Joe Biden criticizes Democratic donor Whitney Tilson, who is running for New York mayor

Whitney Tilson — the anti-Biden Wall Street investor who was among the first Democrats to call for the president to drop out of the 2024 race — is running for New York mayor, The Post has learned.

The 58-year-old financier, long known for his numerous newsletters, podcasts and CNBC appearances, filed paperwork late Monday promising to reduce crime by 50%, fight corruption and solve the refugee crisis, he told The Post Interview exclusively.

The married father of three said he decided to run in the June 2025 primary after Kamala Harris’ disastrous performance on November 5 – which he blamed in part on militant leftists who he says are destroying his party.

“Our government demands the highest taxes of any city in the country, but fails to deliver,” Tilson told The Post. “The vast majority of those leaving the city are low- and middle-income residents who are fed up with crime and disorder and can no longer afford to live here.”

It will be Tilson’s first foray into front-line politics, although he co-founded the Democrats for Education Reform in 2007, which sought to take on the powerful public school teachers unions, and sat on the board of a charter school in the South Bronx for more than two decades .

He joins a crowded field of candidates hoping to unseat incumbent Eric Adams, who is facing a federal indictment for allegedly accepting bribes, with most of his rivals running to the left of the current mayor.

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is strongly encouraged to join the race if Adams ends up not running.

Tilson, a multimillionaire and Warren Buffett supporter, says his campaign will join the Campaign Finance Board’s program, which matches donations at a ratio of 8 to 1, meaning a $250 donation will go to one candidate Brings in $2,000 in city tax money.

He added that his campaign would not accept a single dollar from any organization that does business with the Big Apple’s local government – he would rely solely on smaller donations to reach the legal cap of $7.9 million.

“By everyone else’s standards, I lead a comfortable life, but by the standards of my friends on the Upper East Side, I’m poor. I love Michael Bloomberg’s policies, but I don’t have his bank account. We will stick to the spending limits. No one is going to try to buy the mayor’s office.”

Tilson’s idea to target New York’s crime-ridden areas is to declare a state of emergency in these hot spots so authorities can “flood” these neighborhoods with more officers.

“Defund the police are the three stupidest words ever,” he told The Post. “50% of violent crime occurs in 3.5% of the city’s blocks.”

“I’m talking about increasing police presence and wanting to have judges around the clock issuing search warrants as quickly as possible.”

Tilson also criticized Joe Biden’s administration for making “a terrible mistake in actually opening the doors” and allowing millions of migrants to enter the United States.

“I am not a supporter of Donald Trump’s proposal to round up 12 million illegal immigrants and throw them out of the country. I think it’s practically impossible.

“However, I absolutely support Trump’s proposal to identify either dangerous individuals known to be gang members or anyone who commits serious crimes. I don’t understand why we as a country shouldn’t put them on the list for the next plane home.”

The former commander-in-chief of Kase Capital said he would maintain New York’s status as a sanctuary city but seek to repeal former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s 2014 and 2018 reforms that prevented officials here from cooperating with federal authorities.

The laws prohibit the NYPD, the Department of Corrections and the Department of Probation from cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement unless they are dealing with suspected terrorists or other serious risks to public safety.

“This was kind of a knee-jerk reaction from the radical left to Trump’s first election; They doubled down on the Sanctuary City stuff,” Tilson said.

Changes to the rules have always been bitterly opposed by left-wing members of the New York City Council.

But the veteran investor would work with the president-elect on “removing criminals from our city who are not citizens.”

The author and investment advisor also said he wants to change New York’s building codes to make it easier to build more affordable housing because the market is “so tight and ossified.”

“Because the cost of living is so high in general, most of it is rental or purchase housing… the price of everything depends on supply and demand,” he told the Post. “The demand is there and there has been almost no new supply.”

“We have a vacancy rate of 1.4% in the city. Housing costs are astronomical, yet it is nearly impossible to build new housing due to the incredible regulations and especially these NIMBY zoning restrictions that are not in my back yard,” Tilson added.

Tilson also said he would ban New York officials from accepting anything “more than a cup of coffee” to root out “the entrenched corruption” that he branded as the “blob” of City Hall and to curb “out-of-control spending.” .

“(Mayor Adams) turned out to be corrupt, and he hired a lot of people who turned out to be corrupt,” the former hedge funder added.

New York City “is run by career politicians who have been captured by an army of well-heeled insiders,
Activists, consultants, lobbyists, unions and special interests, all looking out only for themselves,” he said.

“I am a proud Democrat. Sometimes not so proud. But my goal is to improve my party and move my party from the radical left back to the center, because until we do that, the cities and states we control will continue to go in the wrong direction,” Tilson said .

“I’m running an insurgent campaign, going directly to voters and telling them what I believe, which is that the Democratic machine has overtaxed and underserved you for decades,” he added.