With a leftist New York City politician appearing likely to be the Democratic mayoral candidate for the U.S.’ largest city, business interests are melting down over the prospects of his tax-the-rich platform aimed at improving basic services.

Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old assemblymember from Queens, took a commanding lead in the city’s Democratic primary Tuesday after running a campaign relentlessly focused on the cost of living and suggesting city-run groceries and free buses and childcare. For the city’s 1% and its business elite, it’s a five-alarm fire.

“The reaction of the business community to the victory of a member of the Democratic Socialists is a combination of surprise and deep concern,” Kathryn Wylde, CEO of the Partnership for New York City, told Fortune via email. Because very few have met him, “their views are defined by his campaign rhetoric and the negative ads cast against him,” she said.

Billionaire hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman offered to bankroll someone, anyone, who would run against Mamdani, implying his mayoralty would spur a flight with the ultrarich. “If 100 or so of the highest taxpayers in my industry chose to spend 183 days elsewhere, it could reduce NY state and city tax revenues by ~$5-10 billion or more, and that’s just my industry. Think Ken Griffin leaving Chicago for Miami on steroids,” he posted on X Thursday.

John Castimatidis, the owner of the grocery chain Gristedes, floated moving his corporate offices to New Jersey for the duration of Mamdani’s term, while financial analyst Jim Bianco accused New York of “electing to commit suicide by Mayor.” Governor Kathy Hochul, who has positioned herself as a pro-business moderate, preemptively nixed the idea of tax hikes, which the state would need to approve, saying, “I don’t want to lose any more people to Palm Beach.”

Talk is easy, moving is hard

Is New York City at risk of a billionaire exodus? History suggests no.

This isn’t the first time Wall Street mouthpieces and disgruntled business owners threatened to up and leave over a progressive mayor-elect. In 2013, Bill de Blasio won the mayoralty on a tax-the-rich platform, spooking high-income New Yorkers, but De Blasio met with Manhattan industry leaders, like former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and Rupert Murdoch, to win over the elites. The tycoons stayed, and so did Wall Street’s inhabitants. De Blasio, meanwhile, implemented a universal pre-K program that has proved to be an economic game changer and helped reduce income inequality.

Still, recent years have seen high-profile examples of billionaires leaving northern states for Florida or Texas, including Citadel founder Ken Griffin, who moved from Chicago to Florida in 2022, and billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who left New York for the Sunshine State in 2019. But for Icahn, who was 83 at the time, the move was “more about lifestyle than taxes,” Reuters reported.

The reality is, for individuals as well as for businesses, choosing a place to relocate involves many factors, including what the location has to offer, and what it costs.

“What makes New York attractive is we have an excellent labor market in terms of having great human capital; companies want to be here, and their employees like to be in New York City,” Ana Champeny, vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission, told Fortune.

Champeny added that high taxes play into the equation, as do other factors. Counting state and local taxes, New York City collects an average of $12,751 per capita, more than California’s $10,346. “We are well above the average, and we are significantly higher than high-tax states,” she said. “There’s always a risk that people are going to choose to relocate and businesses will choose to relocate, but increasing our taxes further would increase that risk.”

Back to the ’80s?

While not all businesses can physically pick up and leave, New York’s real estate sector fears the money will do exactly that if Mamdani pulls through on his promise to freeze rents—a factor that led the landlord lobby to pour millions into rival Andrew Cuomo’s primary campaign.

Kenny Burgos, CEO of the New York Housing Association, which represents landlords, argued further restrictions on rents would affect landlords’ ability to pay for repairs, making 40% of the city’s properties unaffordable and ultimately causing property owners to “walk away.”

“You will have vacant, deteriorated buildings, abandoned buildings, much like the Bronx had in the ’70s and ’80s,” he told Fortune. “You can’t pick them up and go anywhere else with them, so we are forced to contend with a potential administration who is threatening the very viability of these buildings.”

Indeed, landlords’ mass abandonment of properties during those decades forced the city and its tenants to take over much of the housing stock, leading to the creation of hundreds of thousands of low-cost apartments. For perspective, New York’s current mayor struggled to get approval for a program to build 80,000 new units over 15 years.

Partnership for New York City CEO Kathryn Wylde, for her part, is encouraging members to focus on the facts, noting that “much of Mamdani’s agenda cannot be accomplished by a mayor, but are the province of the Governor and state legislature. A mayor cannot, for example, raise corporate or income taxes,” she said. Partnership members plan to meet with the candidate, to which he is “very open,” she added.

Progressive economist Paul Krugman is one of many who thinks the possibility of a crime-fueled doom loop accelerating New York’s deterioration is overstated. Compared to the crime-ridden 1980s, “New York is one of the safest places in America, and probably as safe as it has ever been,” he said on Substack, recalling his own childhood growing up in the city’s suburbs when Times Square was full of sex shops and Columbia University deployed private security to protect faculty homes.

“New York’s problem now isn’t rampant crime or scary immigrants. It’s affordability,” he wrote. “And while we can and should debate the likely success of Mamdani’s proposals, affordability has been his main focus.”

Politics & Government Business Execs Ponder Making A Big Push To Reelect Eric Adams Real estate and corporate leaders who abandoned the mayor for Andrew Cuomo are now anxious about popular Democrat socialist Zohran Mamdani.

Mayoral candidates Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani and incumbent Eric Adams. (Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY, Alex Krales/THE CITY)

June 26, 2025, 2:44 p.m. The unexpected victory of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani as the presumed Democratic nominee for mayor confronts business leaders with a dilemma: Build bridges to a candidate they bitterly opposed as too far left or get behind Mayor Eric Adams bid for reelection.

All signs point to the Adams option, as the incumbent mayor launches his campaign as an independent after dropping his bid for the Democratic nomination. The day after this week’s primary election, leading real estate executive Scott Rechler said he would support Adams despite the many scandals that have engulfed the mayor.

“You want to have leadership that speaks to what New York is,” Rechler said. “It’s the capital of capitalism.” Another key business leader, who asked not to be named, put it more bluntly: “What do we have to lose?”

This is not the outcome the executives had expected. They had generally abandoned Adams as he had become snared in scandals and coalesced behind former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose independent super PAC Fix The City received millions of dollars from them. Rechler, a longtime friend and informal advisor to Cuomo, gave $250,000 to the PAC. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg donated a little more than $8 million. The problem for business leaders is twofold. Unlike progressives like Comptroller Brad Lander, they don’t know Mamdani and have no links to him. More importantly, his policies, especially calling for a four-year rent freeze on regulated apartments and an increase in taxes on both corporations and wealthy New Yorkers, are anathema to them.

“Mamdani’s past comments and campaign rhetoric raise serious concerns in the city’s business community,” said Kathy Wylde, CEO of the Partnership for New York City, which represents large companies. “Most do not know him, but fear he is not well informed on the fiscal and economic challenges facing our city.” Real estate interests make the same argument. “Based on candidates’ campaign platforms, in November voters will need to choose between practical or fanciful and extreme ways to continue the drop in crime, build much necessary housing and create good jobs,” said James Whelan, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, in a statement. Wylde and Whelan represent the city’s business establishment. The billionaires like Bill Ackman who have ridiculed Mamdani on social media are not part of the group. But they have the ability to pour untold millions into the November election if they want, which is what Ackman said Thursday he would do if he were convinced there was a viable candidate to oppose Mamdani. “New York City under Mamdani is about to become much more dangerous and economically unviable,” the Pershing Square CEO posted to social media on Wednesday.

The mayor could also expect large donations from crypto executives, who were among the biggest contributors to 2024 campaigns and whose interests the mayor has been trumpeting even before his election. In one sign of the uncertainty gripping business leaders, none of the local chambers of commerce responded to a request from THE CITY on their reaction to the election. One possibility is that executives could use allies of Mamdani as a way to connect, says Suri Kasirer, one of the most important lobbyists for business interests. “People like Brad Lander are going to be very important in building bridges,” she said. “And lots of people in the business community have a relationship with Brad.” She also believes executives could seek to influence the election of a speaker of the City Council who would be more in line with their views and could serve as a check on Mamdani were he to win.

Zohran Mamdani looks forward to the November election for NYC mayor

Josh Einiger has more on Mamdani, and what comes next for the presumptive victor in this year’s Democratic mayoral primary.

Josh Einiger has more on Mamdani, and what comes next for the presumptive victor in this year’s Democratic mayoral primary.

Josh Einiger has more on Mamdani, and what comes next for the presumptive victor in this year’s Democratic mayoral primary.

Josh Einiger has more on Mamdani, and what comes next for the presumptive victor in this year’s Democratic mayoral primary.

NEW YORK (WABC) — An election night stunner in the Democratic primary for mayor wasn’t a nail-biter win for Zohran Mamdani, but an apparent decisive victory that shattered any ranked-choice dreams for his challengers.

His campaign targeted and attracted young voters unfazed by the 33-year-old’s thin resume and lack of political, governmental and administrative experience.

The Queens assemblyman spoke exclusively with Eyewitness News anchor Bill Ritter on Wednesday afternoon,.

“It is my belief that every New Yorker should have what they need to live a dignified life. It shouldn’t be something that they can be priced out of. And that’s why, at the heart of our campaign is this focus on freezing the rent for more than 2 million rent-stabilized tenants, making the slowest busses in the country fast,” he said.

Mamdani, who would be the city’s first Muslim mayor and its youngest mayor in a century if elected, faced skepticism over the feasibility of some of his proposals and backlash over some of his comments on Israel.

A socialist mayor is cause for concern, said Kathryn Wylde of the Partnership for New York City.

She said the prospect is terrifying to the business community, and Mamdani will need to broaden his base to win in November and to govern, if he does.

“The problem is, when the solution is spending more government money, that means raising taxes. And that means prices go up, rents go up. There’s no magic bullet here,” Wylde said.

Joe Torres has more from Brooklyn Heights.

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in conceding defeat, congratulated and even applauded Mamdani for organizing an impactful campaign that inspired supporters to come out and vote on a scorching day that nearly reached 100 degrees.

Cuomo, the early front-runner in the race, conceded on Tuesday night, but he has not abandoned his bid to be New York City’s 111th mayor. He could run as a third-party candidate in November.

“I want to give some thought about the best way to help the party, but most of all, the best way to help the city,” Cuomo said.

Mayor Eric Adams is already running as an independent. He will formally announce his re-election campaign on Thursday on the steps of City Hall.

“He’s a snake oil salesman. He will say and do anything to get elected. I am looking forward to being on the campaign trail and showing New Yorkers we can’t go backwards,” Adams said during an interview with Fox News on Wednesday.

Wylde said despite his challenges, it would be premature to count out Adams.

“I delivered for the city. We are not going backwards. We are not going back to a place where we want to defund the police, don’t invest in jobs, where we believe we can make broken promises that we can’t deliver,” Adams said.

Mamdani countered:

“He has exacerbated a cost-of-living crisis. He raised the rent on more than 2 million New Yorkers by 9%. He increased water bills to the highest they’ve been in 13 years, and he sided with Con Edison when they wanted to increase gas and electric bills by $65 a month. This is someone who has put his thumb on the scale against working in middle-class New Yorkers. We need someone who will actually use every tool to provide relief to those same New Yorkers,” Mamdani countered.

Heading toward the fall, Mamdani is also sure to face a renewed wave of criticism from the city’s business and real estate communities, which have opposed his plans to hike taxes on the wealthy and poured money into Cuomo’s political action committees.

Republicans, too, have begun to pile on Mamdani, perhaps seeing a potential upset in the cards if the city’s more conservative voters turn out to oppose him in November.

Mamdani thrilled liberal voters with a campaign focused on lowering the high cost of living, but he would be the most left-leaning mayor in generations. He is pro-immigrant, a champion of Palestinian rights, and has proposed socialist-style programs including government-owned grocery stores.

The Republican mayoral candidate, Curtis Sliwa, called Mamdani “too extreme for a city already on edge.”

President Trump took aim at Mamdani on social media, calling him “a 100% Communist Lunatic.”

“We’ve had Radical Lefties before, but this is getting a little ridiculous,” the president wrote. “Yes, this is a big moment in the History of our Country.”

Some Democrats think so, too.

Lawrence Summers, the Treasury Secretary under former Democratic President Barack Obama, aired dire concerns on social media.

“I am profoundly alarmed about the future of the (Democratic Party) and the country” because of the New York City results, Summers wrote.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who had endorsed Mamdani, scoffed at such Democratic critics and instead called for them to follow Mamdani’s lead.

“In many ways, Mamdani’s campaign really shows the direction in which the Democratic Party should be moving. And that is not to worry about what billionaires want, but to worry about what working-class people want,” Sanders told The Associated Press.

The Vermont senator warned Republicans against premature celebration.

“People like Mamdani are their worst nightmares,” Sanders said of the GOP. “It’s one thing for the Democrats to be strongly against Donald Trump. It is another thing to give working class people something to vote for – a positive agenda.”

Mamdani has had to sidestep a field of landmines of his own making, centered on his policies and political rhetoric.

He called the New York Police Department “racist, anti-queer and a major threat to public safety” in a 2020 social media post. As a mayoral candidate, he softened his stance and said that the police served a vital role. Still, he pushed for the creation of a new public safety department that would rely more on mental health care services and outreach workers.

On Israel’s war in Gaza, he used the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions in the conflict. In the primary’s closing stretch, Mamdani also defended the phrase ” globalize the intifada,” which he described as “a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights.”

He also faced criticism over his identity as a democratic socialist, a label he refused to back away from.

“I think of the words of Dr. King, who decades ago said, “call it democracy or call it democratic socialism.” There must be a better distribution of wealth for all of God’s children in this country. And it gets to the heart of the matter, which is inequality, and my belief that every New Yorker should have what they need to live a dignified life,” Mamdani told Bill Ritter. “It shouldn’t be something that they can be priced out of. And that’s why, at the heart of our campaign is this focus on freezing the rent for more than 2 million rent stabilized tenants, making the slowest buses in the country fast.”

After keeping quiet on Mamdani throughout his primary campaign, three of New York’s top Democrats, Gov. Kathy Hochul, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, praised the progressive upstart but stopped short of endorsing him after his victory seemed assured.

The Democratic leaders, largely considered moderates, applauded his focus on affordability and said they had spoken with him, although none explicitly said they would support him in the November general election.

Some information from ABC News and The Associated Press

Eric Adams, the New York mayor, launched his re-election campaign on Thursday, days after democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani sent political shockwaves through the New York and national Democratic party by leading in its mayoral nomination for November’s election.

Adams, who did not mount a campaign for the Democratic nomination as his popular support cratered due to a corruption scandal, will now run as an independent candidate. Mamdani’s decisive win against the former governor Andrew Cuomo could see Adams get wider appeal in his, though much will depend on if Cuomo also runs in the November race.

“I will fight for everyday New Yorkers who just want their city to darn work for them,” Adams said at a press conference on the steps of city hall, contrasting himself with Mamdani, whom he attacked as a “silver spoon” socialist.

“It’s a choice between a candidate with a blue collar and one with a silver spoon,” he said. “I’m not interested in slogans, I’m interested in solutions. I don’t work with special interests, I work for the people.”

Adams said his record as mayor stands above the noise of politics, and his record surpasses his critics. “There are some critics who spend more time attacking than achieving. They have a record of tweets, I have a record on the streets, a record of results.”

Adams’ formal entry into the race comes as the city’s business community has reacted harshly to Mamdani’s nomination and policy proposals that include a freeze on rents, free bus services, city-run groceries and higher taxes on the wealthy. They may now shift their support from Cuomo to Adams.

The business community is “struggling to understand the implications of Mamdani’s victory”, Kathy Wylde, CEO of Partnership for New York City, said in an interview with Semafor.

Wylde acknowledged that Mamdani’s focus on affordability tapped into “the financial insecurity young people feel and their anger that the established political class has done nothing to fix it. It’s not an endorsement of socialism but rather a rejection of the status quo, which threatens to bring on the kind of political instability that business hates.”

Adams’ reputation took a beating when he was indicted on federal corruption charges – charges that were later dropped in an apparent deal with the incoming Trump administration. Since Trump returned to the White House, Adams has developed an ever closer political relationship with the US president – dismaying many Democrats.

Adams met with Wall Street business leaders on Wednesday, including Daniel Loeb, a hedge fund manager, who are considering throwing their weight behind him to try to stall Mamdani, whom Adams called a “snake-oil salesman”.

The support of Wall Street, which was previously backing Cuomo, suggests an alliance between Adams’ base of Black and Jewish voters against Mamdani’s young and wealthy white Brooklyn-based supporters.

Loeb posted to social media, “It’s officially hot commie summer,” after Mamdani’s Tuesday night Democrat party primary win.

In any second term, Adams promised to continue to bring down crime, launch a citywide mental health initiative, advance vocational training and expand affordable housing. He promised that the campaign “is going to be the most interesting political campaign in the history of the city”.

The unexpected victory of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani as the presumed Democratic nominee for mayor confronts business leaders with a dilemma: Build bridges to a candidate they bitterly opposed as too far left or get behind Mayor Eric Adams bid for reelection.

All signs point to the Adams option, as the incumbent mayor launches his campaign as an independent after dropping his bid for the Democratic nomination.

The day after this week’s primary election, leading real estate executive Scott Rechler said he would support Adams despite the many scandals that have engulfed the mayor.

“You want to have leadership that speaks to what New York is,” Rechler said. “It’s the capital of capitalism.”

Another key business leader, who asked not to be named, put it more bluntly: “What do we have to lose?”

This is not the outcome the executives had expected. They had generally abandoned Adams as he had become snared in scandals and coalesced behind former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose independent super PAC Fix The City received millions of dollars from them. Rechler, a longtime friend and informal advisor to Cuomo, gave $250,000 to the PAC. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg donated a little more than $8 million.

The problem for business leaders is twofold. Unlike progressives like Comptroller Brad Lander, they don’t know Mamdani and have no links to him. More importantly, his policies, especially calling for a four-year rent freeze on regulated apartments and an increase in taxes on both corporations and wealthy New Yorkers, are anathema to them.

“Mamdani’s past comments and campaign rhetoric raise serious concerns in the city’s business community,” said Kathy Wylde, CEO of the Partnership for New York City, which represents large companies. “Most do not know him, but fear he is not well informed on the fiscal and economic challenges facing our city.”

Real estate interests make the same argument.

“Based on candidates’ campaign platforms, in November voters will need to choose between practical or fanciful and extreme ways to continue the drop in crime, build much necessary housing and create good jobs,” said James Whelan, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, in a statement.

Wylde and Whelan represent the city’s business establishment. The billionaires like Bill Ackman who have ridiculed Mamdani on social media are not part of the group. But they have the ability to pour untold millions into the November election if they want, which is what Ackman said Thursday he would do if he were convinced there was a viable candidate to oppose Mamdani.

“New York City under Mamdani is about to become much more dangerous and economically unviable,” the Pershing Square CEO posted to social media on Wednesday.

The mayor could also expect large donations from crypto executives, who were among the biggest contributors to 2024 campaigns and whose interests the mayor has been trumpeting even before his election.

In one sign of the uncertainty gripping business leaders, none of the local chambers of commerce responded to a request from THE CITY on their reaction to the election.

One possibility is that executives could use allies of Mamdani as a way to connect, says Suri Kasirer, one of the most important lobbyists for business interests.

“People like Brad Lander are going to be very important in building bridges,” she said. “And lots of people in the business community have a relationship with Brad.”

She also believes executives could seek to influence the election of a speaker of the City Council who would be more in line with their views and could serve as a check on Mamdani were he to win.

The Mamdani campaign has reached out to business groups like REBNY and the Partnership for New York City to set up meetings. But a campaign spokesperson blasted those saying they will oppose him.

“What these handful of billionaires and business executives are so scared of is our pklan to tax them and the most profitable corporations a little bit more to fund an agenda to lower the cost of living for all New Yorkers,” said spokesperson Andrew Epstein. “Zohran is committed to fighting for an affordable and safe city for everyone, regardless of whether or not you have the money to buy corrupt politicians.”

Wylde convened a call Wednesday afternoon with business leaders to assess the results.

“We discussed the situation and the options for the general election and agreed to see what happens in the coming days,” she said.