The food delivery company DoorDash spent heavily in the past New York City mayoral campaign in an effort to defeat the eventual winner Zohran Mamdani and put into office Andrew Cuomo. Companies like DoorDash and Uber use drivers that they treat as independent contractors so that they are hard to unionize and can be exploited in many ways. Local governments can put in place regulations that can prevent such abuses and Mamdani had promised to enforce those rules.
Through that election cycle, DoorDash spent around $1.4 million against Mamdani and in favor of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The company was one of the top donors to the biggest outside spender in the election, a virulently anti-Mamdani super PAC called Fix the City.
…DoorDash contributed $1 million to Fix the City, a super PAC that spent $31 million in the mayoral election, accounting for close to half of the total outside spending in the race, largely funded by big corporations and billionaires. DoorDash made the payment in May 2025, at a time Mamdani’s campaign was gaining significant momentum ahead of the mayoral primaries in June.
Fix the City ran a barrage of ads, phone calls, text messages, and other forms of political communication seeking to prevent a Mamdani victory and portraying him as a politician with “radically dangerous ideas” and “a risk New York can’t afford.”
…DoorDash also gave $1.8 million to Local Economies Forward NY, a super PAC that contributed more than $360,000 to Cuomo’s campaign.
Aided by corporations like DoorDash and billionaires like Bloomberg, the overall independent spending by super PACs seeking to defeat Mamdani was more than eight times what was spent in his favor, according to The Intercept’s analysis of data published by the NYC Campaign Finance Board.
Why did they so want to defeat Mamdani? Because he had promised to regulate delivery apps to make sure that the workers they use are paid and paid fairly, things that the company did not do
Now the company has to pay well over $100 million in restitution to the workers and in fines.
The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection’s citywide investigation into DoorDash began after dozens of workers reported that the company had failed to pay them or had paid them late for work they had performed.
…DoorDash’s settlement followed an investigation by the NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. The Mamdani administration said that the investigation “found that DoorDash deliberately paid workers below the Minimum Pay Rate or not at all.”
Under the settlement with the city, the food delivery giant will pay over $115 million in worker restitution and over $16 million in civil penalties and administrative fines.
Two weeks after assuming office, the Mamdani administration warned delivery apps to comply with worker protections, sending notices to DoorDash and others, and announcing a lawsuit against the delivery app Motoclick.
Local governments can do a lot to improve the conditions of its workers and the general public in both small and big ways, which is what progressives like Mamdani are doing. That is why these businesses are trying so hard to defeat progressives.
Surely corporate America will conclude that they didn’t spend enough to stop Mamdami.
Correct me if I am mistaken, but isn’t Andrew Cuomo widely disliked? Maybe not ‘Ken Paxton’ disliked but even the oligarchs ought to have realised they had picked a flawed proxy.
@2 birgerjohansson: Not true, he generally had support as a Democrat. He was considered a good Democrat until the sexual harassment charges destroyed his reputation. In 2025 he was ahead in most primary polls and his loss to Mamdani was considered an upset.
After losing the primary he ran as an independent in the general election and still got a substantial portion of the vote.
For the companies it’s also a case of having to go with a viable candidate. The Republican never had a chance in the NY city election, it was always a choice of which Democrat was going to win.
The sad part on this is that a few years ago I read an article that rated the various major (U.S.-based) delivery apps on how well they treated their drivers, and I seem to recall DoorDash was actually the best of them. Which helps demonstrate what a low bar ‘the best’ is in this field.
Different countries have different setups, of course. DoorDash and UberEats both operate here in Canada, but there’s also a local operation called ‘Skip the Dishes’ which became part of the European JustEat/Takeaway conglomerate (which I believe also owns GrubHub in the U.S.). Admittedly it’s not terribly well regarded in terms of business ethics either.