Wall Street's expensive bet against Zohran Mamdani turned out to be a bad investment.
New York City's CEOs and other billionaire business leaders spent more than $40 million trying to stop Mamdani from becoming the city's next mayor. Now they have to live with him — and their reactions range from threatening to leave the city to pragmatic acceptance.
"I think it's the stages of grief," says Kathryn Wylde, who runs the Partnership for New York City, an influential business group that represents more than 300 large employers.
Wylde has been brokering meetings between her members and Mamdani in the past several months. Her response to his victory this week was both practical and tinged with optimism.
"The Partnership works with whoever wins," she says. "Zohran has won resoundingly, and so we will seek to be his partner in dealing with the challenges facing the city, which are considerable right now."
Those issues include the ongoing affordability crisis that Mamdani made a central message of his campaign. But he has proposed addressing it with some policies that businesses and the wealthy people who run them widely dislike, including a rent freeze and higher taxes.
Speaking to WNYC on Wednesday, Mamdani promised to spend his first 100 days "taking concrete and substantive actions to deliver on the cost of living crisis that is pushing so many New Yorkers out of the city."
He also promised to take on "corporate greed."
CEOs' opposition to Mamdani is about both business and emotion
Practically speaking, Mamdani will be unable to raise taxes without help from New York State's government. But his proposal at least threatens to make the city more expensive for both businesses and billionaires in an effort to rein in costs for the rest of the city's residents.
Wylde points out that some business leaders had other reasons for opposing him. His rhetoric about "corporate greed" and his identity as a Democratic socialist tend to be trigger words for dyed-in-the-wool capitalists.
And then there's his relatively youthful age of 34 — which was part of his appeal for young voters, but more off-putting to chief executives who may be decades older.
"The universal [initial] reaction was, 'Is this young man someone you would hire to run a 300,000 person corporation?' And of course the answer was, 'No way,'" says Wylde.
There are also deeper, emotional stakes for many CEOs in New York City, which has the largest Jewish population outside of Israel. The conflict between Israel and Hamas, and Mamdani's criticism of the Israeli government, became a major tension in this election.
About one third of Jewish voters cast their ballot for Mamdani, according to CNN's exit polls. He spoke out against anti-semitism and said Wednesday that he looks forward to working with Jewish leaders across the city.
Meanwhile, some of Mamdani's most vocal billionaire opponents seemed to accept their defeat this week. Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman spent some $2 million on efforts to defeat the new mayor — but on Tuesday, he publicly congratulated him.
"Now you have a big responsibility," Ackman posted on X. "If I can help NYC, just let me know what I can do."
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