Politics

Can a socialist mayor and Wall Street coexist? New York is about to find out.

Published

8 months ago

November 6, 2025

NEW YORK — Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is facing a deeply skeptical business community that has long called the shots in New York. But don’t go looking for the moving vans just yet.

Gotham’s business elite are taking a wary — but open-minded — view of the young democratic socialist who wants to hike their taxes, quotes Eugene Debs and believes billionaires shouldn’t exist.

Kathy Wylde, the president of the business-backed Partnership for New York City, compared the relationship between her constituents and the mayor-elect to the seven stages of grief.

“We’re moving toward acceptance,” Wylde said.

Still, contingency plans are being prepared by some, even as the city’s wealthiest residents consider how to court the incoming mayor.

“Business people, smart business people, going into this are thinking, ‘Watch your ass, you’re in combat,’” said John Catsimatidis, a billionaire oil executive, grocery store tycoon and ally of President Donald Trump. “I talked to him once. He’s a young kid … He never ran anything. If he came in with a job application I wouldn’t hire him to run a supermarket.”

Catsimatidis, who unsuccessfully pressed Republican Curtis Sliwa to get out of the mayoral race to aid former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s bid, is weighing his business options.

“What I’m going to do is reduce my exposure to New York,” he said. “I have a lot of businesses in New York, I have a lot of assets in New York. Remember the old expression, ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket?’”

Mamdani will take office on Jan. 1, leading a city of 8.5 million residents that serves as the world’s financial and media capital — a money powerhouse that many of the planet’s wealthiest people call home. Now, those same business leaders — long accustomed to sympathetic mayors from Michael Bloomberg to Eric Adams — are adjusting to a leader who promises to upend the city’s economic order.

The mayor-elect wants permission from state officials to raise taxes on corporations and uber-rich New Yorkers to pay for his campaign promises like free child care and buses. His embrace of far-left democratic socialism supported by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders is anathema to the capitalists who have long wielded power in New York City.

The city’s monied class sank millions of dollars into super PACs in a futile effort to stop Mamdani’s insurgent candidacy, which was built on a populist appeal to voters outraged by the cost of living in a deeply expensive city. He did so with a volunteer army of thousands and millions of dollars in relatively modest donations.

Mamdani this week signaled he’s willing to talk with and work with some of the biggest of the biggest capitalists, name checking JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon during Wednesday morning remarks.

“It is critically important that we start to embody a style of leadership that does not demand agreement across every single issue,” Mamdani said. “In order to even have a conversation, we need to be able to deliver for New Yorkers, and that means to meet New Yorkers, even those with whom we have any disagreements. So I look forward to having those kinds of meetings, be it with Jamie Dimon or be it with other business leaders.”

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani met with many business leaders after his upset primary victory and has expressed an openness to working with finance and real estate titans despite policy differences.

Business titans are counting on New York’s moderate Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, to block Mamdani from raising their taxes. And some met with him after he won the primary and others are seeking meetings now — determining whether the untested mayor-elect will be rigidly orthodox or open to compromise.

Wylde views Hochul, who endorsed Mamdani but is heading into her own tough reelection battle next year and wary of raising taxes, as a kind of fiscal firebreak.

The governor opposes hiking income and business taxes. Any deal to do so must be approved by the Democratic-dominated state Legislature and signed by Hochul.

“The governor has done a great job of reassuring the business community since the primary that she will not allow anything crazy on taxes and that she fully appreciates that New York has to stay competitive,” Wylde said.

People in real estate, meanwhile, have been comforted by Mamdani’s embrace of veteran City Hall hands like Maria Torres-Springer, who served three mayors, and respected city planning czar Dan Garodnick, who have worked well with the industry. Others have taken note of the mayor-elect’s increased attention to bringing down landlord costs as part of the equation for a multi-year rent freeze that was a pillar of his campaign platform.

“There isn’t going to be an exodus of people. There are definitely people that are going to leave, but I don’t think that’s going to be a trend — a Wall Street trend or a real estate trend — if in fact the city stays safe and prosperous,” said MaryAnne Gilmartin, president and CEO of development firm MAG Partners and a member of the Real Estate Board of New York, the industry’s leading trade group. “If he pays close attention to that, I think people will and should give him a chance.”

Even those who poured money into the unsuccessful efforts to stop Mamdani from winning are admitting he was onto something in a campaign that focused largely on cost of living issues facing New Yorkers.

Scott Rechler of RXR, a major developer, said in a statement Wednesday he’s “ready to work” with the mayor-elect. Rechler donated $250,000 to a pro-Cuomo super PAC in the Democratic primary, and reacted to Mamdani’s surprise win in June by expressing hope he could be beat in the general election.

Steven Roth, the CEO of Vornado Realty Trust, one of the city’s largest commercial landlords, also put money into a political action committee aimed at halting Mamdani. But, in an earnings call with investors hours before the polls closed Tuesday, he was sanguine. Roth said he was yet to see any pullback in demand for customers because of a Mamdani mayoralty.

“I’m an optimist and believe that everything will work out for the best,” Roth said.

Bill Ackman, the Trump ally and hedge fund titan who was one of the single largest donors in the mayoral race and opposed Mamdani, congratulated him on election night in a social media post.

“If I can help NYC, just let me know what I can do,” he said.

In a follow up post, Ackman doubled down on the conciliatory tone. “Mamdani won a decisive election,” he wrote. “He is going to be our mayor for the next four years.”

Dimon, who reportedly reached out to Mamdani on Wednesday, did a sitdown interview with BLN alongside Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, a lifelong Democrat who left the party and is running for Michigan governor as an independent. Asked if he could imagine himself doing a sitdown alongside Mamdani, Dimon said he would help someone if they wanted his help, but didn’t give a ringing endorsement.

“I’ve seen a lot of mayors, governors, political leaders — some grow into the job,” Dimon said. “And I’ve seen a lot who swell under the job, they never get around to it. They are so befuddled with politics and ideology. I’m hoping any mayor does what’s right to help the citizens of that city.”

Antonio Weiss, a Treasury official in the Obama administration and investor at the New York-based firm SSW Partners, said Mamdani is “substantive on policy yet open to learning more and to hearing additional perspectives.”

“Mamdani has made a serious effort to expand his coalition during the general election, and that has meant sitting down with people who don’t necessarily agree with him,” Weiss said.

The mayor-elect was a little-known state lawmaker when he launched his campaign and insiders didn’t know him like they knew the past several mayors who, despite widely different politics, were city hall veterans, like Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams.

One view is that Mamdani’s key platforms — free buses, freezing rent — were planting flags to show he’ll take bold steps but his ultimate policies will be more nuanced.

“What he’s signaling,” said Tom Wright, the head of the vaunted Regional Plan Association, “is he wants to fix the problem.”

Sam Sutton contributed to this report.

Politics

Birthright citizens score

Published

33 minutes ago

July 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The scorer of the opening American goal against Bosnia, Folarin Balogun, is eligible to play for the United States only because airline employees in New York kept his pregnant mother from returning to London until her son was born.

As our Riya Misra wrote recently, it makes Balogun not only the leader of a reinvigorated U.S. attack but a poster child for a cause validated yesterday by the U.S. Supreme Court: that the 14th Amendment of the Constitution guarantees citizenship to anyone born within its orders.

Read Riya’s story about Balogun and the debate over birthright citizenship here.

Politics

Why the World Cup is a royal affair

Published

2 hours ago

July 1, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Spotted at World Cup matches so far: King Felipe VI from Spain, King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima from the Netherlands, and Norway’s Princess Ingrid Alexandra and Prince Sverre Magnus. The European royals have been out in force supporting their national teams.

Hardly spotted yet: Europe’s elected leaders.

European heads of government only tend to make appearances at matches in person during later stages of the tournament. For example, Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, attended the 2018 final in Moscow and traveled to Qatar in 2022 for the semifinals and finals.

This is perhaps because a monarch attending the national team’s match is viewed as apolitical, whereas a prime minister making the same trip can invite criticism over priorities and use of public funds.

Indeed, this year, Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney had to reject opposition claims that his trip to Massachusetts to watch his country play Haiti was a taxpayer-funded “World Cup jolly.” Portuguese President António José Seguro also attended the Colombia vs. Portugal game in Miami last Saturday evening.

As the tournament heads toward the quarterfinals and beyond, expect more European politicians, whose countries remain in contention, to start appearing in the stands. So no Friedrich Merz or Rob Jetten…

Politics

‘It’s not very often that you get, like, really great news from Bosnia’

Published

3 hours ago

July 1, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

No matter the result on Wednesday night, the roughly 60,000 Bosnian Americans who call St. Louis home — reportedly the largest population of Bosnians outside Bosnia and Herzegovina — will have something to celebrate. Many, however, are unapologetically cheering for their homeland when it takes on the country they now call home.

“They are like dressing up in the jerseys, singing the anthem,” said Ibro Tucakovic, a Bosnian immigrant who arrived in the U.S. in 1998 and became the first Bosnian immigrant to seek elected office in Missouri. “Looking at my daughter, when we won against Qatar, she was crying. And so basically they, they can see the happiness in their parents’ eyes, because it means so much to us. So the kids are basically just going nuts over it.”

Mirhad Hasanovic, a Bosnian immigrant who came to the U.S. in July 2001 and is now a legislative staffer running to represent parts of St. Louis’s South County in the Missouri statehouse, said it was “unfortunate” that his two favorite countries are playing against one another so early on in the tournament.

“For Bosnians, this is huge,” he said. “We’re a very small country, so just to be able to be at the World Cup and compete is an achievement in itself. “Kids grow up at the age of three or four, they start playing, they start watching, they start going to all the leagues, so the excitement level is out the roof.”

For refugees whose memories of Bosnia revolve around war and genocide, its first-ever appearance in the knockout rounds has become a way to reconnect with the country they fled.

“It’s not very often that you get, like, really great news from Bosnia,” said Adna Karamehic-Oates, director of the Center for Bosnian Studies at Saint Louis University. “People want good stories that come out of Bosnia, and that’s why they’re so happy.”