The same millionaire donor who dumps cash into pro-congestion-pricing causes is also a major backer of Robert Kennedy Jr.’s campaign and funder of murky causes that peddle anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.
Wealthy hedge-funder Mark Gorton, 57, of Manhattan recently told The Post that he is probably the largest funder of transportation-related causes in the Big Apple centered around getting cars off the streets. He is a major proponent of the recently paused congestion-pricing scheme to toll drivers $15 for entering Manhattan below 60th Street.
“I’d had this vision of a livable city where people get around by transit and bike and the private car is very very limited,” Gorton said after attending a pro-congestion-pricing rally Saturday.
Gorton — the founder of LimeWire, a onetime file-sharing service that now specializes in AI-generated music — is the majority supporter and founder of OpenPlans, which is the parent of StreetsBlog.
Now the current CEO of Tower Research Capital, a hedge fund, Gorton also has contributed to the Riders Alliance and ReInvent Albany.
Both groups have joined in on rallies against Gov. Kathy Hochul’s “indefinite pause” of the congestion toll in recent weeks and are part of a larger coalition working with New York City Comptroller Brad Lander that is threatening to sue to force the state to move forward with the plan.
“When I started doing this, almost no one was saying it. You were a real freak if you went up at your community board and said, ‘I think we should have fewer cars in the neighborhood,'” said Gorton, touting his 25-year record of advocating for transportation causes. “People looked at you like you are a Commie or something, like it was just not done.”
He said that these days, he hangs out with bike activists over stuck-up Wall Street types.
Gorton also spreads his fortune to causes well outside the mainstream, including pumping millions of dollars into RFK Jr.’s presidential campaign and anti-vaccine advocacy groups.
Gorton maintains his conspiratorial beliefs that vaccines cause autism, the motive behind President John F. Kennedy’s assassination was covered up, and the response to the COVID-19 pandemic was a psychological operation to expand digital censorship.
“I saw that there was an opportunity to fight the pharmaceutical health side of the deep state and the forces of corporate capture because such a large civic response had been activated over the course of the pandemic,” Gorton said.
He said his advocacy against vaccines drew him to RFK Jr., who has taken the same stance.
Gorton considers the exiled Kennedy and independent presidential candidate a friend and “kindred spirit” over their collective questioning of the JFK assassination, too.
The well-heeled donor is co-chair of a multimillion-dollar super PAC — American Values 2024 — the main group supporting RFK Jr.’s campaign, and he served as Kennedy’s interim campaign manager at one point.
John Kaehny, executive Director of Reinvent Albany, which advocates on behalf of good government causes, calls Gorton a “mad scientist” but stresses that there’s no animus between the LimeWire founder’s work with RFK Jr. and Reinvent’s focus, especially on congestion pricing.
“We don’t agree with Mark Gorton on everything, but on congestion pricing, we do,” Kaehny told The Post. “His other presidential sentiments, feelings, support is really not at all part of our conversation with him. It’s just something he does.”
Khaney pointed out that Gorton doesn’t hide his identity when contributing to causes, like some other millionaire types that hide behind donor-advised funds and other shadowy avenues.
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Meet Mark Gorton, the anti-vax millionaire donor behind congestion pricing and RFK Jr. - New York Post
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