Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman is wading deeper into the New York City mayoral race, blasting Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa for refusing to drop out and accusing him of effectively delivering City Hall to far-left Democrat Zohran Mamdani.

Ackman, the founder of Pershing Square Capital, posted data Friday from the prediction market Polymarket, showing Mamdani’s odds soaring to nearly 90%, far ahead of independent candidate Andrew Cuomo and Sliwa.

“It was not Zohran Mamdani’s debate performance,” Ackman wrote on X. “It was Curtis Sliwa’s statement after the debate that he is not leaving that has tipped the odds to 90% for Mamdani.”

Ackman, who has publicly backed Cuomo’s centrist independent bid, said the only way to block Mamdani’s path to victory is for Sliwa to step aside. The billionaire’s intervention marks one of the rare instances of a Wall Street heavyweight openly weighing in on a city race.

Sliwa isn’t budging. His campaign fired back late Friday, rejecting the notion that any billionaire should dictate the race.

“Billionaires aren’t going to decide the outcome — it’s the voters,” said campaign spokeswoman Maria Sliwa. “Curtis is on a major party line just like Mamdani. If anything, Cuomo should drop out, not Curtis.”

Sliwa, who founded the Guardian Angels crime-prevention group, has anchored his campaign on law and order and says he’ll stay in the race “to give Republicans a choice.”

But the standoff is quickly becoming the campaign’s most volatile flashpoint. Ackman’s warning echoed Cuomo’s charge earlier Friday that Sliwa’s presence is splitting the anti-Mamdani vote and ensuring a socialist victory.

“Curtis cannot win,” Cuomo said on WABC radio’s Sid & Friends in the Morning. “He was put on by the Republican county chairs because he’s a spoiler. They want Mamdani to win so they can say, ‘Look how crazy the Democrats have become — they elected a socialist who’s anti-cop, anti-business, antisemitic.’ It’ll help them politically, but it’ll kill the city.”

Cuomo sharpened his attack by invoking Mamdani’s platform, warning that the 33-year-old assemblyman’s plans to “defund the police” and close Rikers Island without replacement jails would trigger “a mass exodus from this city.”

Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist backed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders, has already rattled the city’s political establishment with his surprise primary win over Cuomo and his rising appeal among progressive voters.

If elected, he would become New York’s first Muslim mayor, and like the most left-wing leader ever to run the nation’s largest city.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)