Mamdani Won on Affordability. Can He Win Over NYC’s 1 Percent?

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My vision for New York City in twenty twenty five looks like Saran Mandani.

New Yorkers across the city went to the polls Tuesday to cast their ballots for mayor. On Manhattan's Upper East Side. We spoke to voters motivated by a wide range of issues. Mamdani is very like pro immigrant, pro LGBTQ plus community.

The biggest thing for me has been corruption that I've seen.

But New York City is too big a city for somebody to run that has never had a full time real job.

No one's getting free groceries, and no one's getting free runt it does. More than two million New Yorkers came out to vote for mayor, something that hasn't happened since nineteen sixty nine, and when the results came in, more than fifty percent of voters went for Zoran Mamdani, the thirty four year old Democratic socialist whose platform was laser focused on one key issue, affordability.

Tonight, you have delivered a mandate for change, a mandate for a new kind of politics, a mandate for.

A Mamdanni won every borough but Staten Island He won in precincts that were majority Black and majority Hispanic, and precincts where most residents were renters and public transit users. Now, as mayor elect, Mamdanni faces a new challenge governing a city of eight and a half million people, including the vocal minority of New York's wealthiest who opposed him and poured millions into political action groups trying to defeat him.

We will put an end to the culture of corruption that has allowed billionaires like Trump to evade taxation and exploit tax breaks, but with.

Their outsized influence on the city's politics, economy, and revenue. Mam Donnie has also tried to make peace with the cities one percent, and there are signs that several of those big name high net worth skeptics are already coming around. Last month, Jamie Diamond, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, said at a conference led by Fortune magazine that he was ready to work with Mam Donnie if he won.

If he becomes mayor, I will call him an or for my help.

Does may not agree with him?

And at a news conference today, Mam Donnie said he's ready to sit down with people like Diamond too.

So I look forward to having those kinds of meetings, be it with Jamie Diamond or be it with other business leaders, and continuing to show that our affordability agenda is an agenda that would also benefit businesses across the city.

I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the big take from Bloomberg News today. On the show, New York City's uber wealthy tried to stop or on mam Donnie's rise. Now they're processing his victory. Can Mamdani come to the table with billionaires and business leaders while delivering on the policies and principles that got him elected? New York New York the Big Apple, the city that never sleeps, and the city where money never sleeps.

This is a really great place to get rich.

Emily Flitter covers economic and social inequality for Bloomberg. She says, from twenty fifteen to twenty twenty three, the city minted nine thousand new million dollar earners, a rate of three per day. By twenty twenty three, there were almost thirty five thousand New Yorkers making a million or more a year. But if New York is a good place to get rich, it's an even better place to get richer.

The billionaires who already live in New York City saw their combined net worth grow ninety percent in the last nine years.

Mam Donnie ran on a platform highlighting the fact that along with that growing wealth has come a growing wealth divide. Here he is on NBC's Meet the Press in June.

I don't think that we should have billionaires because, frankly, it is so much money in a moment of such inequality.

New York City has some of the deepest income inequality in the country. According to an analysis of census data by the Center for New York City Affairs, the top twenty percent of New Yorkers have total incomes thirty three times larger than the bottom twenty percent, and Mam Donnie's campaign promised to tax those at the top to provide more public services for everyone.

The sort of three pillars of his campaign are fast and free buses, freezing the rent, and free childcare for children between six weeks and five years.

Old.

Bloomberg City Lab reporter Fola Akinneby recently profiled Mam Donnie for BusinessWeek and looked at why his campaign caught on.

It speaks to the underlying stress and the underlying weight of the conditions in the city. Right And when you look at at the same time the stock market doing what it's doing, and folks at the top getting wealthier, and you see a federal push sit to cut.

Taxes, and the number of millionaires in the city has grown as grown as well.

I think people start asking questions about where they fit in.

But as Mom Donnie campaigned on affordability for all, he also tried to win over the cities one percent in New York. That's people making at least nine hundred thousand dollars a year. They're a big driver of the city's economy because of how much money they pay an income and property taxes. Mam Donnie recognized that a path to victory in New York included getting them on board, so he reached out to Catherine During.

The year before the primary election, I had met with Zoran a few times, had introduced him to a couple business leaders.

Catherine is the president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, a trade group representing the city's largest employers across industries like real estate and banking.

Although there was not, frankly, a lot of interest in his candidacy in the business community, no one had basically ever heard of him. If they had, it was that he was a socialist and a marginal character.

After mam Donnie's dramatic primary win, that changed, Catherine set up a series of meetings between Mamdani and the city's business leaders to talk about their visions.

For the city.

Which policy areas have been most concerning or divisive to business leaders, and where are there areas of agreement.

So I think in general their areas of agreement are that there is an affordability crisis in this city and that we need to bring costs down, and disagreement on how do we solve that, with the business community thinking we do not solve that by increasing government spending, because that will just put a new tax burden on everybody.

Many business leaders viewed mom Donnie with skepticism, thinking he was young and relatively inexperienced. Some believed his proposals were unrealistic or even posed a fundamental threat to their financial interests, and Catherine said people in her network also had other concerns.

One source of great concern is coming from members of the Jewish community that feel the strong importance of the Jewish homeland. The other areas are in terms of support for charter schools, mayoral control of the schools, most importantly public safety.

Big name, wealthy New Yorkers largely backed former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. A Bloomberg News analysis found that pro Cuomo and anti mam Donnie PAX raised over twenty six million dollars between the June primary and yesterday's election, fueled by donations from investors like Bill Ackman and Dan Loeb, as well as Michael R. Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP.

There's been a lot of outside money flowing into this race, and when you look at the advertisements and the messages that are coming from these outside groups, these outside packs, they've been pretty dark pictures of what the city could look like under mayor mam Donnia. They say that, like you know, crime is going to spike and the city is going to change.

Mam Donni won't be able to achieve his key affordability proposals alone, because the city doesn't fully control its own per strengths. He's proposed paying for things like free buses and universal childcare with increased corporate and income taxes. But the power to set those tax rates and the operation of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is held in the state's capital, Albany, so.

Free buses would require likely some money from the MTA. That the campaign puts a cost it around seven hundred million dollars a year. The city has one hundred and sixteen billion dollar budget. The city might be able to afford it on its own, but he again would probably need some state funding for that. Universal childcare is a

Hoko later said on a podcast that she still didn't plan to raise taxes, but that she was hearing people's voices. Catherine Wilde says the business community, meanwhile, sees tax hikes as a non starter.

Personal and corporate tax increases are great concerns since we're the highest tax city in the country. So a New Yorker today, in a middle or upper middle income family, fifty five percent of their paycheck goes to the government in state, federal, and city taxes. And if you go to Florida or Texas or Tennessee, you end up paying thirty eight percent because they don't have state and local

How would the business leaders like to see Mom Donnie address some of those key affordability issues, if not by raising taxes or going to the state for more money.

By reducing the size of government. We have three hundred thousand employees of New York City government, the most in history. I think that the city spending is mostly on labor, and those expenses have gone up more than fifty percent over the past decade. So I think most people in the private sector think we could get along with less government.

The fear that wealthy New Yorkers might leave if they're tax too much or if the city isn't run in the way they want is one that mum donnie's critics repeated in the lead up to the election. In late October, Bill Ackman posted on x that mumdannie's quote anti business policies, including higher corporate taxes, will kill NYC jobs and cause companies to flee. And here's the Heritage Foundation. Stephen Moore on Fox Business News in September.

If mcdonnie wins, Wall Street will no longer be located in Manhattan, it will move.

So now that mom donnie's one is Wall Street moving to Florida. That's after the break. If New York's billionaires and multimillionaires were to pack up and leave tomorrow, it

That's not something that any of these owners or investors in real estate can just pick up and walk away with.

Sure, there are plenty of financial professionals who've already been lured to South Florida, earning it the nickname Wall Street South, But Emily says, when it comes to earning potential and lifestyle potential, New York wins every time.

In twenty twenty, four Wall Street South financial industry employees earned one hundred and eighty two thousand dollars on average, whereas if you were working in finance in Manhattan last year, you earned an average of four hundred and thirteen thousand dollars. And I'm actually I'm from Miami. I love Miami, so I don't want to be dissing Miami, but it just doesn't have as much stuff as New It has fewer fancy restaurants, it doesn't have as many really high end schools.

Emily says, if you really want to know how New Yorkers might react to a tax increase, you can look back to what happened after New York increased its top personal income tax rates in twenty twenty one from eight point eighty two percent to nearly eleven percent for the highest earners overall.

The data showed that people did not leave New York in significant numbers because of the tax hikes. It's as simple as.

That, and well.

Catherine Wilde, the head of the Partnership for New York City, cautions that higher taxes could make the city less competitive. She says, the fears about Mom Donnie have been overblown.

Certainly. I don't think people who are knowledgeable are going to pick up and leave before they know that something really devastating is going to happen, and there's no indication that that's the case. Much of the rhetoric around this mayoral election have suggested that a Mom Donnie victory will result in the city falling into deep decline, that it will be like the nineteen seventies. People should know that if the budget in the city goes out of whack.

Catherine says. Another example of Mom Donnie's openness to compromise was his decision to keep Police Commissioner Jessica Tish in her position if you want. Is it fair to say that one of the takeaways of this conversation at least his Wall Street don't panic.

Absolutely. My message would be, don't panic, but be prepared to roll up your sleeves and help our next mayor solve the affordable crisis, which will be good for business, for Wall Street and for the residents of New York City.

As Mom Donnie enters, Gracie Manson, buoyed by the support of a diverse coalition of New Yorkers, Bloomberg City Labs, Fola Kennedy says, Mam Donnie will continue to walk this fine line. Can he come to the table for compromises with big business while staying true to the values that have made him so popular.

I think that's what's going to define his administration, right, like whether he's able to sort of like thread some of these needles.

I'm wondering whether you think the business community was caught off guard by the rise of Mom Donnie and what they should take away from the way that he's resonated with voters.

I think a lot of people were cut off guard by Mam Donny's rise, and it speaks to again how much his message of affordability is resonated. This is a guy that throughout the campaign has stuck to that talking point. If you ask him any question, he always returned to affordability as part of his answer to the question, and I think it shows the power of that kind of messaging.

Already, it seems like Wall Street is coming around. Bill Ackman, the billionaire investor who'd been warning of an imminent exodus of the wealthy if Mom Donnie won, posted on X last night tagging Mom Donnie quote congrats on the win. Now you have a big responsibility. If I can help NYC, just let me know what I can do. And even President Donald Trump, speaking earlier today, followed up criticism of mom Donnie by saying, we want New York to be successful.