New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani celebrates with his wife Rama Duwaji after winning the election on Tuesday.Jeenah Moon/Reuters
Gus Carlson is a U.S.-based columnist for The Globe and Mail.
Amid the chorus of New York business leaders vowing to leave the city under its new mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who plans to raise taxes on corporations and high earners, two prominent and influential voices are singing a different tune.
One is Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s CEO, who has broken ranks with other top executives in the city and says he will “offer to help” the new mayor.
The other is hedge fund manager and activist investor Bill Ackman, founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management.
“Now you have a big responsibility,” Mr. Ackman said to Mr. Mamdani in a congratulatory social-media post following last Tuesday’s election. “If I can help NYC, just let me know what I can do.”
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What’s remarkable about the conciliatory tone of these two Wall Street mastodons is that it represents a breathtaking reversal in their view of the new mayor. Both men were staunch critics of Mr. Mamdani’s platform targeting wealthy New Yorkers and corporations with higher taxes to address widespread affordability concerns in the city.
Mr. Ackman, in particular, was among a group of billionaires who spent an estimated US$20-million to support the campaigns of Mr. Mamdani’s opponents.
Mr. Dimon’s posture has stunned some, mainly because he has appeared recently to favour President Donald Trump, visiting the White House twice in two months after previously icy ties. In a pre-election social-media post, Mr. Trump called Mr. Mamdani a “communist” and endorsed his independent opponent in the mayoral race, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo.
But Mr. Dimon is more pragmatist than ideologue. His company employs 24,000 people in New York. He clearly sees the need to be inside the new mayor’s tent, where he can help to shape policy, rather than on the outside looking in and having no say in the destiny of his people, his company and the city they call home.
As it became clear Mr. Mamdani was on a path to victory, Mr. Dimon softened his rhetoric. In the days running up to the election, Mr. Dimon praised Mr. Mamdani’s efforts during the campaign to talk to a lot of people, listen to their feedback and ratchet back his more progressive proposals.
“He’s convinced a lot of people he’s going to change,” Mr. Dimon said of Mr. Mamdani in a CNN interview. “He wants to learn.”
Zohran Mamdani has been elected mayor of New York City, capping the Democrat’s stunning ascent from little-known state lawmaker just a year ago to one of the most talked-about politicians in the country.
The Associated Press
Whether or not Mr. Mamdani’s pullback on some of the more controversial elements of his plans was real or simply a campaign ploy is unclear. In a post-election interview with The New York Times, he made it clear his decisive win is a mandate to push forward what critics see as his radical progressive agenda.
That agenda has prompted other CEOs to threaten to leave. A pre-election survey by the Partnership for New York, the city’s powerful financial services industry group, suggested the exodus could be significant.
Among the chain-rattlers is Barstool Sports CEO Dave Portnoy. He said last week he will move his company and its 300 employees to New Jersey to escape what he calls Mr. Mamdani’s punitive, anti-business policies.
But as with the gaggle of celebrity nitwits who have threatened repeatedly to leave the U.S. if Mr. Trump was elected – but didn’t – the question is whether Mr. Portnoy’s huffing and puffing is simply bluster to garner attention or a real intention.
The specter of a corporate exodus is not a myth. New York has lost nearly 160 companies in the last five years, including big-name financial services firms that have blamed high taxes and onerous regulatory constraints for their decisions.
The beneficiaries have been low-tax, business-friendly states such as Texas, Florida, Tennessee and North Carolina. Texas now has more financial services workers and more headquarters of Fortune 500 companies than New York, according to the Partnership survey.
Despite the leakage, Mr. Dimon’s belief in the resilience of New York seems much more measured and credible than other leaders who believe the sky will fall under Mr. Mamdani.
But Mr. Dimon’s optimism is not without acknowledgement that the dynamic tension between the city’s business community and its left-leaning leaders is challenging.
“I would hope for the best in this case, and New York will survive – you know, we survived Bill DeBlasio,” Mr. Dimon said of one of the most business-unfriendly mayors the city has seen.
Considering their history, Mr. Mamdani, Mr. Dimon and Mr. Ackman make strange bedfellows. This is politics, after all. But even an uneasy co-operation between them is good – even essential – for the city, its workers and its economy.