POLITICS: Meek NYC business leaders must resist Mamdani ‘Stockholm syndrome’

I was a bit shaken when I turned on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” shortly after Election Day.  

There was Kathy Wylde, the longtime director of the Partnership for New York City, cheerleading for Mamdani-nomics.

She claimed the political adversaries of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani had exaggerated the case against him and his policies, blaming “political ads” and AI for widespread concern over his socialist proclivities. 

“I don’t think the rhetoric of the campaign will continue,” Wylde insisted.

“I’m very hopeful that he’s gonna be a positive force in the city.”

“He doesn’t sound like a socialist to me,” she declared.

Yikes. 

The Partnership is a group of prominent Manhattan business leaders and major employers who advocate for a healthy and prosperous local economy. 

Its members should be deeply worried about where New York is headed.

Most of the policy ideas Mandani advocates risk urban decline, fiscal chaos and a mass exodus of business interests from the city.  

Yet Wylde said Partnership members are open to Mamdani’s agenda to raise taxes on businesses, give services away for free, freeze rents and create government-run grocery stores.  

She isn’t the only one touting the new regime: At a recent Manhattan real-estate conference, developers were applauding the Mamdani era.  

“New York City is back,” boasted Scott Richler, CEO of RXR, a major real-estate firm.   

He said investors “feel the energy, they have the conviction, and they have every right” to feel good about the city’s future.  

Meanwhile, other prominent business figures are expressing dismay — including the Partnership’s new incoming CEO, Steven Fulop, currently the mayor of Jersey City. 

Fulop this week called Mamdani’s proposed corporate tax increases “absolute suicide for NYC, and an absolute dream” for neighboring New Jersey

These two radically different perspectives reflect deep divisions within the New York City business community. 

Who’s right?

The natural temptation for New York business leaders is to keep your head down, keep your mouth shut, and make peace with the incoming mayor — then hope and pray for the best.

That’s sometimes called Stockholm Syndrome: Learning to love your oppressor. 

Here we go again: Business groups tried this appeasement strategy under Mayor Bill de Blasio.

De Blasio, who ran on a “tale of two cities” narrative of economic inequality, coddled unions, got the state to hike NYC’s minimum wage, and caved without a whimper when Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez led the charge to drive out a job-generating Amazon headquarters in Queens.

Rather than standing up to de Blasio’s anti-business stances, too many influential business voices only enabled him, failing to mount any meaningful opposition.

A better approach for those who truly care about the future of America’s premier financial capital is to warn the public — often and loudly — against policies that will strangle New York’s economic vitality.

That finally happened in 2020, seven years into de Blasio’s mayoralty,  when more than 150 major business leaders got fed up.

They joined together to protest “widespread anxiety” over New York’s “security and livability” as pandemic restrictions ground on — warning that the mayor’s laxity on quality-of-life issues would harm the city’s economic prospects.

It didn’t halt de Blasio’s war-on-business policies, but it slowed him down.  

The city’s lurch toward big-government socialism is taking its toll.  

Over the past decade, 2 million New Yorkers have fled the state, taking with them some $500 billion in cumulative income.

The poor have suffered the most from the loss of wealth and job creators. 

Fulop and other business leaders must take a firm stand in defense of the free enterprise system that once built their city into a global powerhouse.

They must explain to voters how Mamdani’s radical tax-redistribution policies, which would give New York the highest corporate taxes in the country, are the enemy of prosperity.

Rent controls create housing shortages.

Government-run enterprises drive out private investment.

Seizing the means of production is a recipe for economic collapse, as history has demonstrated time and again from the Soviet Union to Venezuela. 

Employers shouldn’t expect President Donald Trump or anyone else in Washington to bail out the city from the bad policy choices it keeps making. 

If the job creators and the business leaders of Manhattan won’t use their voices and financial resources to defend the city and help make New York great again, who will?

Fulop has promised to do just that.

But right now he’s a lonely voice of reason. 

Stephen Moore, co-founder of Unleash Prosperity, has served as a senior economic advisor to President Donald Trump.