New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani just made the biggest mistake of his young career.
Well, not bigger than allowing 18 people to freeze to death on New York’s sidewalks because of his deadly ideology. And probably not bigger than ignoring the city’s yawning budget deficit before promising freebies he cannot deliver. But taking on one of Wall Street’s big boys, and then getting squashed for it, ranks right up there.
Yes, New York’s mayor had the bad judgment to make Ken Griffin, CEO and founder of Citadel, one of the nation’s most successful financial firms, the poster child for his “tax the rich” political crusade.
Griffin punched back, apparently to the surprise of the young socialist.
On April 15, Mamdani posted a video he had filmed outside the building that includes Griffin’s 24,000-square-foot penthouse to pitch his pied-a-terre or “foot on the ground” tax, saying, “This is an annual fee on luxury properties worth more than $5 million, whose owners do not live full-time in the city. Like for this penthouse, which hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin bought for $238 million.”
Speaking days later at an investment conference in Oslo, Griffin linked the mayor’s video to today’s “demonizing” of business leaders, which he tied to other acts of violence. “What upset me was the personal attack,” he said. “Not too far from where I live in New York is where they assassinated the CEO of UnitedHealthcare.”
Once again, Mamdani failed to do his homework. Had he checked, he would have discovered that Griffin has a history of punching back.
After all, in 2022 Griffin moved Citadel’s long-time headquarters from Chicago to Miami, blaming the soft-on-crime policies and high taxes imposed by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) for the move. Even former Obama aide David Axelrod was appalled, writing, “Whatever your politics, you should consider this a loss to the city and state, not just because of the taxes lost, but because of Griffin’s philanthropy has been expansive and impactful.”
In response to Mamdani, Citadel COO Gerald Beeson wrote a memo to the firm’s employees listing the contributions Griffin, Citadel and Citadel Securities have made to New York City. Beeson’s email highlighted that principals of the firm and its 2,500 employees have paid nearly $2.3 billion in city and state taxes over the last five years. In addition, Griffin himself had donated $650 million in charitable contributions to organizations, including the Robin Hood Foundation and Success Academy Charter Schools, as well as other important institutions.
In short, this is the kind of person and company that New York City very much needs and should be working to keep.
Mamdani has not gotten that message. Griffin announced at the recently concluded Milken Conference in California that he is reconsidering his firm’s planned expansion in New York. He may instead simply double down on Miami.
Beeson’s April 23 internal email detailed the cost to New York of that potential decision: “We are about to commence the redevelopment of 350 Park Avenue, creating 6,000 highly paid construction jobs and supporting more than 15,000 permanent jobs in Midtown New York. … The project — if we move forward — will involve more than $6 billion in spending,” he concluded.
Griffin said the firm’s New York expansion was under review thanks to Mamdani’s “creepy” and “weird“ video. The mayor doesn’t seem to understand that to tax the rich, you need to keep them around. He apparently also doesn’t get the importance of creating and keeping jobs in the city, indifferent as to how his policies affect not only revenues but also working-class New Yorkers.
He is not alone.
In 2019, recently elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) famously helped union activists and others block Amazon’s plans to build a second headquarters in New York. That cost the city 25,000 jobs. As The New York Times reported at the time, “Amazon’s retreat was a blow to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, damaging their effort to further diversify the city’s economy by making it an inviting location for the technology industry.”
Ocasio-Cortez, who like Mamdani built her career using social media, posted in response to Amazon pulling out, “today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers and their neighbors defeated Amazon’s corporate greed, its worker exploitation, and the power of the richest man in the world.”
Like Mamdani, Ocasio-Cortez did not care that Amazon’s decision would hurt the city. More important was scratching that far-left anti-wealth itch.
The response to Ocasio-Cortez’s move was swift, with one critic posting: “You didn’t defeat Amazon — it will succeed elsewhere. You defeated yourselves”.
Today, Mamdani’s juvenile attack on Ken Griffin will very likely encourage others currently on the fence to abandon New York. Private equity giant Apollo Global Management, headquartered in Manhattan, has reportedly decided to open a “second headquarters,“ most likely in either Florida or Texas, as so many others have. CEO Mark Rowan emailed confirmation of the pending move to the Financial Times, which broke the story in late March, saying that “New York does not have a monopoly on talent, and we expect most of our future growth will take place in our second HQ.”
Overall, New York has lost firms managing more than $1 trillion in assets in the last few years. Hundreds of businesses have moved, mostly to low-tax Florida or Texas.
Zohran Mamdani’s anti-business, anti-wealth crusade is thrusting the city into a death spiral — fewer businesses and residents means higher tax rates, since local leaders won’t cut spending and that will drive even more to leave.
Democrats in New York and other shrinking states like California will continue to lose House seats and Electoral College votes if they follow Mamdani’s lead. Do they really want to pay that price?
