Billionaire heiress Elizabeth Simons is pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into the Democratic Party’s campaign to retake the House — even as she bankrolls the socialist causes and candidates that have Democrats’ establishment leaders increasingly on edge.
Simons, who previously cut a $250,000 check to a super PAC backing Mayor Zohran Mamdani, has donated $354,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — the party’s chief House campaign arm — and thousands more to individual House candidates this election cycle.
The donations, ironically, put Simons behind the same Democratic leadership forces trying to prevent the party’s increasingly powerful progressive wing from taking over.
“I can see why a lot of the very woke left is lining up with Hakeem [Speaker Jeffries] because the goal is winning the House,” said one longtime Democratic fundraiser.
The DCCC is headed by Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), a member of the party’s centrist New Democrat Coalition, which is the under guidance of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is positioned to take power if Dems snatch back the House. Republicans rule by a narrow 218-212 majority.
Simons is hardly a conventional Democratic establishment donor — she has has poured millions into progressive education initiatives while backing candidates like Mamdani.
Simons is chairwoman of the board of directors of the Heising-Simons Foundation, which she co-founded with her husband, Mark Heising. Her father James Simons founded the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, and was worth an estimated $31.4 billion at the time of his death in 2024.
Last August, she cut her quarter million dollar dollar check to New Yorkers for Lower Costs, which made it the largest contribution to the group backing democratic socialist Mamdani’s bid against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Her “woke math” support came in the form of $1.7 million in contributions by the foundation to the Racial Justice in Early Mathematics Project at Chicago’s Erikson Institute.
She and three other California heavy hitters have given to such causes as anti-incarceration prosecutors and cash bail opponents — donating $22 million to ballot measures and candidates in the 2022 election cycle, according to Politico.
“Democrats aren’t just embracing a socialist, anti-police agenda, they’re being bankrolled to do it. Every Democrat backing this radical, pro-crime platform will answer to voters this fall,” blasted Emily Tuttle, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the GOP’s campaign arm.
Simons and three other California megadonors — Patty Quillin, Quinn Delaney and Kaitlyn Krieger — have contributed nearly $4 million to House Democrats and Democratic committees this election cycle, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission data.
Simons and her foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment on her contributions and strategy.
Quillin is founder of Meadow Fund, a donor-advised fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and is married to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. Krieger is married to Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger, and the pair run a nonprofit focused on criminal justice issues.
Delaney is founder and board chair of the Akonadi Foundation, which “supports the development of powerful social change movements to eliminate structural racism and create a racially just society.” She is married to California real estate developer Wayne Jordan.
During the same period, Quillin gave more than $300,000 to the DCCC — but also contributed $650,000 to the Working Families Party, which is one of several groups committed to taking down the party establishment.
The group crowed last week in a release about adding Michigan House primary winner Will Lawrence and US Senate primary winner Abul El-Sayed “to the growing list of WFP-backed candidates winning grueling primaries in purple seats.”
