(TMI) David Sarota, July 31, 2020

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has stood firm against intensifying pressure to avert massive budget cuts by raising taxes on the many billionaires who live in his state. As that campaign to tax billionaires got a recent boost from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York’s Democratic state legislative leaders, Cuomo has insisted that he fears that the tax initiative will prompt the super-rich to leave the state. On Wednesday, he doubled down, warning that if the state tried to balance its budget through billionaire tax hikes “you’d have no billionaires left.”

In defending billionaires, Cuomo is protecting a group of his most important financial boosters: More than a third of New York’s billionaires have funneled cash to Cumo’s political machine, according to a TMI review of campaign finance data and the Forbes billionaire list. 

New York disclosure records show that 43 of New York’s 118 billionaire families have donated money to Cuomo’s campaigns and the state Democratic Party committee he controls. In all, those billionaires and their family members have delivered more than $8 million to Cuomo’s political apparatus since his first gubernatorial campaign. That includes large donations from billionaires in the last few weeks as Cuomo has fought to stop tax hikes on billionaires.

Eleven of Cuomo’s billionaire donors have delivered $100,000 or more to his campaign and/or the New York State Democratic Party’s housekeeping fund. They include hedge fund titans James Simons ($3.6 million), Stanley Druckenmiller ($1 million) and Daniel Loeb ($114,000); real estate moguls Alexander Rovt ($321,000) and Stephen Ross ($80,000) and investor Ronald Perelman ($197,000). Ross, Simons and Simons’ wife delivered a total of $115,000 to Cuomo this month.

Source: TMI