Exclusive | Billionaire heiress who backed Mamdani now shoveling cash to House Dems in hopes of party takeover

Billionaire heiress Elizabeth Simons is pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into the Democratic Party’s campaign to retake the House — even as she bankrolls the socialist causes and candidates that have Democrats’ establishment leaders increasingly on edge.Simons, who previously cut a $250,000 check to a super PAC backing Mayor Zohran Mamdani, has donated $354,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — the party’s chief House campaign arm — and thousands more to individual House candidates this election cycle.The donations, ironically, put Simons behind the same Democratic leadership forces trying to prevent the party’s increasingly powerful progressive wing from taking over.“I can see why a lot of the very woke left is lining up with Hakeem [Speaker Jeffries] because the goal is winning the House,” said one longtime Democratic fundraiser.The DCCC is headed by Rep.Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), a member of the party’s centrist New Democrat Coalition, which is the under guidance of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is positioned to take power if Dems snatch back the House.

Republicans rule by a narrow 218-212 majority.Simons is hardly a conventional Democratic establishment donor — she has has poured millions into progressive education initiatives while backing candidates like Mamdani.Simons is chairwoman of the board of directors of the Heising-Simons Foundation, which she co-founded with her husband, Mark Heising.Her father James Simons founded the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, and was worth an estimated $31.4 billion at the time of his death in 2024.Last August, she cut her quarter million dollar dollar check to New Yorkers for Lower Costs, which made it the largest contribution to the group backing democratic socialist Mamdani’s bid against former Gov.

Andrew Cuomo.Her “woke math” support came in the form of $1.7 million in contributions by the foundation to the Racial Justice in Early Mathematics Project...