What’s a girl got to pay to get to third place?
🚨 A special evening Feed Me report.
A few days ago,
’s David Federico reached out to me with a peculiar text: “I wasn’t sure if this would merit an investigation, but it turns out Elizabeth Lewinsohn’s donations to her own campaign are far more out of the ordinary than I expected.”Now, if you frame up a text like that to me, and of course I’m going to say I want a full investigation. But first I had to look up who Elizabeth Lewinsohn was.
Lewinsohn (D) is running in the 2025 primary for New York City Council District 1 (Lower Manhattan), which means covering neighborhoods like Lower East Side, Tribeca, Dimes Square, Chinatown, SoHo, and the Financial District. If those are neighborhoods you’re interested in, you should be reading
.She’s a former NYPD Counterterrorism policy chief, and according to AMNY, her top priorities are, “public safety, affordable housing, green space, and compassionate solutions to our unhoused crisis.”
She has also put $519k of her own money into her campaign.
Below, Federico explores how that happened, and why it’s unusual.
What does $519,000 get you in Lower Manhattan these days? Probably not a one-bedroom but it might just be enough for third place in the local City Council race.
Since May, District 1 candidate Elizabeth Lewinsohn pumped $519k into her campaign war chest through eight self-donations ranging from $50k to $99k. The 11th hour blitz catapulted her to first in total dollars raised in District 1, outraising the incumbent and favorite by a margin of 7-to-1.
Lewinsohn has now technically raised more money than any other New York City Council candidate in 2025 and more than all her District 1 competitors combined (yes, private and public funds included).
Even across all 2025 New York City races, including mayoral candidates, Lewinsohn is 11th among highest raising candidates and has raised more private dollars than notable mayoral candidates Adrienne Adams, Michael Blake, and Jessica Ramos.
But don't politicians donate money to themselves all the time? Candidates in this cycle have self-donated a total of $665k, and a whopping 83% of that was from Lewinsohn to… Lewinsohn. Mayoral candidate and former hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson did contribute approximately $15k to his own campaign but big political players Zohran Mamdani, Brad Lander, and Adrienne Adams, for example, only donated $250 to their own individual campaigns. Cuomo? Eric Adams? Both zero.
“Zohran Mamdani, Brad Lander, and Adrienne Adams, for example, only donated $250 to their own individual campaigns. Cuomo? Eric Adams? Both zero.”
Can't say for certain what she had in mind when she donated a half-million to herself over the course of a month, but this is not the first time Lower Manhattan’s had a candidate so generous with their own campaigns. Dan Goldman’s successful run for Congress in 2022 demonstrated that the benefits of a well self-funded campaign (a cool $2mm of his own fortune and additional $600k from family) still outweigh the backlash from some progressive voters. Susan Damplo’s unsuccessful run for City Council District 2 in 2021, however, not so much. Over six months, Damplo donated $220k to her own campaign. She finished 8th with 1.6% of the vote.
All three – Damplo, Goldman, and Lewinsohn – came from law backgrounds, and although Lewinsohn never practiced, she met her husband, Jonathan Lewinsohn, during their time at Yale Law School in the 2000s. She’s since dived into non-profit and community work.
This is where you might find yourself asking, Where’s the cash coming from? Which is where we’ll direct you to her husband Jonathan Lewinsohn’s LinkedIn. Lewinsohn is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Diameter Capital Partners, a credit hedge fund that manages $18B in assets. Prior to that, he spent time at some of the best of the best hedge funds – Centerbridge, Anchorage – and was a law clerk at the U.S. Courts of Appeals after graduating Yale Law (smart man). $500k is nothing to this family.
So, as it stands, it remains puzzling what the game plan is. As I alluded in my intro, Ms. Lewinsohn is deemed to be a potential 3rd place finisher given the steadfast support incumbent Chris Marte (running on an anti-gentrification, anti-displacement platform) and abundance agenda-pilled challenger Jess Coleman*** (who is running a pro-housing development platform) have received from their respective ideological camps. A late campaign start in December 2024 — and a less than active social media presence since — don’t tell a compelling story either. And despite a $665k campaign budget, Ms. Lewinsohn either declined public funds or has still not qualified for public matching funds, which require independently raising $5k and getting a minimum of 75 in-district donors.
What's the plan here? Is anyone rich enough to tell me what the upside of this is?
In the meantime, the Lewinsohn campaign has now fully joined the flood of advertising materials into the Lower East Side. May was all about Marte and Coleman on lampposts, small business windows, and mailboxes, now Lewinsohn's flyers are the latest addition to the neighborhood's famous paper and tape mosaics.
Thanks for reading and remember to vote! Early voting is on through Sunday, June 22.
*** Breaking news as of the hour this was sent: Elizabeth and Jess have cross-endorsed each other.
Notes:
No public polling has been done on this race, so this is a self-assessment of the situation derived from 1-1 conversations and online commentary
Elizabeth’s office has not yet responded to a request for comment.
All numbers are as of June 18th 2025 and sourced from the Follow the Money tool found on the NYC Campaign Finance Board website
Sources:
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The way I thought this was about third places ie the spa
Hell yeah love this hyperlocal election reporting