{"id":273713,"date":"2021-06-14T01:24:38","date_gmt":"2021-06-13T22:24:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/maya-wiley-rails-against-billionaires-despite-george-soros-backing\/"},"modified":"2021-06-14T01:24:38","modified_gmt":"2021-06-13T22:24:38","slug":"maya-wiley-rails-against-billionaires-despite-george-soros-backing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/maya-wiley-rails-against-billionaires-despite-george-soros-backing\/","title":{"rendered":"#Maya Wiley rails against billionaires despite George Soros backing"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Maya Wiley rails against billionaires despite George Soros backing<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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Mayoral hopeful Maya Wiley has been endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and other fellow Democrats who regularly decry the power of special interests and big money in politics \u2014 even though she has for decades been bankrolled by hedge-fund billionaire George Soros.<\/p>\n

Soros, the 90-year-old liberal kingmaker often criticized by Republicans and others for his outsize political influence, has ties to Wiley dating back to the 1990s, and recently pumped $500,000 into an independent expenditure group backing Wiley\u2019s City Hall campaign, on top of direct donations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we don\u2019t come together as a movement, we will get a New York City built by and for billionaires, and we need a city for and by working people,\u201d said Ocasio-Cortez, a self-described democratic social<\/a>ist representing parts of Queens and the Bronx, in endorsing Wiley earlier this month. \u201cSo we will vote for Maya #1.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wiley, a former MSNBC contributor and legal counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, tweeted the quote<\/a> last week in soliciting campaign donations \u2014 to further stock a war chest already directly and indirectly aided by Soros.<\/p>\n

A spokesman for Soros confirmed to The Post that the deep-pocketed investor has contributed $500,000 to the independent expenditure group 1199 for Maya, a joint venture with 1199SEIU, an influential healthcare workers union that has endorsed Wiley.<\/p>\n

Last week, the union announced a $1.2 million ad-buy<\/a> backing Wiley, paid for by \u201c1199 for Maya.\u201d <\/p>\n

As of Sunday afternoon, the lofty sums were not yet reflected on the web site of the New York City Campaign Finance Board, an independent agency dedicated to helping New Yorkers track the flow of money in local politics.<\/p>\n

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\"Maya
Maya Wiley worked for George Soros\u2019 Open Society Foundations in the late 1990s.<\/figcaption>
Robert Miller<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Those figures also don\u2019t include about $16,000 in direct contributions to Wiley\u2019s campaign by Soros, members of his family and associates through his Open Society Foundations, as well as by 1199SEIU, public campaign finance records show.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is the belief that billionaires are bad for society \u2014 except for when they\u2019re giving to my campaign,\u201d Doug Muzzio, a veteran political science<\/a> professor at Baruch College, told The Post of the app<\/a>arent hypocrisy. \u201cThat\u2019s the logic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wiley\u2019s ties to Soros date back to the late 1990s, when she worked for nearly two years for the Open Society Foundations, according to her LinkedIn profile<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2002, Wiley founded the Center for Social Inclusion, an organization dedicated to \u201cending racial inequities through structural reform,\u201d as Wiley wrote on the profile.<\/p>\n

Both that group<\/a> and the Tides Foundation<\/a>, a bicoastal progressive activist organization for which Wiley has additionally worked, have also been backed in part by hefty Open Society grants, according to releases from the philanthropic group.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Harlan Mandel, Wiley\u2019s longtime partner, serves as CEO of the Media Development Investment Fund, yet another organization funded by Soros\u2019 Open Society<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the Democratic primary election \u2014 which saw early voting begin Saturday \u2014 Wiley has faced flak for several of her stances on public safety and policing.<\/p>\n

She has been blasted by the NYPD\u2019s unions for a campaign ad in which she said cops don\u2019t think her and fellow black New Yorkers \u201cdeserve to breathe,\u201d and gave a non-committal answer when asked on the debate stage if she would take guns away from police.<\/p>\n

Amid a deluge of criticism, Wiley later tried to amend her answer, insisting that she did not intend to strip<\/a> cops of their service weapons.<\/p>\n

She has also been slammed as a hypocrite for Mandel\u2019s financial contributions towards private security patrolling her Brooklyn neighborhood \u2014 even as she presses to \u201cdefund the police.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked by The Post about the seeming contradiction between her campaign-trail disdain for billionaires and her long-running ties to \u2014 and big-bucks funding by \u2014 Soros, Wiley would only say that she can\u2019t control who chooses to back her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t comment on independent expenditures because I\u2019ve been very clear that I have no control over them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"Maya
Mayoral candidate Maya Wiley leaving her Brooklyn home on June 7, 2021.<\/figcaption>
Gregory P. Mango<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Despite his seemingly bottomless coffers, billionaire Soros paid no income tax between 2016 and 2018, according to a recent, wide-ranging investigation on tax inequality by ProPublica<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But, piggybacking off of the \u201cTale of Two Cities\u201d rhetoric of her other former boss \u2014 de Blasio \u2014 Wiley has backed efforts to hike taxes on New York\u2019s wealthiest.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, she spoke out in support of an Albany bill that would raise the state income tax rate to 7.01 percent for single earners clearing $300,000 annually, and as high as 13.81 percent for those making $100 million or more.<\/p>\n

At an SEIU1199 rally last week in Brooklyn, Wiley touted that effort when pressed by a Brookdale Hospital nurse on why she sees 40 percent of her income go to taxes while billionaires pay, relatively speaking, little to nothing.<\/p>\n

The answer left the nurse, who declined to give her name, unimpressed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a typical politician\u2019s response,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Aaron Feis<\/em>\n <\/div>\n