“The strength of Zohran’s movement is undeniable and New Yorkers are making it clear they’re ready for a city they can afford,” Pekec said.
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