For the next four years, Zohran Mamdani will be the most scrutinized politician in the United States. Part of that is the nature of being the mayor of New York City, the financial and media capital of the country. There’s more at stake here, more attention paid. It’s also because he is a political phenomenon, rising from less than one percent name recognition to become mayor of the largest US city, and in the process defeating the disgraced former governor of New York Andrew Cuomo (twice).

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And then, of course, there is the fact that he is a democratic socialist—his is the most significant electoral win for the revived Democratic Socialists of America, of which he is a member, at a time of their growing membership and influence. Everyone, for different reasons, will be watching to see if this experiment in democratic socialist governance in a city as diverse and unwieldy as New York City will succeed or fail.

Mamdani will (and already has) receive criticism from left, right, and center. The right and center can largely be dismissed for what they are: fear of the emergence of a new world, one in which the traditional powerbrokers who have served at the behest of capital are no longer relevant, supplanted by those with genuine interest in improving the lives of working class people. The left is trickier.

There is an inevitable clash in the priorities of the left and the realities of day-to-day governance, especially when those priorities are not shared throughout the existing political system. Concessions will (and already have) be made to keep the government functioning. The left will have to decide which of these concessions are betrayals and which are necessities.

The other complicating factor is that, in the US, “the left” remains ill-defined; it’s a soft coalition of those who might be considered liberals, progressives, socialists, communists, anarchists, and every variation therein, with their own competing ideologies and priorities. Each decision made by the Mamdani administration threatens to upset and alienate one or more parts of this coalition, which he will need to remain intact in order to have any chance of enacting his agenda.

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Mamdani struggled with “the Black vote,” or at least with older Black voters, Democratic party stalwarts who were unfamiliar with the young politician and distrustful of his affiliation with the DSA.

You can see this playing out in an early critique lobbed at him from some of New York City’s Black political class. In a recent story in the New York Times, several Black leaders voiced their disappointment that Mamdani has not chosen any Black deputy mayors. During the Democratic primary, Mamdani struggled with “the Black vote,” or at least with older Black voters, Democratic party stalwarts who were unfamiliar with the young politician and distrustful of his affiliation with the DSA—which is sometimes viewed as a project dominated by the political concerns of the white gentrifiers displacing longtime Black New Yorkers. He was able to recover Black support in the general election, but it is tenuous at best, with this early critique showing how easily it may fall away.

“He already doesn’t have the best relationship with the Black community,” the political consultant Tyquana Henderson-Rivers told the Times, “And it seems like he’s not interested in us because there’s no representation in his kitchen cabinet.”

It’s not true that there is no Black representation in Mamdani’s cabinet—Kamar Samuels has been appointed schools chancellor, Jahmila Edwards is the director of intergovernmental affairs—but there is no Black representation at the level of deputy mayor, a point which rankles those Black leaders who have made representation the focal point of their advocacy efforts. It’s an approach that has been derided or embraced under the term “identity politics,” though its current use bears no resemblance to the original theory put forth by the Black feminist group the Combahee River Collective, whose 1977 manifesto coined the term and defined it as part of their commitment “to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression.” For them, the way to identify these struggles were to look at their own identities—Black, queer, working class, women—to know which systems of oppression were operating and how to organize against them. “If Black women were free,” they wrote, “it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.”

As it operates now, identity politics is little more than an assurance that a marginalized identity group will have representation, a spokesperson, placed within existing systems of power, ostensibly to represent the interests of the marginalized identity group they are the appointed spokesperson for, though that part is often immaterial. Mamdani’s predecessor, Eric Adams, himself the second Black mayor of New York City, appointed Black deputy mayors; one of them has gone on to work for ICE. The Adams administration was besieged with corruption at every level—the Blackness of the perpetrators was of no solace.

It’s a now old and tired refrain: too much focus on race distracts from the real economic issues wrought by the excesses of capitalism, which affect us all across racial categories.

Identity politics has fallen prey to what the political philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò has deemed “elite capture.” In his 2022 book, Elite Capture, he writes: “In the decades since the founding of the Combahee River Collective, instead of forging alliances across difference, some have chosen to close ranks—especially on social media—around ever-narrower conceptions of group interests.” And not just on social media—this has been the case with the professional Black political class for decades, a greater and greater narrowing of Black political concerns to whether or not a Black person, or a few, are present in decision-making rooms, with little-to-no concern about what those Black people are actually saying inside those rooms.

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It’s an easy enough politics to critique, since it focuses so much energy on the who and not the what—the actual material consequences for those who have not been appointed the representatives. Indeed, it comes under fire often, but not always with good faith or understanding. In a recent Times op-ed, the writer Zaid Jilani, a strident opponent of the new identity politics, warns that:

…many Democrats hang on to a racial progressivism that will prevent the party from assembling a broad enough coalition to expand on its recent electoral successes and address America’s historic and contemporary injustices.

It’s a now old and tired refrain: too much focus on race distracts from the real economic issues wrought by the excesses of capitalism, which affect us all across racial categories, even whites, and signals the exclusion of white people from a potential coalition to fight against economic injustice. Jilani writes:

Research by the Yale University political scientists Joshua Kalla and Micah English has shown that framing progressive policies including increasing the minimum wage or Medicare for all around how much they benefit minorities or achieve racial justice makes it less likely that people will support those programs.

Democrats should instead think about selling candidates and policies as they would a consumer product. Would you buy something if its commercial told you how good it was for everyone except you?

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Which would seem a sensible question, if you are a selfish person who has never purchased anything for anyone other than yourself. We buy things for other people all the time… if we care about them.

What some critics of “identity politics,” like Jilani, often want to direct us toward is a politics that does not consider race as a salient factor in US life at all—despite acknowledging the racist terror brought about by the current right-wing regime. Our response, they suggest, needs to be rooted in the shared concerns of the working class, the overthrow of our capitalist oppressors, because that is the primary engine through which all other forms of oppression operate. And it’s true, these systems work in concert with one another—the Combahee River Collective pointed us toward this understanding. But it is not the case that upending capitalism alone undoes all the other forms of oppression. If we won Medicare for all, or universal healthcare, tomorrow, this would be a great victory—but what would it serve a Black person who could finally go see a doctor who doesn’t believe they feel any pain?

To ignore race—or gender, or sexuality—while attempting to build working class solidarity is to say that there are some concerns of working class people that do not matter.

“The working classes [are] so much more than people who work,” the labor historian Robin D.G. Kelley writes in Race Rebels, and acknowledging should not be an impediment to multiracial organizing efforts, but rather a way to see what working class people across different ideas actually need. In her book Women, Race & Class, Angela Davis supplied this critique of the suffrage movement that is applicable here:

Susan B. Anthony should not, of course, be held personally responsible for the suffrage movement’s racist errors. But she was the movement’s most outstanding leader at the turn of the century—and her presumably ‘neutral’ public posture toward the fight for Black equality did indeed bolster the influence of racism within the NAWSA [National American Woman Suffrage Association]. Had Anthony seriously reflected on the findings of her friend Ida B. Wells, she might have realized that a noncommittal stand on racism implied that lynchings and mass murders by the thousands could be considered a neutral issue.

To ignore race—or gender, or sexuality—while attempting to build working class solidarity is to say that there are some concerns of working class people that do not matter.

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Unfortunately, from critics like Jilani, the messaging around working class solidarity seems to always trend toward “accept more racism” rather than “be less racist.” Non-white people are expected to organize alongside and excuse white racists because of our shared interests in defeating capitalism, with no assurances our particular concerns around white supremacy addressed. And in the absence of a working class coalition that reckons with this issue, those elites who have captured identity politics are able to step in and siphon off more support for their inept agenda because it does at least acknowledge the salience of race.

What Táíwò suggests as an antidote to this is a “constructive political culture” that would “focus on outcome over process—the pursuit of specific goals or end results rather than avoiding complicity in injustice or promoting purely moral or aesthetic principles.” Matters of representation are not wholly inconsequential, but they are not the ends—the specific goals must remain significant material change in the lives of all working class people. But those goals can not be so narrowly defined as to exclude any issue that is not a purely economic one, even if the expense is the loss of support among those who refuse to see beyond their own racism, heterosexism, and queerphobia. We must demand the world we want.

The Mamdani administration is already carrying an immense weight of expectation, but in this there is also a unique opportunity to show how democratic socialist governance can go beyond an insufficient politics of representation, while also expanding the notion of what can and should be working class concerns. It will not be perfect. Mamdani will face criticism at every turn. But the hope of the new era he is helping usher in is not perfection, simply the will to try.

The post » Can Zohran Mamdani Survive at the Intersection of Identity Politics and Democratic Socialism? appeared first on Our Story Insight.

In an exclusive sitdown interview with The Post, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson said Mamdani’s socialist agenda for the Big Apple — including vows to hike taxes on the rich and expand government control over prices for housing, groceries, and childcare — could accelerate defections of big financial firms from the city.

The 50-year-old Republican, who majored in history as an undergraduate at Harvard, likewise floated the possibility that Wall Street is at risk of being toppled from its perch as America’s premier financial center — likening it to Venice, Italy losing its edge as Europe’s premier trading hub centuries ago.

Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, a Republican, leads what is now the second-largest financial services hub in the US. Anadolu via Getty Images

“It’s not inconceivable at all that within a certain number of years, people look back and go, ‘Do you remember back when New York was the financial capital of the United States? Isn’t that weird?’” Johnson told The Post.

The Dallas native has worked closely with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to offer “economic incentive deals” — a mix of generous tax breaks and grants — to attract the likes of JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and Canadian giant Scotia Bank to the fast-growing Texas destination long known as “Big D”.

The strategy appears to be working. JPMorgan — led by legendary Wall Street titan Jamie Dimon — already employs more people in the Lone Star State than in New York.

Dallas is now the second-largest financial services hub in the US, having added over 100,000 finance jobs in the past decade — and Johnson expects the pace to accelerate.

“What was already a trickle is going to turn into a flood of individuals and companies who have called New York home for a long time, moving to Dallas,” Johnson said.

Mamdani, who was sworn in on New Year’s Day as the new mayor of New York City, showed little sign that he would back down from his radical left-wing agenda. Richard Swafford/ZUMA / SplashNews.com

“The action isn’t here,” he said of the Big Apple. “The action is in the western part of the country.”

His comments echo a warning from Fortress co-CEO Drew McKnight, who told The Post in November that Dallas was now a serious rival to New York in terms of attracting financial talent.

Last week, Mamdani, a 34-year-old former state assemblyman, doubled down on his campaign pledges to freeze rents and hike taxes as he took office.

Johnson called Mamdani’s policies an “un-American socialist impulse” — and noted that he isn’t the only New York politician who shares blame for spurring financiers to “vote with their feet” and quit the city.

“A transaction tax was being discussed in Albany. That’s why I think we first started getting a lot of communication from New York-based firms about whether or not they wanted to come to Texas,” he added, saying the policy proposal had helped spur the creation of the Texas Stock Exchange, which will formally launch later this year.

Renderings released by Goldman Sachs show how its new Dallas campus will look once completed in late 2027. Goldman Sachs

Johnson outlined his pitch to Wall Streeters, saying Dallas was a prime spot for financial giants as there is no state income tax in Texas, falling property rates, and a pro-business administration.

“I’ve cut the property tax rate every year I’ve been in office now. So we’re talking seven straight years,” Johnson said.

“You’re talking about an environment where they’re talking about trying to find new ways to tax people, compared to one where we’re trying to push down the one tax we’ve got, and we don’t have an income tax,” he added.

Cheaper housing, strong schools, safe streets, and easy permitting for big projects like David Solomon-led Goldman Sachs’ new $700 million campus, set to employ 5,000.

Fortress co-CEO Drew McKnight told this newspaper in November that Dallas was now a serious rival to New York in terms of attracting financial talent. Bloomberg via Getty Images

Federal rules from the SEC apply to banks or financial firms wherever they are based, but Dallas offers a better life for employees, he added.

“The cost of living is lower,” Johnson said. “You can have the best of New York, but you can have it in a place where you can also afford to have a very nice home, send your kids to good schools, and be safe.”

Mamdani’s planned tax hikes — such as raising the corporate rate to 11.5% and adding a 2% personal income tax over $1 million — aim to fund his programs, which he claims will raise $9 billion yearly.

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Alissa Quart on the Lessons From Mamdani’s Campaign

“We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism,” the newly elected Mayor of New York Zohran Mamdani said, in his invigorating inauguration speech yesterday, that praised ordinary New Yorkers.

Mamdani’s speech, like his wildly successful campaign, recognized both New York’s working class and that ever-growing group of voters that so often goes unacknowledged in political rhetoric: the precarious middle class. The latter are voters who have worked hard and done most of what America expects of its people, but they haven’t quite been able to live comfortably. For a decade, I have called them the “Middle Precariat” (i.e. the precarious middle-class ). It seems that perhaps 2026 is their year, at least in terms of political messaging.

Mariano Muñoz, 46, a parent coordinator at a school in Brooklyn with a seven-year-old and a newborn, is one such New Yorker. He “resonated” with Mamdani’s affordability message because “we feel the squeeze of everyday life, trying to raise our kids in Brooklyn.” What these constituents are looking for is a combined sense of emotional and economic  safety—what some theorists call “affective security.”

Twenty years ago, professors, tech workers, scientists, authors, and unionists might not have seen themselves as having much in common. Now, despite being middle class on paper, they share an insecurity that has created its own form of political energy. We can see how this proletarian-ized middle class can have an outsized political effect not just in New York City but in Democratic political wins from Washington state to Georgia, including that of Mayor Katie Wilson in Seattle. They’ve also factored  in wins in Virginia and Georgia—see Governor Abigail Spanberger—and a 2026 mayoral contest in Maine.

Tara Fannon, 50, is part of this “middle-class-ish.” A New York-based government contractor, Fannon was laid off due to DOGE cutbacks. “New Yorkers like me have been hit hardest by Trump’s policies, the tax giveaways, the hollowing out of our political institutions,” she says.

“My peers in public education, arts, in climate, have all been impacted by funding cuts and that further activates us.” Fannon voted enthusiastically for Mamdani, for this reason. Ditto for Peter Donahue, a 60-year-old electrician who supported Seattle’s new democratic socialist Wilson. Donahue says people like him may “make a lot of money on paper, like 70K to 100K a year,” but the Puget Sound metropolis is so expensive that only a few hundred electricians in his craft union, he says, still live within city limits. “We wonder, ‘Can I survive or am I going to be a homeless person?’ That’s why left and right are coming together and voting over wages and affordability.”

Voters want this economic gaslighting to end and for their lived experience to be seen: the Middle Precariat no longer wants to be dismissed as mere neurotics imagining inflation on their daybeds.

In the first Trump era, the precarious middle class seemed like a provisional or transient category. Pundits liked to suggest that their financial concerns were just a matter of bad vibes. Now it’s clear that voters want this economic gaslighting to end and for their lived experience to be seen: the Middle Precariat no longer wants to be dismissed as mere neurotics imagining inflation on their daybeds. There are indeed many threats to their future. The cost of home ownership has gone up by 50 percent in the last five years nationwide and middle-class workers are suddenly seeing their jobs replaced by AI.

Muñoz says he wouldn’t describe his family as middle class anymore. “What’s middle class?” the father of two young children asks. “Not on food stamps?” If he and his wife “hadn’t landed a rent-stabilized apartment years ago, we couldn’t stay here: we have a weekly conversation about what we are still doing in New York City, living paycheck to paycheck.”

Economist Thomas Ferguson, research director of the left-leaning economic think tank Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), says that this economically charged politics is not just related to voters with limited incomes but also comes in response to the rapidly rising cost of public goods, like electricity, up 30 percent since 2021, and the rising cost of state colleges.

Tariffs have also made everything harder, according to a new report published by Yale’s Budget Lab, causing a loss of an average of $2,400 for most households, and $1,700 for households in the 20th percentile. Real income growth is weak in 2025, especially for younger workers. According to the think tank EPI, nominal wage growth “has been far below target in the recovery.” As state funding for education disappears, says the economist Ferguson, the cost has been thrust onto parents—yet anotherexternal burdern the Middle Precariat has had to internalizeas a family expense.

When Wilson appeared on CNN, she acknowledged this saying, “I ran for mayor in Seattle because we are in a moment where we have an affordability crisis, just like many cities around the country, people are struggling with the cost of housing, with the cost of childcare…” Even corporate Democrat and sibilant soothsayer James Carville recently mused that his party should go all in on “economic rage,” as if financial ire was a hot new stock pick.

Then Trump started throwing around the idea of sending out tariff rebate checks as if he were deciding to deliver every family a pizza. In other words, political dinosaurs—or monsters—must at least give lip service to affordability. At the same time, political prodigies like Mamdani actually understand how to signal  their allegiance with the a coalition of the working class and the Middle Precariat (for example, by having Bernie Wagenblast, the famed voice of New York City’s subway system’s refrain, “Stand clear of the closing doors, please” be the emcee of his inauguration).

In 2026, the political elite  must continue to put its sometimes newly discovered sympathetic—and sociological—imagination to work, recognizing the struggles and fortunes of those who may on paper be middle class but no longer feel that way. At the same time, this year, one can only hope that the precarious middle class continues to recognize its electoral strength—call it “precariat power.”

The post » Zohran Mamdani Understands the Precarity of Middle Class American Life appeared first on Our Story Insight.

The mayor-elect wants to hand out everything from frozen rents and free buses to subsidized trans surgeries even for kids. He wants the so-called 1% of wealthy New Yorkers who already pay for most of the freebies to pay even more to foot the bill.

That message won him the mayoralty, but what he left out of his pitch is what happens next. Just how much do people really like progressive government, and what happens to local economies and standards of living when lefty pols go there?

Oregon is one of the most progressive in the country. It has in recent years embraced various methods to defund and defang the police – all stuff supported by our new mayor Zohran Mamdani. Jack Forbes/NY Post Design

Take Oregon. The state is one of the most progressive in the country, providing a suite of social welfare benefits courtesy of super high taxes on business and a state income tax. It has in recent years embraced various methods to defund and defang the police – all stuff supported by our new mayor.

Its largest city, Portland, has embraced various forms of socialism, the same stuff spouted by our mayor elect. It also has become a poster child of urban decay, a smoldering mess of crime, businesses fleeing and homeless. People have had enough.

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According to the survey conducted by Public Opinion Strategies (financed by the a pro-business advocacy group “Save our Cities”) here are the results:

•  67% say Oregon’s economy is “pretty seriously off on the wrong track” because of mountainous taxes, regulations and homelessness.
• Independents are the largest voting block and 73% believe the state is on the wrong track.
• Portland, of course, has been one of the epicenters of social justice since 2020. Massive protests and various government programs to provide equity. But people in the state say they now care more about jobs and the economy over this lefty fad by a margin of 62% to 15%.

The numbers don’t lie. Oregon was once a burgeoning tech hub but big employers like Intel have been cutting staff. Its unemployment rate is growing to 5%, the highest since COVID. The Wall Street Journal recently reported about the difficulty in leasing space in downtown Portland: the US Bancorp Tower, “once a premier address in the city, was afflicted with ‘vagrants sleeping in hallways of vacant office floors.’ “

Homeless on the street of Portland, which has become a poster child of urban decay. Xinhua/Shutterstock

As the Journal reported, the vagrants were “starting fires in stairwells, smoking fentanyl and defecating in common areas,” citing a so-called lease-termination lawsuit by a former tenant.

The building, with a 60% vacancy rate, was recently sold for $45 million. In 2015, it had fetched nearly $400 million.

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Yes Oregonians (like New Yorkers) put the lefties in power, but now after living with all of the above, there is growing evidence that they’ve had enough.

It should provide a stark warning to the ruling Democratic Party: Go all in on socialism by supporting the extreme policies of Mamdani, and you will likely face a continued exodus from your states – and a revolt from those voters who stick around.

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He told Side Dish he’s pulling the plug on three new establishments, including one in Midtown West. 

“I waited for the election before signing and now I’m not signing,” he said.

Stratis Morfogen told Side Dish he’s pulling the plug on three new establishments, including one in Midtown West.  Matthew McDermott

Just last week, Morfogen opened his first restaurant in Miami. The eatery, called Brooklyn Chop House Miami, boasts 400 seats and has a rooftop bar overlooking the skyline in the Moxy Hotel in Wynwood.

“I’m not signing any more leases in New York,” Morfogen vowed. “I’ll keep what I have. We’re not expanding in New York but we are pursuing further opportunities in Miami and other cities.

“We just don’t feel that this mayor is suitable to supporting small businesses.”

Veteran restaurateur and nightlife guru Richie Romero had the same response to Mamdani’s stunning defeat of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent, and Republican Curtis Sliwa earlier this month.

Romero has put a halt on new openings except for a new East Village outpost of Sushi By Bou, for which construction began months before the election.

“We want to wait and see what [Mamdani] does. His radical changes scare the s–t out of small business owners,” Morfogen said. Getty Images

“The hatred of Jews, socialism, the economics – it’s too much,” he said of Mamdani. “I had to be vocal. I get attacked, but it is what it is.”

Romero, who hosted fundraising events for Cuomo, said he is launching a coalition “to fight socialism” that is still in the works. 

Instead of betting on New York, the lifelong New Yorker is opening 12 to 15 concepts outside the city in secondary markets — from Atlanta and Dallas to West Palm, Fla.

Just last week, Morfogen opened his first restaurant in Miami, above. Brooklyn Chop House

The eatery, called Brooklyn Chop House Miami, boasts 400 seats. Brooklyn Chop House

Morfogen said he opted not to sign a lease for an all-but-completed deal for a new restaurant at West 32nd Street and 10th Avenue. He also put the brakes on signing leases for new diners on the Upper East Side, at East 62nd Street and First Avenue, and on the edge of the Upper West Side. 

“I am not signing any leases now,” Morfogen declared. “We want to wait and see what [Mamdani] does. His radical changes scare the s–t out of small business owners.”

The mayor-elect’s proposal to raise the city’s minimum wage to $30 by 2030 will “put fast-casual out of business,” Morfogen predicted. 

Restaurateur Richie Romero has put a halt on new openings except for a new East Village outpost of Sushi By Bou, for which construction began months before the election. Stephen Yang

“There won’t be any more diners for $25 a person if a $12 burger goes up to $22,” he said. “We will still have to pay our rent and our profit margin — at 10% — is too thin to survive.” 

He is also worried about public safety under Mamdani, an ardent critic of the NYPD.

It’s personal for Morfogen, who said illegal immigrants have assaulted members of his family in recent years, leading one of the victims to be hospitalized.

“I have had enough. I love New York City and even after all the destruction with Cuomo during COVID, I was forced to vote for him because anything is better than a socialist communist with insane, anti-small business policies,” Morfogen said. 

Romero’s Sushi By Bou in Chelsea, above. Romero said he is launching a coalition “to fight socialism.” Hassan Mokaddam

“I can’t believe that New York City, a city I love and where I grew up, voted him in. I’m not sure I recognize this city anymore,” said the restaurateur, whose dad was a Dem.

“This is not the Democratic city that my father loved. [Former Gov.] Mario Cuomo is turning in his grave seeing what the Democratic Party has become.” 

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He said the streets don’t feel safe near his 24-hour Gramercy Park diner, called Diner24.

“Thank God we have a police station a block away. Can you imagine if [Mamdani] defunds the police? It’s insanity, and the message that is even being considered gives criminals a lot of confidence that they can get away with things,” Morfogen said.

Romero said he is opening 12 to 15 concepts outside the city in secondary markets — from Atlanta and Dallas to West Palm, Fla. Adrien Mueller

Mamdani’s anti-business proposals like taxing the rich and opening publicly-run grocery stores angered Romero, too.

“You see 30 to 40% of vacant storefronts now,” he said. “How do you suggest that someone who is not pro business will make it get better?” 

Not everyone agrees. Restaurateur Mark Bucher, who co-owns Medium Rare restaurants in nine cities including the Big Apple, said he’s “always bullish on New York City” and plans to open a new outpost in Manhattan next year.

But Romero said his main interest in the city is for promotional purposes, not making money.

“New York is a showcase — like Fifth Avenue,” he said. “It’s better to open in West Palm, Dallas and Nashville, where they are more business friendly. It’s impossible to make money here.”

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“Now that a mayor is in office, whether it’s this city or any other city, we have an obligation as a company to work with him to try to make the city successful,” Moynihan said Tuesday on Fox News.

“I’ve got 16,000 teammates who work just in the neighborhood here, and we’ve got to make it successful.”

The key to that, he said, is how Mamdani approaches “governing all the people in the whole city, and [how] he has to carry the budget and the tax base.”

Moynihan argued that the company’s success is partly tied to the success of elected officials like Mamdani and the cities, towns and states they represent.

He told “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade he plans to request a meeting with the mayor-elect, calling the issue “important” to thousands of Bank of America employees and their families who rely on New York City being “great.”

In an interview with Fox News, Moynihan said, “Now that a mayor is in office, whether it’s this city or any other city, we have an obligation as a company to work with him to try to make the city successful.” AP

Moynihan believes that the future of NYC being successful is how the mayor-elect governs residents across the city. Dennis A. Clark

“As I look forward, I hope that the mayor will engage with us, and we’ll give him some ideas,” he added.

Mamdani’s win has inspired some right-wing voices to entice residents and businesses to flee the Big Apple to come their way.

New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte, for one, worked to recruit those eyeing a greener pasture by advertising with a large van covered in rotating digital posters, one of which read, “NYC business owners: Mamdani got you down? Come on up to New Hampshire for no Communism, less red tape, and less taxes.”

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan plans to have a meeting with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani to discuss the future of the Big Apple. Christopher Sadowski

A Times Square billboard – reportedly funded by a super PAC supporting Vivek Ramaswamy’s Ohio gubernatorial campaign – invited New Yorkers to flee “radical socialist” Mamdani for the “freedom” promised in the Buckeye State.

Moynihan’s comments come after he announced a major initiative to hire 10,000 veterans over the next five years, a pledge he outlined during his appearance.

“We believe our company is a great company for veterans, and we believe we owe it to make sure we’re bringing those veterans into our company. Even if they come to work for us for five years and get a job somewhere else, we’ve given them a great start and helped them make that transition,” he said.

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The 34-year-old state assemblyman is aiming to become the youngest mayor in over a century in the Big Apple. 

Having already outflanked former governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democrat primary in recent months, the Uganda-born democratic socialist is well-placed to complete his rise to the top job in the biggest city in the United States. 

“When I walked the length of Manhattan just a few days before the election, hundreds of New Yorkers marched alongside me,” Mamdani said. 

“And when we strode into Times Square under a billboard with (Kalshi) odds that showed Cuomo’s chances of winning at nearly 80 percent, we knew that the so-called experts were set to get it wrong yet again.”

Mamdani continued to detail the odds on the Kalshi prediction market, which remain firmly in his favor. 

“When you see the Kalshi odds that have our chances of victory in the 90s, know this: you are reading the same things that Andrew Cuomo read when he went to sleep each night in June, believing that his victory was promised,” Mamdani said.

BREAKING: Zohran Mamdani references his Kalshi odds on stage

Kalshi is mainstream. pic.twitter.com/hLCzqLL7G2

— Kalshi (@Kalshi) October 27, 2025

President Trump warns New Yorkers against Mamdani

The Kalshi prediction market on the New York City mayor election currently gives Mamdani an 89% chance of succeeding Eric Adams to lead NYC over the next four years. 

Kalshi prediction market chart showing Mamdani leading the NYC mayoral race with 89% odds. Credit: Kalshi

Conversely, Cuomo – standing as an independent – is given just an 11% chance of landing a late shock.

If Mamdani is elected, he would become the first Muslim mayor in NYC’s history. 

His prominence and wide appeal to the electorate come from his focus on bread-and-butter issues that have resonated with New Yorkers. He has been firm and focused on cost-of-living essentials, conveying the message that he will address rent and food prices, as well as resonating on salary levels.

Cuomo has attacked his rival on matters of crime and safety, while also suggesting Mamdani does not have the requisite experience to lead New York at this stage of his career. 

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has warned that he will not look upon Mamdani’s election favorably if that is how the vote plays out. 

He told CBS on Sunday, “It’s gonna be hard for me as the president to give a lot of money to New York, because if you have a communist running New York, all you’re doing is wasting the money you’re sending there.” 

Trump on Mamdani: “I think I’m a much better looking person than him, right? It’s gonna be hard for me as the president to give a lot of money to New York, because if you have a communist running New York, all you’re doing is wasting the money you’re sending there.” pic.twitter.com/SyS0GwHfgQ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 3, 2025

Mamdani has rejected the Communist label applied to him by detractors. 

Beyond the main Kalshi market on the mayoral race, the same platform is running various related lines on the NYC vote. 

For Mamdani’s margin of victory, he is currently given a 23% chance of winning by 24 points or more, and a 54% chance of securing at least 50% of the vote.

Image credit: Dmitry Shein / Kalshi

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The home-sharing giant wants the City Council to change a 2023 law that effectively shut down most Airbnb listings in the city.

Under the proposed legislation, owners of single-family homes would be allowed to offer rentals without the hosts being present for less than 30 days. The city’s limit on guests would also be lifted, from two to four.

Airbnb is hoping the NYC City Council amends restrictive legislation on how it does business in the city. Shutterstock

The new legislation targets Local Law 18, a two year-old bill that has decimated Airbnb and the rest of the short-term rental market in New York City. 

After faltering earlier this year, the latest bill was quietly amended last week to also undo the existing law’s “unlocked doors provision,” which requires hosts to keep all doors accessible to guests.

The proposed legislation stands to affect homeowners in Brooklyn and Queens the most. Airbnb hosts in those boroughs have said they are financially squeezed by not being able to rent to families and guests who don’t want to share their vacation with a host.

A draft bill loosening the Airbnb restrictions was scrapped in February amid strong opposition from the hotel industry and other groups.

The same sectors are crying foul again – even as hotel rates in the city have steadily climbed since Local Law 18 was enacted.

Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. James Messerschmidt

Dem City Council member Mercedes Narcisse. Stefano Giovannini

The new legislation comes “as Airbnb tries to salvage their multi-million dollar campaign to undermine our housing laws before New Yorkers and a new pro-tenant mayor can stop them,” read a statement from Tenants Not Tourists, a coalition of housing advocates that is supported by the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council union.

Opponents of the latest bill say Airbnb will later try to go further and free up all hosts — including apartments in Manhattan that have largely disappeared from Airbnb’s platforms.

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Airbnb has spent millions on a political action committee supporting City Council members who have been willing to revisit some of the most stringent requirements of Local Law 18. Those include the sponsor of the new bill, Brooklyn Dem Mercedes Narcisse.

Neither Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani nor independent Andrew Cuomo, who’s been catching up to the lefty in the polls, has publicly commented on the proposed change to the city’s Airbnb law.

However, Mamdani, who’s made housing affordability the centerpiece of his campaign, is widely expected to oppose loosening the restrictions.

A Mamdani spokesperson did not immediately answer a request for comment.

Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia has been one of the biggest donors to an Andrew Cuomo Super Pac for mayor. REUTERS

Cuomo’s supporters see him as being amenable to changing the law’s tight grip on the home sharing industry in New York, sources said, pointing to the fact deep-pocketed Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia is one of the largest single donors to a pro-Cuomo super PAC.

A spokesperson for the ex-governor did not immediately answer a request for comment.

Airbnb has slammed the city’s current law as failing “to deliver on its promise to improve housing affordability.”

Airbnb has supported Andrew Cuomo’s race for mayor of of New York City. Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York Post

“Homeowners are struggling even as short-term rentals have all but disappeared,” Michael Blaustein, the company’s Northeast Atlantic policy lead, said in a statement.

Airbnb believes the new bill will get a vote before the end of the year, according to a source close to the company.

The next step is a Council Housing Committee hearing scheduled for Nov. 13. 

The current rules require hosts to register with the city and certify that their homes meet rigorous building, zoning and other codes — or face fines of up to $5,000.

In June, the city sent warning letters to 500 of the 3,000 registered short-term rental hosts here, while another five were threatened with having their licenses revoked, according to Office of Special Enforcement, which regulates the home sharing industry in the city.

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It was such a disgusting spectacle on so many levels: masked thugs parading up Sixth Avenue, chanting the antisemitic slogan “From the river to the sea” and “Israel does not exist,” terrorizing people as they left work.

Hundreds of protesters literally stopped traffic in the middle of rush hour so we could hear their warped version of history. 

The demo should provide a wake-up call to the city’s political class including its business leaders ahead of next month’s mayoral election, which is set to bring even more appalling behavior.

The fact that they remain largely asleep makes the situation New Yorkers face all the more horrifying. 

It must be noted that the protest necessitated a large police presence that diligently prevented an all-out riot given the volatile nature of the crowd.

More From Charles Gasparino

That night, I was scheduled to attend a concert at Carnegie Hall.

As I made my way uptown, dodging a series of near brawls between various factions of protesters, I struck up a conversation with a police officer and asked a question all New Yorkers should be asking themselves: “How is any of this legal?” 

City Hall is currently occupied by an ex-cop named Eric Adams, though not for much longer.

He just dropped out of the upcoming mayoral race because his manifold ethical lapses made him unelect­able even if he’s done a decent job reducing crime.

I say “decent” because the quality of life in this city remains abysmal; the subways remain unsafe; and homelessness ­rages on our streets. 

The reason the cops allowed that disgustingly nihilistic Oct. 7 protest stems from Adams’ crazy interpretation of the state constitution’s guarantees for the right of assembly. 

During the Giuliani years, you needed a permit and were relegated to designated areas.

When the leftist Bill de Blasio became mayor, the First Amendment and the state constitution’s speech protections meant anything goes, even if it means chanting “From the river to the sea” on Sixth ­Avenue. 

Grim outlook 

And it’s only going to get worse, which is something our city’s leadership class needs to understand — and fast.

Along with his ethical woes, Adams quit the campaign to consolidate support around a more moderate candidate for mayor and prevent the ­Israel-hating, avowed Marxist Zohran Mamdani from occupying City Hall after the Nov. 4 ballot. 

This week, Adams will likely ­endorse for mayor his fellow “moderate,” former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, though it will likely make almost no impact — and not just because Cuomo brings his own baggage.

The race is a three-way competition with the beret-wearing Guardian Angels founder, ­Republican Curtis Sliwa, sucking up around 15% of the vote, according to the latest polling. 

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That leaves Mamdani comfortably ahead in this increasingly leftist Democratic city, polling at 46% to Cuomo’s 33%. 

You would think that with less than a month before Election Day, Cuomo and Sliwa would come out swinging against the kooky communist frontrunner.

They do throw some jabs at him, but their attacks feel strangely muted. 

Where is their five-point plan to revive the economy while showing how a leftist like Mamdani will destroy what business is left through high taxes and defunding the police? 

And why didn’t either come out and say that NYC’s latest death-cult protest — something an anti-Zionist like Mamdani undoubtedly celebrated — would never happen under their watch? 

And where is the business community and its chief organizer, Kathy Wylde of the Partnership for New York City, screaming “Enough!”

They should be prodding Cuomo and Sliwa to get on the ball because of all that’s at stake. 

This city has a long history of ethnic parades, of course.

They’re organized around pride like the one on Monday celebrating the great, though much maligned, explorer Christopher ­Columbus. 

This was different.

Why are the cops allowing thugs to upend all forms of civility while they violently cheer wanton rape and murder? 

“You’re going to have to ask the city about that,” the cop responded before we shook hands and parted ways. 

Far left vision 

Mamdani, of course, hasn’t been muted about his vision: business-destroying taxes, leftist views on policing and the rest.

But at least he’s willing to fight for what he believes in and, barring something unforeseen, he’s going to be our next mayor. 

I managed to make my event at Carnegie Hall, a grand venue that speaks volumes about our great city, the wealth it created and the wealth creators who give back by funding the arts. 

Still, I couldn’t help but think while mingling with all those bankers and lawyers in attendance — no doubt, all members of the Partnership for New York City — how little they understand what’s about to happen to Gotham — and their responsibility for allowing it to occur.

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Just sit tight and let the ill-equipped Maoist Zohran Mamdani win in November.

Let him unleash his creepy, dogmatic socialist policies on the masses to teach them valuable lessons — both economic and cultural — about wokeness and progressivism, and more broadly its stranglehold on the Democratic Party.

I’m starting to agree.

A fleeing middle class

Let the city sink into the abyss.

Let Mamdani’s policies force out business and prod more upper- and middle-class residents to flee.

Let the city declare bankruptcy — which will happen if Mamdani gets his way.

We can then start from scratch.

Detroit did it and the last time I was there, its downtown was pristine.

Plus, we’re headed there anyway, right?

Why not expedite the process and teach people who think leftism works that it doesn’t — particularly when you chase out all the non-leftists who pay the bills.

To be clear, New York City isn’t Detroit.

Sure, there’s diversification, businesses moving operations to Texas and Florida, but for all the work-from-home doom-and-gloom talk about New York City real estate, Jamie Dimon’s JPMorgan is still headquartered in Midtown.

Goldman Sachs remains on the West Side.

BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager, is in Hudson Yards.

NYU Langone is here, built through the grit of legendary financier Ken Langone, with world prestige and a quality of care to match.

(I can personally attest to the latter.)

The best restaurants are here: Try getting a table at ­Elio’s, Sistina or Rao’s.

It’s still a cultural mecca, the home of Broadway, The Met and some great museums.

For all our issues, New York City with a GDP of around $1.3 trillion has an economy bigger than many countries.

We are also saddled, of course, with an insane political class.

Zohran Mamdani might be honest in his Marxism, maybe boyishly naive in explaining the benefits of government-run grocery stores that have failed everywhere they were tried.

(See most recently Kansas City.)

But in this state, he is no outlier.

He is emblematic of one-party rule, a fellow traveler in New York’s leftist Democratic Party that has brainwashed voters into believing we need massive regulation that impedes business formation.

Ditto for rent control that creates housing shortages, lax policing (do you really feel safe on the streets of Manhattan, particularly at night?), high taxes (the reason so many people are leaving) and a fracking ban that continues to deprive economically depressed upstate regions.

Dems have ditched New York’s melting pot in favor of woke and hostile tribalism.

The largest concentration of Jews outside Israel, right here in New York City, must now accept daily harassment over leftists’ warped interpretation of history.

And we must embrace ­unions, like the clown car that runs the school system.

Consider: Sleepy Joe Biden’s immigration policies opened the floodgates for millions of migrants to come to this country.

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Many settled here in New York City, were housed in fancy hotels, and yet since 2020 NYC has witnessed a net out-migration of around 400,000 people.

Put another way, a city’s worth of taxpayers left and was replaced by the world’s poor who are tapping into the city’s generous welfare state.

Cuomo caved

Operationally, Andrew Cuomo could be a good mayor.

He knows how to run things on both the state and national level.

Yet consider his ill-fated last years as governor: He was forced to cave to the left on every issue, banned fracking, raised taxes and couldn’t tame the size of government.

Could Eric Adams stand up to those clowns if he were to win — and not drop out as people now believe he will?

He hasn’t so far.

Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, the crime-fighting activist founder of the Guardian Angels, is tough as nails and, when you sit with him, very coherent on policy.

Yet if through a stroke of divine intervention he were to be elected, he would be outnumbered 1,000 to 1.

He needs the state Legislature to create reform on taxes and other issues, and that’s where the mini-Mamdanis reside.

There and the New York City Council, which is a mini-politburo.

That’s why I am now leaning ­toward the nuclear option.

Let Mamdani win — and prove to New Yorkers and Americans once and for all that there’s a reason communism failed in the Soviet Union, and that the apparatchiks in China have embraced the free market to survive.

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