{"id":208330,"date":"2026-04-24T13:34:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T13:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/208330\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T13:34:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T13:34:14","slug":"big-business-fears-mamdani-its-workers-gave-him-big-bucks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/208330\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Business Fears Mamdani. Its Workers Gave Him Big Bucks."},"content":{"rendered":"

Every fall, the Wall Street analysts who cover the real estate giant CBRE troop to the company\u2019s local headquarters in the Met Life Building on Park Avenue<\/a> to hear executives tell them about the state of business and why they should recommend the company\u2019s stock to their clients.<\/p>\n

Months ago, before the mayoral election, New York region CEO Mary Ann Tighe had given her presentation and answered the analysts\u2019 questions when, throwing a curveball, she looked at the group and said, \u201cNow I have a question for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow many of you live in the city?\u201d she asked. About three quarters of the 29 analysts, who looked to be 35 or younger, raised their hands. \u201cAnd how many of you intend to vote for Mamdani?\u201d she continued.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Most of the hands stayed up.<\/p>\n

Tighe retells that story to make a point. CEOs may have spent millions<\/a> trying to block the election of Mayor Zohran Mamdani<\/a> and now are mobilizing to prevent tax increases<\/a> on executives like themselves and their companies \u2014 but the people who work for them are on the mayor\u2019s side.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"CabsGoogle employees gave generously to Zohran Mamdani\u2019s mayoral campaign. Credit: Alex Krales\/THE CITY<\/p>\n

The dichotomy will be important as the city\u2019s leading business group, the Partnership for New York City<\/a>, crafts an aggressive new approach to Mamdani after its outgoing leader drew criticism<\/a> during the mayoral campaign over her praise for the young democratic socialist<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But before they attempt to convince voters that the mayor\u2019s progressive policies<\/a> may harm New York, the partnership\u2019s leaders may have to persuade their own employees.<\/p>\n

An analysis by THE CITY found that Mamdani\u2019s mayoral campaign received contributions of more than $242,000 from 1,971 employees of the 300 companies belonging to the partnership.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t just tell workers to do something and expect them to do it because it\u2019s good for you,\u201d said Bradley Tusk, a key political aide to Mayor Michael Bloomberg and one of the loudest voices calling on the partnership to be more assertive in the city\u2019s rough-and-tumble politics. \u201cIf you can\u2019t persuasively explain why it tangibly and directly matters to them, it won\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mamdani\u2019s Big Tech Base<\/p>\n

The young talent that CEOs say are the reason they keep their companies in New York represent Mamdani\u2019s base. A recent Marist poll showed that the mayor\u2019s strongest approval ratings came from college graduates between the ages of 18 and 29.<\/p>\n

Employees at tech companies led the list of contributors, even as Mamdani targets Big Tech for practices like making it difficult to cancel subscriptions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Google employees \u2013 323 of them, mostly software engineers and researchers \u2013 gave more money to Mamdani during his campaign than those from any other partnership company, followed by employees at Amazon and Meta. Google employees donated $55,726.61.<\/p>\n

Roughly 40% of the partnership member employees who donated to Mamdani lived in Brooklyn<\/a>, while nearly 23% reported Manhattan addresses, while others live outside of the city.<\/p>\n

The average donation among employees in partnership members was $93, a little lower than the campaign\u2019s final average contribution of $99, with the majority of them small-dollar donations, according to city Campaign Finance Board<\/a> data.<\/p>\n

Until recently, tech company executives skewed to the left, said Julie Samuels, CEO of the local tech trade group Tech: NYC.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are young, they live in Brooklyn and what\u2019s interesting is not that they support Mamdani but that for the first time there is a split between tech workers and their bosses,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She also notes that tech executives have been mostly silent on the topic of the mayor \u2014 even as other CEOs work to block Mamdani\u2019s efforts for higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations.<\/p>\n

\u2018Adverse Reaction\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

Steven Fulop<\/a>, the former Jersey City mayor who became CEO of the partnership in January, says the anecdotes and campaign contributions do not necessarily reflect the views of the 800,000 people who work for member companies.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople had an adverse reaction to the choices that were presented to the electorate in November, and he was best for those people,\u201d Fulop said of Mamdani. \u201cBut that doesn\u2019t speak to that segment embracing socialism.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MayoralMayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani heads into the 4-5 Wall Street station after a campaign event, June 10, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg\/THE CITY<\/p>\n

He says his task at the partnership isn\u2019t to be for or against the mayor but to develop common sense policies to make New York a better place. He suggests it is too early for judgments.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne hundred days into his term, people thought Eric Adams<\/a> would be elected president,\u201d Fulop said.<\/p>\n

Tighe sees a benefit to the support for Mamdani within New York companies.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you have to remember is that, for young people, having a 34-year-old mayor is cool and having him as mayor makes that talent want to live here more,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every fall, the Wall Street analysts who cover the real estate giant CBRE troop to the company\u2019s local…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208331,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,82632,82633,9,24,63,2780,4727,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-208330","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brooklyn","8":"tag-brooklyn","9":"tag-brooklyn-headlines","10":"tag-brooklyn-news","11":"tag-campaign-2025","12":"tag-city-data","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-nyc","16":"tag-taxes","17":"tag-voting","18":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}