Crime Problem · NYC Governance · May 8, 2026 · Live

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NY Leaders Desperately Try to Stop
Billionaires From Fleeing the City Over Mamdani

• $5.4BNYC budget deficitFY2026 gap Mayor Mamdani inherited — his pied-à-terre tax covers less than 10% of it— NYC Mayor's Office / CNBC, Jan 2026
• 46%of NY State income taxesPaid by the top 1% of earners — 93,000 filers in a state of 20 million people— Empire Center for Public Policy, 2023 data
• −31%millionaire share declineNY's share of U.S. millionaires fell 31% between 2010 and 2022 — costing $13B+ in annual tax revenue— Citizens Budget Commission
• 52Mviews on XMamdani's April 15 'tax the rich' video filmed outside Ken Griffin's $238M penthouse — went immediately viral— Fortune / CNBC, May 2026

On April 15, 2026, Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D-NYC) stood outside 220 Central Park South — the Manhattan tower where hedge-fund billionaire Ken Griffinpaid $238 million for a penthouse in 2019 — and posted a one-minute video announcing New York's first-ever pied-à-terre tax: an annual surcharge on luxury residential properties worth more than $5 million whose owners do not live in the city full time. The clip racked up 52 million views on X within days.

Griffin's response was immediate and public. Within weeks, he appeared at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills and announced that Citadel, his $63 billion hedge fund, would “double down”on Miami — adding hundreds of thousands of square feet to a new office building already under construction there. He said the video had put him “in harm's way,” citing the 2024 assassination of a corporate CEO outside a Midtown hotel. Private equity giant Apollo Global Management, headquartered in Manhattan, separately announced plans for a “second headquarters” in Florida or Texas that could eventually house up to 1,000 employees.

Now, state and city leaders who supported Mamdani's rise are scrambling to contain the damage — dispatching outreach to corporate leaders, offering quiet assurances that the pied-à-terre tax is narrow and the income-tax hikes Mamdani originally campaigned on will not materialize. The mayor, for his part, has called the exodus talk “imagined.” The billionaires disagree — in writing, on camera, and with building permits in Miami.

Zohran Kwame Mamdani (D) is a 33-year-old democratic socialist who won the 2025 New York City mayoral Democratic primary — and with it the general election in the heavily Democratic city — on a platform of rent freezes, free city-owned childcare, a municipally-run grocery chain, and aggressive taxes on the wealthy. A former state assemblyman from Astoria, Queens, he defeated former Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) in the primary after Cuomo was widely seen as the establishment front-runner.

Mamdani took office in January 2026 and immediately faced a $5.4 billion budget deficit. His solution: tax the wealthy. His proposed policy toolkit included a mansion tax, a pied-à-terre surcharge, and — in early public statements — a push for New York State income tax increases on earners above $1 million. Governor Kathy Hochul (D-NY) agreed to the pied-à-terre measure but drew the line at income tax hikes. The pied-à-terre tax is projected to generate $500 million annually — less than 10% of the deficit.

New York City's fiscal structure is unusually dependent on a small slice of high-income earners. According to the Empire Center for Public Policy, the top 1% of New York State earners — roughly 93,000 filers — paid 46% of all state personal income taxes in 2023. Pershing Square CEO Bill Ackman, himself a New York billionaire, put it bluntly in a May 2026 Bloomberg interview: “The top 1% of the population pays something approaching 35–40% of the total tax revenue of the city. The top 10% might be 75%.”

The Citizens Budget Commissiondocumented the trend line in a sobering report: New York State's share of U.S. millionaires fell 31 percent between 2010 and 2022. Had that share stayed at its 2010 level, the state and city would have collected more than $13 billion in additional personal income tax revenue in 2022 alone. That number does not include spillover taxes — property, sales, business — that high earners generate.

“If your goal is to make New York City financially solvent, what you don't want to do is drive out the Ken Griffins of the world.”

Bill Ackman, Pershing Square CEO — Bloomberg interview, May 4, 2026

The pied-à-terre tax, as enacted, applies an annual surcharge to residential properties valued above $5 million whose owners maintain a primary residence elsewhere. It is not an income tax. It targets the properties themselves. Mamdani publicly named Ken Griffin's $238 million penthouse and Alexander Varshavsky's $20.5 million property as examples. The tax is expected to raise $500 million — against a deficit of $5.4 billion. Governor Hochul (D)signed it while explicitly blocking Mamdani's request for a broader millionaire income surtax, saying the state “stops short” of hiking income taxes on the wealthy.

Investor Kevin O'Leary called the overall plan “sheer blind stupidity,”noting on Fox Business that wealthy non-residents who own luxury Manhattan apartments pay property taxes, employ building staff, and consume almost none of the city's public services. Under the pied-à-terre model, the city was charging them for the privilege of owning an asset — a structure O'Leary said would accelerate, not reverse, the departure of portable capital from the five boroughs.

Ken Griffin, founder and CEO of Citadel, is the most prominent figure to go on record about his intentions. Speaking at the 2026 Milken Institute Global Conferenceon May 5, he said: “Mamdani has made it clear we need to double down on our bet in Miami. We went to Miami and revised our building plan to make it a bigger office building. We've added several hundred thousand square feet of new space.” Citadel filed the updated Miami building permit publicly. The Park Avenue redevelopment in New York — originally estimated at $6 billion, projected to create more than 15,000 permanent jobs — is now described as uncertain.

Separately, Apollo Global Management— one of Wall Street's largest alternative asset managers, headquartered in Manhattan — has been scouting office space in Miami, Palm Beach, and Austin, Texas. According to Bloomberg reporting from March 2026, Apollo has internally discussed the new outpost as a “second headquarters” that could eventually house up to 1,000 employees — matching its current New York headcount. CEO Marc Rowanhas not publicly attributed the move to Mamdani specifically, but the timing and stated rationale — New York's “business climate” — make the context unmistakable.

“New York doesn't welcome success. When we moved from Chicago, there was a debate between New York and Miami. It's unquestionably true that we made the right choice.”

Ken Griffin, Citadel CEO — Milken Institute Global Conference, May 5, 2026

New York State and city officials are trying to reassure the financial sector that the policy environment will not worsen. Governor Kathy Hochul (D-NY)publicly blocked Mamdani's income-tax-hike push, insisting the state already has some of the highest combined state-and-city income tax rates in the country — the top rate reaches 14.776% combinedfor New York City residents — and that adding a millionaire surtax would accelerate flight rather than fill the gap. Her office emphasized the pied-à-terre tax's narrow scope: it applies only to non-primary-residence properties above $5 million.

NYC Comptroller Brad Lander (D)and economic development officials have reached out quietly to financial-sector leaders, emphasizing that the five-borough economy remains the deepest capital market on Earth and that the mayor's rhetorical style should not be confused with the actual tax code. Business groups including the Partnership for New York City have met with the Mamdani administration to stress the fragility of the tax base.

Mamdani himself has been unmoved in public, convening a Tax Day public forum with Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Columbia professor Gabriel Zucman— both advocates of wealth taxation — to validate his approach. He cited the state's 2021 millionaire surcharge as proof that the wealthy don't flee: “After that tax increase, we gained more millionaires.” Critics note that the 2021 hike coincided with a pandemic rebound and a stock-market boom — not a representative environment for gauging tax sensitivity.

The Dispatch noted in May 2026 a dimension missing from most coverage: billionaires can flee Mamdani, but small business can't hide. The pied-à-terre tax targets the ultra-wealthy with portable assets. But Mamdani's broader policy agenda — proposed rent freezes, a city-run grocery chain (projected to cost $1.5 billion), and mandated childcare expansion — falls disproportionately on the city's mid-tier employers: restaurant owners, small landlords, retail operators who cannot simply file a Miami building permit and call it a strategic rebalancing.

The Free Press observed that the political structure of NYC Democratic politics creates a perverse incentive: the voters most likely to support Mamdani (renters, service workers, young professionals) are economically harmed most severely when the tax base that funds their schools, parks, and transit shrinks — but the political signal that registered at the 2025 primary was that those voters preferred the rhetoric of redistribution to the economics of retention.