Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: My vision for New York City in twenty twenty five
Speaker 2: looks like Saran Mandani.
Speaker 3: New Yorkers across the city went to the polls Tuesday
Speaker 3: to cast their ballots for mayor. On Manhattan's Upper East Side.
Speaker 3: We spoke to voters motivated by a wide range of issues.
Speaker 3: Mamdani is very like pro immigrant, pro LGBTQ plus community.
Speaker 4: The biggest thing for me has been corruption that I've seen.
Speaker 1: But New York City is too big a city for
Speaker 1: somebody to run that has never had a full time
Speaker 1: real job.
Speaker 3: No one's getting free groceries, and no one's getting free
Speaker 3: runt it does. More than two million New Yorkers came
Speaker 3: out to vote for mayor, something that hasn't happened since
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty nine, and when the results came in, more
Speaker 3: than fifty percent of voters went for Zoran Mamdani, the
Speaker 3: thirty four year old Democratic socialist whose platform was laser
Speaker 3: focused on one key issue, affordability.
Speaker 4: Tonight, you have delivered a mandate for change, a mandate
Speaker 4: for a new kind of politics, a mandate for.
Speaker 3: A Mamdanni won every borough but Staten Island He won
Speaker 3: in precincts that were majority Black and majority Hispanic, and
Speaker 3: precincts where most residents were renters and public transit users. Now,
Speaker 3: as mayor elect, Mamdanni faces a new challenge governing a
Speaker 3: city of eight and a half million people, including the
Speaker 3: vocal minority of New York's wealthiest who opposed him and
Speaker 3: poured millions into political action groups trying to defeat him.
Speaker 3: Mamdani has been unapologetic and steadfast in his message that
Speaker 3: many of the city's problems are rooted in income inequality,
Speaker 3: and in his victory speech billionaires were part of what
Speaker 3: he said had gone wrong.
Speaker 1: We will put an end to the culture of corruption
Speaker 1: that has allowed billionaires like Trump to evade taxation and
Speaker 1: exploit tax breaks, but with.
Speaker 3: Their outsized influence on the city's politics, economy, and revenue.
Speaker 3: Mam Donnie has also tried to make peace with the
Speaker 3: cities one percent, and there are signs that several of
Speaker 3: those big name high net worth skeptics are already coming around.
Speaker 3: Last month, Jamie Diamond, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase,
Speaker 3: said at a conference led by Fortune magazine that he
Speaker 3: was ready to work with Mam Donnie if he won.
Speaker 2: If he becomes mayor, I will call him an or
Speaker 2: for my help.
Speaker 5: Does may not agree with him?
Speaker 3: And at a news conference today, Mam Donnie said he's
Speaker 3: ready to sit down with people like Diamond too.
Speaker 5: So I look forward to having those kinds of meetings,
Speaker 5: be it with Jamie Diamond or be it with other
Speaker 5: business leaders, and continuing to show that our affordability agenda
Speaker 5: is an agenda that would also benefit businesses across the city.
Speaker 3: I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the big take from
Speaker 3: Bloomberg News today. On the show, New York City's uber
Speaker 3: wealthy tried to stop or on mam Donnie's rise. Now
Speaker 3: they're processing his victory. Can Mamdani come to the table
Speaker 3: with billionaires and business leaders while delivering on the policies
Speaker 3: and principles that got him elected? New York New York
Speaker 3: the Big Apple, the city that never sleeps, and the
Speaker 3: city where money never sleeps.
Speaker 6: This is a really great place to get rich.
Speaker 3: Emily Flitter covers economic and social inequality for Bloomberg. She says,
Speaker 3: from twenty fifteen to twenty twenty three, the city minted
Speaker 3: nine thousand new million dollar earners, a rate of three
Speaker 3: per day. By twenty twenty three, there were almost thirty
Speaker 3: five thousand New Yorkers making a million or more a year.
Speaker 3: But if New York is a good place to get rich,
Speaker 3: it's an even better place to get richer.
Speaker 6: The billionaires who already live in New York City saw
Speaker 6: their combined net worth grow ninety percent in the last
Speaker 6: nine years.
Speaker 3: Mam Donnie ran on a platform highlighting the fact that
Speaker 3: along with that growing wealth has come a growing wealth divide.
Speaker 3: Here he is on NBC's Meet the Press in June.
Speaker 5: I don't think that we should have billionaires because, frankly,
Speaker 5: it is so much money in a moment of such inequality.
Speaker 3: New York City has some of the deepest income inequality
Speaker 3: in the country. According to an analysis of census data
Speaker 3: by the Center for New York City Affairs, the top
Speaker 3: twenty percent of New Yorkers have total incomes thirty three
Speaker 3: times larger than the bottom twenty percent, and Mam Donnie's
Speaker 3: campaign promised to tax those at the top to provide
Speaker 3: more public services for everyone.
Speaker 2: The sort of three pillars of his campaign are fast
Speaker 2: and free buses, freezing the rent, and free childcare for
Speaker 2: children between six weeks and five years.
Speaker 6: Old.
Speaker 3: Bloomberg City Lab reporter Fola Akinneby recently profiled Mam Donnie
Speaker 3: for BusinessWeek and looked at why his campaign caught on.
Speaker 2: It speaks to the underlying stress and the underlying weight
Speaker 2: of the conditions in the city. Right And when you
Speaker 2: look at at the same time the stock market doing
Speaker 2: what it's doing, and folks at the top getting wealthier,
Speaker 2: and you see a federal push sit to cut.
Speaker 3: Taxes, and the number of millionaires in the city has
Speaker 3: grown as grown as well.
Speaker 2: I think people start asking questions about where they fit in.
Speaker 3: But as Mom Donnie campaigned on affordability for all, he
Speaker 3: also tried to win over the cities one percent in
Speaker 3: New York. That's people making at least nine hundred thousand
Speaker 3: dollars a year. They're a big driver of the city's
Speaker 3: economy because of how much money they pay an income
Speaker 3: and property taxes. Mam Donnie recognized that a path to
Speaker 3: victory in New York included getting them on board, so
Speaker 3: he reached out to Catherine During.
Speaker 7: The year before the primary election, I had met with
Speaker 7: Zoran a few times, had introduced him to a couple
Speaker 7: business leaders.
Speaker 3: Catherine is the president and CEO of the Partnership for
Speaker 3: New York City, a trade group representing the city's largest
Speaker 3: employers across industries like real estate and banking.
Speaker 7: Although there was not, frankly, a lot of interest in
Speaker 7: his candidacy in the business community, no one had basically
Speaker 7: ever heard of him. If they had, it was that
Speaker 7: he was a socialist and a marginal character.
Speaker 3: After mam Donnie's dramatic primary win, that changed, Catherine set
Speaker 3: up a series of meetings between Mamdani and the city's
Speaker 3: business leaders to talk about their visions.
Speaker 6: For the city.
Speaker 3: Which policy areas have been most concerning or divisive to
Speaker 3: business leaders, and where are there areas of agreement.
Speaker 7: So I think in general their areas of agreement are
Speaker 7: that there is an affordability crisis in this city and
Speaker 7: that we need to bring costs down, and disagreement on
Speaker 7: how do we solve that, with the business community thinking
Speaker 7: we do not solve that by increasing government spending, because
Speaker 7: that will just put a new tax burden on everybody.
Speaker 3: Many business leaders viewed mom Donnie with skepticism, thinking he
Speaker 3: was young and relatively inexperienced. Some believed his proposals were
Speaker 3: unrealistic or even posed a fundamental threat to their financial interests,
Speaker 3: and Catherine said people in her network also had other concerns.
Speaker 7: One source of great concern is coming from members of
Speaker 7: the Jewish community that feel the strong importance of the
Speaker 7: Jewish homeland. The other areas are in terms of support
Speaker 7: for charter schools, mayoral control of the schools, most importantly
Speaker 7: public safety.
Speaker 3: Big name, wealthy New Yorkers largely backed former New York
Speaker 3: Governor Andrew Cuomo. A Bloomberg News analysis found that pro
Speaker 3: Cuomo and anti mam Donnie PAX raised over twenty six
Speaker 3: million dollars between the June primary and yesterday's election, fueled
Speaker 3: by donations from investors like Bill Ackman and Dan Loeb,
Speaker 3: as well as Michael R. Bloomberg, the founder and majority
Speaker 3: owner of Bloomberg LP.
Speaker 2: There's been a lot of outside money flowing into this race,
Speaker 2: and when you look at the advertisements and the messages
Speaker 2: that are coming from these outside groups, these outside packs,
Speaker 2: they've been pretty dark pictures of what the city could
Speaker 2: look like under mayor mam Donnia. They say that, like
Speaker 2: you know, crime is going to spike and the city
Speaker 2: is going to change.
Speaker 3: Mam Donni won't be able to achieve his key affordability
Speaker 3: proposals alone, because the city doesn't fully control its own
Speaker 3: per strengths. He's proposed paying for things like free buses
Speaker 3: and universal childcare with increased corporate and income taxes. But
Speaker 3: the power to set those tax rates and the operation
Speaker 3: of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is held in the state's capital, Albany, so.
Speaker 2: Free buses would require likely some money from the MTA.
Speaker 2: That the campaign puts a cost it around seven hundred
Speaker 2: million dollars a year. The city has one hundred and
Speaker 2: sixteen billion dollar budget. The city might be able to
Speaker 2: afford it on its own, but he again would probably
Speaker 2: need some state funding for that. Universal childcare is a
Speaker 2: huge it's a massive undertaking. We're talking about six seven
Speaker 2: million dollars a year, and it's also something that could
Speaker 2: not be stood up, you know, in one year overnight,
Speaker 2: right like something's going to take years now. Governor Cathy
Speaker 2: Hoko in the past has said that she is not
Speaker 2: open to raising taxes, and she has her own election
Speaker 2: to look forward to in twenty twenty six. At the
Speaker 2: same time, I think Mom Donnie's calculation here is that
Speaker 2: all these people can be pushed and you know, funny enough.
Speaker 2: If you look at Hoko's appearance at this Mom Donny
Speaker 2: rally that was about a week or two ago, she
Speaker 2: was heckled when she came on to stage. People were
Speaker 2: chanting tax the rich, tax the rich, and she equivocater,
Speaker 2: all right, I can hear you.
Speaker 3: Hoko later said on a podcast that she still didn't
Speaker 3: plan to raise taxes, but that she was hearing people's voices.
Speaker 3: Catherine Wilde says the business community, meanwhile, sees tax hikes
Speaker 3: as a non starter.
Speaker 7: Personal and corporate tax increases are great concerns since we're
Speaker 7: the highest tax city in the country. So a New
Speaker 7: Yorker today, in a middle or upper middle income family,
Speaker 7: fifty five percent of their paycheck goes to the government
Speaker 7: in state, federal, and city taxes. And if you go
Speaker 7: to Florida or Texas or Tennessee, you end up paying
Speaker 7: thirty eight percent because they don't have state and local
Speaker 7: income taxes. We just saw a two point six billion
Speaker 7: dollar increase in state tax revenues because of Wall Street bonuses.
Speaker 7: We do not want to lose those bonuses. We want
Speaker 7: them to stay right here.
Speaker 3: How would the business leaders like to see Mom Donnie
Speaker 3: address some of those key affordability issues, if not by
Speaker 3: raising taxes or going to the state for more money.
Speaker 7: By reducing the size of government. We have three hundred
Speaker 7: thousand employees of New York City government, the most in history.
Speaker 7: I think that the city spending is mostly on labor,
Speaker 7: and those expenses have gone up more than fifty percent
Speaker 7: over the past decade. So I think most people in
Speaker 7: the private sector think we could get along with less government.
Speaker 3: The fear that wealthy New Yorkers might leave if they're
Speaker 3: tax too much or if the city isn't run in
Speaker 3: the way they want is one that mum donnie's critics
Speaker 3: repeated in the lead up to the election. In late October,
Speaker 3: Bill Ackman posted on x that mumdannie's quote anti business policies,
Speaker 3: including higher corporate taxes, will kill NYC jobs and cause
Speaker 3: companies to flee. And here's the Heritage Foundation. Stephen Moore
Speaker 3: on Fox Business News in September.
Speaker 6: If mcdonnie wins, Wall Street will no longer be located
Speaker 6: in Manhattan, it will move.
Speaker 3: So now that mom donnie's one is Wall Street moving
Speaker 3: to Florida. That's after the break. If New York's billionaires
Speaker 3: and multimillionaires were to pack up and leave tomorrow, it
Speaker 3: would have a big impact on the city's finances. The
Speaker 3: top one percent of earners account for forty percent of
Speaker 3: the city's eighteen billion dollars in annual income tax revenue,
Speaker 3: and the homes they own and offices they run or
Speaker 3: work for rack up a lot of real estate taxes,
Speaker 3: covering a large proportion of the city's thirty four billion
Speaker 3: dollars in annual property levies. But Bloomberg's Emily Flitter says
Speaker 3: those big real estate investments are also part of the
Speaker 3: reason that it isn't so easy for the city's corporations
Speaker 3: to quit New York. Barclay's just announced plans to invest
Speaker 3: a billion an office tower in Times Square. JP Morgan's
Speaker 3: new Park Avenue building fits ten thousand employees.
Speaker 6: That's not something that any of these owners or investors
Speaker 6: in real estate can just pick up and walk away with.
Speaker 3: Sure, there are plenty of financial professionals who've already been
Speaker 3: lured to South Florida, earning it the nickname Wall Street South,
Speaker 3: But Emily says, when it comes to earning potential and
Speaker 3: lifestyle potential, New York wins every time.
Speaker 6: In twenty twenty, four Wall Street South financial industry employees
Speaker 6: earned one hundred and eighty two thousand dollars on average,
Speaker 6: whereas if you were working in finance in Manhattan last year,
Speaker 6: you earned an average of four hundred and thirteen thousand dollars.
Speaker 6: And I'm actually I'm from Miami. I love Miami, so
Speaker 6: I don't want to be dissing Miami, but it just
Speaker 6: doesn't have as much stuff as New It has fewer
Speaker 6: fancy restaurants, it doesn't have as many really high end schools.
Speaker 6: And let me just point out that the biggest corporate
Speaker 6: move to South Florida has been from Chicago. Citadel moved
Speaker 6: to Miami, Ken Griffin moved down there. But Ken Griffin
Speaker 6: just announced that Citadel is going to invest a lot
Speaker 6: of money so that they can enhance their presence in
Speaker 6: New York.
Speaker 3: Emily says, if you really want to know how New
Speaker 3: Yorkers might react to a tax increase, you can look
Speaker 3: back to what happened after New York increased its top
Speaker 3: personal income tax rates in twenty twenty one from eight
Speaker 3: point eighty two percent to nearly eleven percent for the
Speaker 3: highest earners overall.
Speaker 6: The data showed that people did not leave New York
Speaker 6: in significant numbers because of the tax hikes. It's as
Speaker 6: simple as.
Speaker 4: That, and well.
Speaker 3: Catherine Wilde, the head of the Partnership for New York City,
Speaker 3: cautions that higher taxes could make the city less competitive.
Speaker 3: She says, the fears about Mom Donnie have been overblown.
Speaker 7: Certainly. I don't think people who are knowledgeable are going
Speaker 7: to pick up and leave before they know that something
Speaker 7: really devastating is going to happen, and there's no indication
Speaker 7: that that's the case. Much of the rhetoric around this
Speaker 7: mayoral election have suggested that a Mom Donnie victory will
Speaker 7: result in the city falling into deep decline, that it
Speaker 7: will be like the nineteen seventies. People should know that
Speaker 7: if the budget in the city goes out of whack.
Speaker 7: We have a financial control Board, which is run by
Speaker 7: the governor, the state Controller, private sector representation they take over.
Speaker 7: The mayor has no control over increasing income or corporate taxes.
Speaker 7: The mayor has some control over real estate taxes, but
Speaker 7: Mam Donnie has already said that he wants to reduce
Speaker 7: real estate taxes where possible. Last spring, he was talking
Speaker 7: about I'm going to freeze the rent. We asked the question,
Speaker 7: how are you going to freeze the rent if you
Speaker 7: don't freeze the costs? How are you going to continue
Speaker 7: to encourage investment in rental housing if you don't have
Speaker 7: some incentives financial incentives for that investment. He has now
Speaker 7: incorporated into his freeze the rent plan a plan to
Speaker 7: reform property taxes. So that's an example where I have
Speaker 7: seen him incorporate the feedback he's gotten and now seems
Speaker 7: prepared to take a more comprehensive and practical view of
Speaker 7: that issue.
Speaker 3: Catherine says. Another example of Mom Donnie's openness to compromise
Speaker 3: was his decision to keep Police Commissioner Jessica Tish in
Speaker 3: her position if you want. Is it fair to say
Speaker 3: that one of the takeaways of this conversation at least
Speaker 3: his Wall Street don't panic.
Speaker 7: Absolutely. My message would be, don't panic, but be prepared
Speaker 7: to roll up your sleeves and help our next mayor
Speaker 7: solve the affordable crisis, which will be good for business,
Speaker 7: for Wall Street and for the residents of New York City.
Speaker 3: As Mom Donnie enters, Gracie Manson, buoyed by the support
Speaker 3: of a diverse coalition of New Yorkers, Bloomberg City Labs,
Speaker 3: Fola Kennedy says, Mam Donnie will continue to walk this
Speaker 3: fine line. Can he come to the table for compromises
Speaker 3: with big business while staying true to the values that
Speaker 3: have made him so popular.
Speaker 2: I think that's what's going to define his administration, right,
Speaker 2: like whether he's able to sort of like thread some
Speaker 2: of these needles.
Speaker 3: I'm wondering whether you think the business community was caught
Speaker 3: off guard by the rise of Mom Donnie and what
Speaker 3: they should take away from the way that he's resonated
Speaker 3: with voters.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people were cut off guard
Speaker 2: by Mam Donny's rise, and it speaks to again how
Speaker 2: much his message of affordability is resonated. This is a
Speaker 2: guy that throughout the campaign has stuck to that talking point.
Speaker 2: If you ask him any question, he always returned to
Speaker 2: affordability as part of his answer to the question, and
Speaker 2: I think it shows the power of that kind of messaging.
Speaker 3: Already, it seems like Wall Street is coming around. Bill Ackman,
Speaker 3: the billionaire investor who'd been warning of an imminent exodus
Speaker 3: of the wealthy if Mom Donnie won, posted on X
Speaker 3: last night tagging Mom Donnie quote congrats on the win.
Speaker 3: Now you have a big responsibility. If I can help NYC,
Speaker 3: just let me know what I can do. And even
Speaker 3: President Donald Trump, speaking earlier today, followed up criticism of
Speaker 3: mom Donnie by saying, we want New York to be successful.
Speaker 3: We'll help him a little bit. Maybe this is the
Speaker 3: Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder. To get
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Speaker 3: We'll be back tomorrow.