Zohran Mamdani’s campaign is offering a rich response to a news story detailing how the very wealthy feel about the New York City Democratic mayoral nominee, tapping a star of “The Gilded Age” to perform a “dramatic reading” of the article.
In a video posted by Mamdani on Monday, Morgan Spector is seen dressed as his railroad tycoon character, George Russell, from the HBO historical drama that’s set in the late 19th century and follows the lives of New York’s mega-rich.
The 44-year-old actor then reads aloud selected passages from a New York Times story published last month titled “How Are the Very Rich Feeling About New York’s Next Mayor?”
“August in the Hamptons: Ocean breezes. Oversubscribed Tracy Anderson classes. Parking woes. And this year, with a New York City mayoral election looming in the fall, a freakout that the most sumptuous of summer staples hasn’t soothed,” Spector said in front of a background filled with books and lit candles.
“Even overpriced lobster salad can’t seem to make people out here feel better,” Spector said, reciting a political fundraiser quoted in the Times’s piece.
“What they are talking about is whether anyone, specifically former Gov. Andrew M Cuomo or Mayor Eric Adams, can beat the Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani,” Spector said in a pronounced manner.
“In June, he dared to say, on ‘Meet the Press’: ‘I don’t think that we should have billionaires,'” Spector said of Mamdani’s interview on the NBC program. Spector then eyed the camera directly and dramatically took a sip of a drink.
“The Hamptons is basically in group therapy about the mayoral race,” Spector said, again quoting the political fundraiser cited by the Times.
“In other words, the plutocrats are panicking,” Spector said, pulling from the same article.
Spector has praised Mamdani before, referring to him as a “fantastic candidate” before he officially clenched the Democratic nomination for New York mayor in July.
“He feels like a candidate who could have an amazing future as a left politician,” Spector told Rolling Stone.
President Trump has repeatedly ripped Mamdani, a New York state Assembly member who identifies as a democratic socialist, calling him a “communist lunatic.”
