New York City’s business elites are long accustomed to direct access to City Hall, where even Democratic mayors felt the need to court the city’s wealthiest and most influential corporate leaders.
That access is getting shredded by Mayor Zohran Mamdani .
The mayor this week fired dozens of corporate leaders from the advisory board of a multimillion-dollar philanthropic fund called the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City.
The nonprofit group uses private donors to give City Hall a pot of money to help finance its agenda. Mamdani removed all of the advisers on the group’s board, which many on Wall Street and in the development trenches saw as a sign that he isn’t much interested in their opinions.
Mamdani said he is creating a new advisory board that will include appointees with the same background as previous members, “as well as those who oftentimes have not been at the heart of the conversations of how philanthropy can build upon the work of public goods and public dollars.”
The shake-up marked the latest effort by Mamdani, an avowed Democratic Socialist, to put distance between himself and the city’s traditional power brokers.
“Twenty or 30 years ago, real estate in New York City could single-handedly stop something or make something happen,” said James Whelan , president of the Real Estate Board of New York and one of the board members who was dismissed from the Mayor’s Fund. But under Mamdani, “one has to consider whether he is looking for opportunities to pick fights to stir up the base.”
In his first major salvo, Mamdani filmed a video outside billionaire Ken Griffin ’s apartment to unveil a new tax on second homes of the rich, drawing scorn from the city’s wealthiest.
Mamdani razzed them again when he wrote on X that they should check their mailboxes for a notice warning them of the looming tax bill (even though some who received a tax notification were longtime New Yorkers not subject to a second-home tax).
And he brought in an antitrust crusader in Lina Khan to chair the city’s Economic Development Corp., the government body that the real estate community closely relies on to execute large-scale development projects.
The real-estate industry is getting used to its new perch from the outside. Earlier this summer, in a hopeful sign of collaboration, the mayor’s office said it was briefing landlord groups on Mamdani’s “Rental Ripoff Report,” a collection of policy reforms responding to tenant complaints over the city’s housing conditions.
But that exclusive briefing never came, at least not for REBNY, Whelan said. REBNY members saw the report for the first time in a press release, just like the rest of the public.
“The tone of the mayor has become more combative toward the business community,” said Steven Fulop , president and chief executive of the Partnership for New York City.
The mayor’s actions have deflated a notion that Mamdani would be someone the business community could work with, despite his outward politics—a Bill de Blasio 2.0. When Mamdani first took office, business leaders had concerns about him but hoped they could find common ground on specific issues.
The uncomfortable divide between New York’s rich and the left-leaning political class is nothing new. Since the 1970s, when the city nearly went bankrupt, New York has relied on the tax receipts from bankers, traders, and real-estate developers to fund an extraordinary safety net and public services. The rich complained, but mayors from Rudy Giuliani to de Blasio courted the city’s most successful to help keep the city in the black.
The Mayor’s Fund was just one such organ. Public works such as the High Line park over former rail lines and Brooklyn Bridge Park merged the public and private spheres. The Economic Development Corporation, a mayor-controlled nonprofit, came up with plans to bring in industries, such as biotech and legal marijuana.
The line between the mayor’s office and the wealthy was probably the fuzziest under Michael Bloomberg , himself a billionaire who ran his own influential charity, and helped steer philanthropic dollars to transform the city.
Things have become tougher for property executives than in decades under Mamdani, who ran on a platform of making the city more affordable for lower-income New Yorkers. His signature issue was freezing rent. The mayor shrugged off the real estate community’s pleas against this policy on a million rent-stabilized units that are already struggling under rising costs.
Mamdani has garnered occasional praise from business leaders after certain actions. The appointment of Tony Shorris , a respected civil servant and former McKinsey partner, to helm the Economic Development Corporation with Khan was well received.
The Mamdani administration also won kudos for overhauling some prohibitive regulations on small businesses, and it is in the process of forming a business advisory council to consult on the city’s economic development strategy.
“Mayor Mamdani recognizes the vital role that the business community plays in our city,” a mayoral spokesman said. “The continued confidence of the business community is critical to growing our economy and building a city that works for working New Yorkers.”
Yet members of the C-suite are still trying to figure out how to communicate concerns to an administration that appears set on shutting it out.
The mayor “is seeking $20 million for child care this year, and money doesn’t come from a mailing list. It comes from people who pick up the phone,” said Jessica Walker , CEO of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce. “He’s just let go of the people who pick up the phone.”
Perhaps Mamdani believes he has a strong hand to play, some real estate execs say. Top college graduate talent continues to seek out career opportunities in New York’s finance, tech and property businesses, and the city remains the global hub for finance. It has withstood bank threats to decamp to Connecticut or other states.
Even some of the mayor’s biggest targets aren’t ready to abandon the city. Griffin, who threatened to halt work on a new Park Avenue tower, is moving forward with the $6 billion construction project. Bill Ackman, the hedge fund billionaire who has long been one of Mamdani’s fiercest critics, spent $260 million this summer for new buildings to house a brain research center on Manhattan’s west side.
Others, however, have told the Mamdani administration that they have begun to look at more business-friendly locations outside New York. Fulop noted Apollo’s plans to build a second headquarters in Austin, and that JPMorgan has more jobs in Texas than in New York.
“It’s not good for his narrative and for New York City’s narrative to have jobs fleeing the city because they feel unwelcome because of his policies,” Fulop said.
Now, the reshaping of the Mayor’s Fund has jolted the city’s business elite, in part because it points to the most decisive shift in power favoring the governing class in about 50 years.
Sitting on the board gave members a sense that they at least had a path into the mayor’s orbit. The board would host occasional meetings with people from the mayor’s office, or even the mayor himself, to discuss City Hall’s priorities, according to board members.
“It was a conversation,” said hotel real-estate magnate Richard Born, who received the dismissal letter. “I was happy to contribute if someone thinks my opinions are worthwhile.”
Born, who served on the board for more than 5 years, was surprised by the letter. He has fond memories of working to provide “internships for underprivileged kids in the hospitality business” and other charitable projects.
Now that the Fund lacks representatives from the business community, it strikes some as if the Mamdani administration is saying: Thanks, we’ve got it from here.
“On one hand, you look at him and say I don’t know what the fund is going to do or how he’s going to get money into it,” said Ron Moelis , founder of affordable housing developer L+M Development Partners who was also dismissed from the fund’s board. “On the other side, this fits his messaging, which is that he doesn’t want to be unduly influenced by wealth.”
Write to Rebecca Picciotto at Rebecca.Picciotto@wsj.com , Kevin T. Dugan at kevin.dugan@wsj.com and James Fanelli at james.fanelli@wsj.com
