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\n The hedge-fund CEO is displeased with New York\u2019s new mayor.
\n Photo: Krisztian Bocsi\/Bloomberg\/Getty Images\n <\/p>\n
There\u2019s a good argument to be made that Mayor Zohran Mamdani should not have gone to war with Ken Griffin<\/a>, the hedge-fund billionaire and one of the wealthiest men on earth. As Mamdani was celebrating a potential agreement in Albany to tax luxury second homes, he cut a widely viewed video that called out Griffin<\/a>, noting that his $238 million penthouse would be subject to the new tax. Mamdani, to underscore his point about the \u201cfundamentally unfair\u201d New York tax system, shot the clip outside Griffin\u2019s luxury skyscraper in Manhattan.<\/p>\n Griffin, in the weeks since, has been on the warpath. \u201cWhat really upset me about the video was the fact that he put me in harm\u2019s way,\u201d he groused<\/a>. \u201cYou know, he seems to have forgotten that the CEO of another American company was assassinated just blocks from where I live in New York. And to put any citizen in harm\u2019s way is just inappropriate for one of our political leaders.\u201d As retribution, Griffin announced that his hedge fund, Citadel, would be expanding its Miami office, adding more jobs there that would have, in theory, gone to New York City. The $6 billion supertall office tower<\/a> Griffin has been planning to build on Park Avenue as Citadel\u2019s new global headquarters is now in some degree of doubt<\/a>.<\/p>\n Would Mamdani have been better off not referencing Griffin at all in his video? Probably. Griffin is a notoriously fickle Wall Street oligarch who already ripped his firm, Citadel, out of Chicago citing political differences with that city\u2019s left-wing mayor. The departure was expensive for Chicago and Illinois, costing them a major corporate taxpayer and around 1,000 high-paying jobs. Mamdani doesn\u2019t ever have to be nice to Griffin, a major GOP donor, but, strategically, it\u2019s likely better to speak more generally about the ultrarich and not call out the most sensitive of their lot \u2014 especially when that person is a major New York employer making a credible threat to move his operations to Miami.<\/p>\n A Griffin ally, real-estate magnate Steve Roth, went even further, though, claiming<\/a> that the phrase \u201ctax the rich\u201d was as \u201chateful as some disgusting racial slurs.\u201d \u201cWe are all shocked that our young mayor would pull this stunt in front of Ken\u2019s home and single him out for ridicule,\u201d said Roth. Despite Griffin\u2019s threat to abandon the supertall office tower that he is teaming up with Roth\u2019s Vornado Realty Trust on, Roth said that \u201cit\u2019s a good bet that we will go all in.\u201d Still, he whined, \u201cthis fence cannot be mended by a short, terse, insincere private apology.\u201d Roth\u2019s tantrum outstripped even Griffin\u2019s absurd claim that Mamdani\u2019s video somehow put him in harm\u2019s way (it\u2019s public knowledge he bought the penthouse, and as a proud and politically involved Donald Trump supporter, he should know that, like Mamdani, he\u2019s operating in the public arena).<\/p>\n Even if the battle wasn\u2019t totally advisable, it has some positive potential for the democratic-socialist mayor: He managed to find two pretty good political foils. Griffin is MAGA, and Roth is representative of what happens when extreme privilege rots your judgment. Roth, especially, is a reminder of how conservatives now exploit<\/a> the language of \u201cwoke\u201d or social-justice culture to deflect the mildest of criticisms. For them, speech must be policed, and speech equals violence. The billionaires, it seems, must be a protected class now. Mamdani has clearly emerged as the man on the right side of history.<\/p>\n In the grand scheme of progressive tax policy, the pied-\u00e0-terre tax championed by Mamdani and supported by Kathy Hochul, the much more moderate governor, is not overly ambitious (it will raise less than $1 billion annually). If Mamdani had a more populist partner in the governor\u2019s mansion, he could pursue truly redistributive tax policy: increases in the income and corporate tax rates that could produce billions in new revenue for schools, parks, libraries, and public transportation. Griffin and Roth would still be inordinately wealthy with enough cash for a thousand lifetimes.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a certain kind of sour-faced pundit who tut-tuts at Mamdani and politicians like him. Doesn\u2019t he know the wealthy pay all the taxes in New York? Doesn\u2019t he know they can leave tomorrow? Money, in this new age, is plenty mobile, but there\u2019s only one New York, an American city of more than 8 million people with an iconic global status. Roth, who derives all his wealth from real estate, needs New York. Griffin, as a financier, may believe he can go anywhere and maybe one day he can relocate Citadel\u2019s New York employees. That\u2019s possible, if ultimately self-defeating. Citadel\u2019s loss will be someone else\u2019s gain, especially since the workers in his industry probably prefer living in New York.<\/p>\n