The leftist New York City mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani might not be the business community’s first choice to run the Big Apple, but a growing contingent in Gotham’s fat cat class say they can can change his evil ways – or at the very least work with him to soften his Marxist rough edges, On The Money has learned.
To be sure, this isn’t a majority opinion among the city’s business elite. Most are scared to death that a radical with Marxist views on the economy, past calls to defund the police, someone who won’t denounce the term “globalize the Intifada,” could be our next mayor. But that could be that case after Mamdani won the Democratic primary in this heavily Democratic city, besting former governor, and party moderate Andrew Cuomo by a comfortable margin.
As On The Money has reported, the business community’s allegiance to Cuomo is now fraying; with many deep-pocketed leaders urging him to drop out as they look to coalesce around the current mayor, Eric Adams.
Cuomo remains in the race, trying to convince business leaders that Adams is “unelectable” (his word) and brandishing various polls showing Adams getting trounced if the election took place today. Mandani, these polls show, barely gets more than 35% of the vote in the general election, which means he’s beatable if the field narrows.
But neither Adams nor Cuomo seem to be willing to drop out of the race, so it’s understandable that many business types are looking at a Mayor Mamdani future, and betting they can make it work, On The Money has learned.
The business community isn’t the city’s biggest voting bloc, not by a long shot, though that understates its importance. Real estate, finance and tech executives have money to splurge on their candidate – and fill the airwaves with negative ads, which could sway voters away from Mamdani when they are faced with daily reminders of his controversial opinions and snippets of his social media feed that you can make a good case veers into some scary takes on race and culture.
Or maybe many — a sizable minority if my reporting is accurate — just see the 33-year-old Mamdani as an unstoppable force, and someone who can be molded by the reality of governing.
As one top business leader told On The Money: “My best guess is that Mamdani is naive, but he’s very smart and hopefully educable. I fear the ideological stuff may be in his DNA based on what I have been told about his parents, but maybe he can outgrow it. We have to hope.”
On its face, Mamdani does come across as a bit of a blank slate. He’s never really held a private sector job before getting into politics, unless you consider his short and unsuccessful stint as a rapper as work experience.
He did better in politics, of course. He worked for a handful of far-left city pols, ran for a Queens assembly seat and won in 2019 and was re-elected twice before running for mayor.
That said, I have never met a real blank slate who ascended in business or politics because everyone has a backstory that shaped their ambition. Dig deeper and you can see Mamdani’s ambition and ideological roots, how they formulated into policy, and why any business leader looking to change his brain cells would need their own skulls examined.
First, he’s the product of far-left parenting, a Marxist academic and a filmmaker, who grew up rich in NYC, attended good schools, and ultra-liberal Bowdoin for college. As The Post has reported, he checked the “Black or African American” box on his college application not due to his Indian heritage, but because before moving to the US, he was born in the African country of Uganda and wanted to “capture the fullness” of his background.
The leftist obsession with intersectionality appears to be among his selling points. Peruse his X feed. His ramblings about economics, the need for government run groceries, massive tax hikes on wealth creators, his retweets of gross racial stereotypes and you will see this is someone not looking for mentoring but pushing NYC into dangerously progressive territory.
Kathy Wylde of the Partnership for New York City has been recently making nice with Mamdani and will hold a meeting with him and some business leaders next week. High on her agenda will be a recommendation from the business types that Mamdani if elected keep Jessica Tisch, the current police commissioner, if he is elected in November.
Tisch, from the powerful Tisch family, is a business community favorite because among other attributes she has done a good job tamping down on crime, including on subways, since taking the job just about a year ago.
While many city business leaders will show up to Wylde’s Mamdani confab, others I speak to are skeptical that olive branches to Mamdani will work.
One top city hedge fund leader supporting Adams tells me Wylde is just looking to remain relevant as her coalition splinters, with the largest faction supporting another Adams term despite his uneven first four years, which included a significant corruption scandal.
Wylde has had a tense relationship with Cuomo over the years (the two don’t hide their disdain for each other) and has in the past supported Adams. She has grown critical of the mayor, particularly during his ethical mishaps, but tells me she and Partnership members are meeting with Adams this week “for a conversation about his accomplishments and path to victory.”
As for Cuomo, Wylde characterizes their relationship this way: “I supported Cuomo for governor, but I don’t think he cares enough about the city to be mayor.”
A Cuomo spokeswoman had no comment.
Mamdani might care a lot about the city even as he pushes it off the fiscal cliff with policies that will lead to more crime, businesses leaving and insolvency, which is why some business leaders tell me Wylde is being absurdly naïve thinking she can forge a relationship with a Marxist, whose past statements suggests he views the business community with intense disdain.
Like most politicians Mandani will do what it takes to win, and in his case that means softening his radical edges and then enacting full-on leftism once in office, they say.
“I’m shocked that Kathy set up that meeting,” one business executive who supported Cuomo but is now moving close to Adams told me, before adding: “I’m being facetious.”
