Whitney Tilson
Whitney Tilson (Democratic Party) ran for election for Mayor of New York. He lost in the Democratic primary on June 24, 2025.
Tilson completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Whitney Tilson was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He earned a bachelor's degree from Harvard and a degree from Harvard Business School. His career experience includes working in finance.[1]
Elections
2025
See also: Mayoral election in New York, New York (2025)
General election
General election for Mayor of New York
The following candidates ran in the general election for Mayor of New York on November 4, 2025.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Zohran Mamdani (D / Working Families Party) | 50.9 | 1,114,184 |
 | Andrew Cuomo (Fight and Deliver Party) | 41.4 | 906,614 | |
 | Curtis Sliwa (R / Protect Animals Party) | 7.0 | 153,749 | |
 | Eric Adams (Safe&Affordable Party / EndAntiSemitism Party) (Unofficially withdrew) | 0.3 | 6,897 | |
 | Irene Estrada (Conservative Party)  | 0.1 | 2,856 | |
 | James Walden (Integrity Party) (Unofficially withdrew) | 0.1 | 2,319 | |
 | Joseph Hernandez (Quality of Life Party) | 0.1 | 1,379 | |
 | Karen Stachel (Independent) (Write-in) | 0.0 | 7 | |
 | Montell Moseley (Independent) (Write-in) | 0.0 | 6 | |
 | Fátimazöhra Nouinou (R) (Write-in) | 0.0 | 4 | |
 | Dana York (Independent) (Write-in) | 0.0 | 3 | |
 | Jean Anglade (Independent) (Write-in) | 0.0 | 3 | |
| Total votes: 2,188,021 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Kyle Gutierrez (Independent)
- Gowri Krishna (Working Families Party)
- Abbey Laurel-Smith (Independent)
Democratic primary election
Democratic Primary for Mayor of New York
The following candidates advanced in the ranked-choice voting election: Zohran Mamdani in round 3 . The results of Round are displayed below. To see the results of other rounds, use the dropdown menu above to select a round and the table will update.
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Total votes: 1,071,730 |
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| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Deirdre Levy (D)
- Cleopatra Fitzgerald (D)
- Corinne Fisher (D)
Republican primary election
Republican Primary for Mayor of New York
The following candidates advanced in the ranked-choice voting election: Curtis Sliwa in round 1 .
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| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Fátimazöhra Nouinou (R)
- Kris Lord (R)
- Joe Alny (R)
- James Manning (R)
- Gonzalo Duran (R)
- Naomi Coley (R)
- John Harris (R)
- Ronen Nahom (R)
- David Rem (R)
- Darren Dione Aquino (R)
- Montell Moseley (R)
Conservative Party primary election
Conservative Primary for Mayor of New York
The following candidates advanced in the ranked-choice voting election: Irene Estrada in round 1 .
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| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
Working Families Party primary election
Working Families Primary for Mayor of New York
The following candidates advanced in the ranked-choice voting election: Gowri Krishna in round 1 .
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| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
Endorsements
Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Tilson in this election.
Campaign themes
2025
Video for Ballotpedia
| Video submitted to Ballotpedia Released May 15, 2025 |
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Whitney Tilson completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Tilson's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Tilson grew up in Tanzania and Nicaragua, the child of teachers who met and married in the Peace Corps. After earning his bachelor’s degree in government from Harvard College and an MBA as a Baker Scholar from Harvard Business School, Tilson has dedicated his career to impactful endeavors.
As a founder of Teach for America and the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, Tilson has been a longtime advocate for education reform and minority-owned businesses. And as an investment manager and writer for the past 25 years, he’s always fought for average Americans, warning them about the internet bubble, the housing crisis, and how Lumber Liquidators was poisoning its customers with toxic flooring.
Tilson is an avid mountaineer, climbing the Nose of El Capitan and many other great peaks. He has run seven 24-hour World’s Toughest Mudders, winning the 50+ age group twice and setting the all-time age-group record of 75 miles.
Tilson has a history of tackling urgent crises—from helping build and operate a COVID-19 field hospital in Central Park in early 2020 to traveling four times to Ukraine's front lines to deliver aid.
He and his wife Susan have lived in Manhattan for three decades, raising their three daughters there.- Whitney Tilson will ensure every New York City child has access to a world-class education, no matter their zip code.
We spend $40 billion per year, roughly $40,000 a kid. Yet our children are reading below those in Mississippi, which spends only $12,000 a year.
Tilson will turn our schools around by appointing a reform-oriented schools chancellor, unleashing our world-class charter sector, and applying the same accountability that charter schools have to all public schools.
Tilson will also negotiate hard with the teachers union so we pay the best teachers more, and protect the SHSAT exam for specialized high schools. - He will actually make crime illegal by punishing repeat offenders and hiring 5,000 new cops. He will ask NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who has made remarkable progress fighting crime, to stay on.
- He will lower rents by building 500,000 new housing units. He will achieve this by reforming zoning laws that make it illegal to build more housing and getting rid of red tape that discourages investment in new home construction.
As Democrats, we believe in government's power to help people. But no one can trust the government to take on more responsibilities if we're not discharging our current duties competently. The high cost of living and disorder in our blue cities is justifiably a source of shame for Democrats nationally. We must do better.
Scott Galloway, business professor and podcast host
PLACE NYC, a charter school advocacy group
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
See also
2025 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on June 4, 2025
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