He Published 960,000 Home Addresses.
Critics Called It a Hit List.
Then a 9/11 Petition Came for Him, Too.
On July 27, 2026, New York City’s Department of Finance published a searchable database of every property covered by the state’s new pied-à-terre tax — a levy built to catch ultra-wealthy second-home owners. It instead surfaced the full name and home address of roughly 960,000 property owners, about thirty times the number of homes the city actually expects to owe the tax.
The rollout landed the same week Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D), sworn in January 1, 2026, faced a second, unrelated firestorm: a petition asking him to sit out New York’s 25th-anniversary 9/11 memorial. Two controversies, one mayor, one week.
- 960,000 property owners' names and addresses listed in the new pied-à-terre database, roughly 30x the ~31,000 homes NYC actually expects to owe the tax — RedState / Fox News Digital
- $340–380M the NYC Comptroller's estimate of annual revenue from the tax — well under the $500M the city itself has projected — TheWrap / city estimates
- 25,000+ signatures reported on the Change.org petition asking Mamdani be excluded from NYC's 9/11 memorial ceremony — Daily Wire
The pied-à-terre tax targets non-primary residences valued at $1 million or more, under enabling legislation signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY). The pitch, echoed by Mamdani throughout his campaign, was straightforward: New York has thousands of empty or barely-used second homes owned by people who can afford to pay more, and taxing them helps fund the city’s affordability agenda. The city has said the levy could bring in roughly $500 million a year; NYC Comptroller Mark Levine (D) has put the realistic figure closer to $340–380 million. What nobody built in, apparently, was a filter on the public-facing side: the searchable database swept in a Queens shopping center, modest homes in the Bronx and Staten Island, and the Breezy Point Shopping Center — none of them anyone’s idea of a Manhattan pied-à-terre, and none of them likely to owe a dime once appeals are sorted out.
Among the names that did belong on a wealth list: Anna Wintour, Cynthia Nixon, Woody Allen, Taylor Swift’s Tribeca home, director Darren Aronofsky, and hedge-fund manager Ken Griffin — whose home Mamdani had used in a promotional video during his campaign. Mamdani posted the rollout himself on X, framing the mass mailing that follows the database as a piece of theater rather than a routine notice: “If you have a second home in New York City worth more than $5M, check your mailbox…you’ve got mail.” For a mayor who ran on taxing the wealthy, publicizing exactly who they are and where they live was, at minimum, consistent with the message. Whether it was wise is the question that dominated the next 48 hours of coverage.
If you have a second home in New York City worth more than $5M, check your mailbox... you've got mail.
The criticism did not come only from the right. Dan Turrentine, a Democratic strategist and former spokesman for Gov. Jared Polis (D-CO), said on the DC Huddle podcast that publishing the list was “so irresponsible…I think this was a huge mistake.” The point, for a strategist who works for Democrats, wasn’t the tax itself — it was making the target list public and searchable. David Carr (R-Staten Island), the City Council’s minority leader — whose own condo turned up on the list, a modest property nowhere near the tax’s intended target — called the rollout “reckless and foolish,” and predicts a wave of appeals from misclassified owners rather than lawsuits. Republican strategist Colin Reed went further, calling it “not only reckless, but outright dangerous.” James Whelan, president of the Real Estate Board of New York — the industry group that has opposed Mamdani’s broader tax agenda — said the sweep shows the levy reaches far beyond the ultra-wealthy target it was sold to voters as.
Fox News’ Outnumbered hosts — Emily Compagno, Kennedy, and Lisa Boothe — drew a direct line to the December 2024 assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan as the safety-risk analog for publishing wealthy New Yorkers’ home addresses.
“It's a searchable hit list, is what it is.”
Lisa Boothe · Fox News' Outnumbered · July 2026
New York City had already had one reminder this year that political figures face real security threats: on March 7, 2026, authorities disrupted a bombing attempt targeting Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence — a separate incident with no established connection to the property database. No lawsuit over the database rollout has been filed as of this writing.
While the property list was still spreading, a second controversy was already underway, and it had nothing to do with taxes. Giovanni Galante, a registered Republican whose wife, Grace Catherine Galante, died in the September 11 attacks, started a Change.org petition asking that Mamdani be excluded from the city’s 25th-anniversary 9/11 commemoration this September. The petition has drawn “more than 25,000” signatures according to the Daily Wire — though Popular Info has reported that the actual number of confirmed 9/11-family signers is contested and likely far smaller, a caveat this piece flags rather than glosses over. Reporters pressed Mamdani directly on the petition in the days after it began circulating, footage of which Gateway Pundit published under the headline “confronted about 9/11 families demanding” he stay away.
Mamdani did not skip the fight, and he did not dodge the cameras either. He committed publicly to attending, saying he would “proudly honor the families, the survivors, the first responders forever impacted by that horrific terror attack by standing alongside them at this year’s 9/11 commemoration.” It was a direct answer to a direct demand — and it did not end the argument.
“I will proudly honor the families, the survivors, the first responders forever impacted by that horrific terror attack by standing alongside them at this year's 9/11 commemoration.”
Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D-NY) · July 2026
Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy did not let Mamdani’s statement stand unanswered. Writing to a platform built for sports and pop-culture commentary rather than politics, he told his audience this particular fight was one he felt he couldn’t skip. In a lengthy X post, Portnoy laid out his own list of grievances: that Mamdani “campaigned with Hassan Piker,” whom Portnoy says argued the U.S. “deserved” 9/11; that Mamdani endorsed Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier, the latter a co-founder, in Portnoy’s characterization, of a Columbia group aimed at the “total eradication of Western civilization”; that Mamdani, in a 2013 post, expressed sympathy for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev before Tsarnaev had been read his Miranda rights; and that Mamdani’s father, Columbia professor Mahmood Mamdani, wrote a 2004 book, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, that Portnoy says discussed justifications for suicide bombing. None of these are new revelations — each dates back years and had circulated before — but stacked together in one post, days before a 9/11 anniversary, they read differently than they had separately. Portnoy’s conclusion: Mamdani “hasn’t hid who he is.”
Portnoy's full response lists Mamdani's past ties to Hassan Piker, his endorsements of Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier, a 2013 post sympathizing with Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and his father's 2004 book on justifications for suicide bombing — concluding Mamdani 'hasn't hid who he is.'
The mayor — Zohran Mamdani (D), sworn in January 1, 2026, whose Department of Finance published the pied-à-terre database and who has committed to attending the 9/11 commemoration despite the petition against him.
The governor — Kathy Hochul (D-NY), who signed the state legislation enabling the pied-à-terre tax that produced the database now at the center of the doxxing-safety debate.
Neither controversy is resolved. On the database, David Carr expects a wave of appeals from misclassified owners rather than litigation, and no lawsuit has been filed as of this writing; the city has not said whether it will pull the misclassified properties — the shopping centers, the modest Bronx and Staten Island homes — from public view while those appeals are pending. On the memorial fight, Mamdani has already said he will attend — a commitment that does not erase the petition or Portnoy’s public rebuttal, but does mean the mayor’s September appearance, not his absence, is now the expected outcome.
What both stories share is a mayor whose own transparency choices — a public database, a public commitment to show up — became the evidence his critics now cite against him. The database was built to tax the wealthy; it ended up publishing their addresses alongside a Queens shopping center’s. The commemoration commitment was meant to settle one dispute; it opened a second, louder one instead, dragging a decade-old blog post and his father’s scholarship into a news cycle that started with a spreadsheet.
Within a week, the story turned on the people who helped put Mamdani in office. Newsweek’s July 29 inventory of names on the Department of Finance file included Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx), former mayor Bill de Blasio (D), filmmaker Spike Lee, and actress Cynthia Nixon — each of whom publicly endorsed Mamdani’s campaign. Heastie’s is the sharpest case: he endorsed Mamdani in 2025 and pledged to help him raise taxes on the wealthy, and he leads the Assembly chamber that passed the FY2027 budget bill enacting the pied-à-terre surcharge in May 2026. Nixon, who hosted a fundraiser for the campaign and called Mamdani “a miracle of nature,” is on the file too. Lee endorsed him on camera in August 2025.
Spike Lee endorses Zohran Mamdani for New York City mayor.
It did not stop at supporters. THE CITY reported that the roll swept in a Queens home belonging to Finance Commissioner Richard Lee — the official whose own agency published it. Council member Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan) said she has lived in her apartment “365 days a year since 1994. So this whole list must be messed up.” Department of Finance spokesman Ryan Lavis said only that “as per State law, the supplemental property tax roll was published for public inspection,” and that anyone who received a letter “is encouraged to inquire or appeal.”
Appearing on the file is not the same as owing the surcharge — it flags properties that may be subject to it, and roughly 17,000 owners actually received letters. How many will owe is itself disputed: Comptroller Mark Levine (D) projected about 11,200 taxable properties in an April 30 fiscal note, while property-tax analyst Tom Flaschen counted roughly 24,000 above the thresholds and argued the release was not doxxing at all, since the underlying ownership data had been public on the same city website for years. Either way, the published file lists 959,710 residences.
Mamdani has not backed down. On July 31 he said “this is not a targeted list,” describing it as the city’s full property roll that state law requires be published, and said the city is “committed to ensuring that this is a tax only levied upon those whose second homes are worth more than five million dollars.” On August 1 his administration pushed the exemption deadline from August 21 to September 18. The database remains live and searchable as of this writing. No lawsuit has been filed, no City Council bill introduced, and none of the named endorsers had publicly commented.
A tax aimed at somewhere between 11,000 and 31,000 second homes produced a public file naming 960,000 property owners. A Democratic strategist called it a mistake; Fox News called it a hit list. Days later, a 9/11 family petition and Dave Portnoy’s own rebuttal put Mamdani’s past statements back in the news — and he answered by committing to show up. Then the file turned up four of his own endorsers, his finance commissioner, and a Democratic council member who has lived in the same apartment since 1994. Two controversies, no lawsuits yet, and a mayor whose own choices keep generating the receipts his critics are using against him.
