Danny Goldberg ScheerPost
It is a truism among pundits that political trends in New York City are not relevant nationally because those of us who live and work here are so different from “real Americans.” On the other hand, the city is home to most national leaders including Donald Trump, Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as our internationally famous mayor, Zohran Mamdani.
The city is also home to New York Post, the newspaper that Rupert Murdoch bought in 1976, two decades before he launched Fox News. The Post is a tabloid manifestation of the id of MAGA. It attack Mamdani on a virtually daily basis with sensationalistic headlines like the one that absurdly claims that he “sides with terrorists”. One of Mamdani’s superpowers is that he is a happy warrior in the wake of such nonsense. Early in his term as he was getting onto a Citibike a heckler yelled “communist” and the Mamdani said with a smile, “it’s pronounced cyclist.”
This is my third piece for Scheerpost about Mamdani. I know that even well intentioned and competent politicians break their supporters’ hearts from time to time, sometimes because of compromises needed to get the best outcomes, and sometimes for less virtuous reasons. But, with two and a half months to go before the end of his first year in office, the mayor of New York City is the best contemporary example of DSA founder Michael Harrington’s paradigm, “the left wing of the possible.”
Mamdani’s primary focus is on quality of life issues in New York, but national issues often intervene. On Oct. 8, in the Marble Hill section of Manhattan an ICE agent shot into a car in which a 5 year-old boy was seated took center stage. And the local media is obsessed with the fact that New York’s Mayor is a Muslim and an outspoken critic of the Israeli government in a city that is home to almost a million Jews.
Yet, despite the recent polarized attention to the anniversaries of 9/11 and 10/7, the clash between the mayor and Benjamin Netanyahu, and criticism from both Jews and Muslims of the composition of Mamdani’s recently announced “antisemitism task force,” a recent Sienna poll found that he is more popular than any other New York politician and that among New York voters under the age of 40, his approval rate is 64%.n
The issue that inspired many of his supporters and the one that got him elected is affordability and quality of life for non-millionaire New Yorkers. Mamdani campaigned on free buses, city owned grocery stores with cheaper food, more affordable housing, a better civic approach to mental illness, less potholes, better playgrounds etc. These things cost money, and the money has to come from somewhere. One source that Mamdani has identified is a pied-à-terre tax on apartments or houses in the city that are worth $5 million or more, and which are not the primary residence of the owner. Many were bought as investments and are unoccupied for most of the year, which helps drive up prices of real estate for the entire city.
The local debate about an additional tax to be paid by incredibly rich people, like the upcoming vote in California on a wealth tax for billionaires, is a template for the national argument about the extreme disparity of wealth that is at the root of most of America’s problems.
The pied-à-terre law was approved last spring by the New York State legislature and signed by governor Kathy Hochul in the spring. New York Democrats are wary of crossing the mayor, especially since two of his chosen candidates beat sitting congressmen in the recent primaries. Although Hochul’s reputation was that of a political moderate, she had the foresight to endorse Mamdani’s run for mayor at an early stage and their relationship is far more cooperative than the one that existed between most previous New York mayors and governors. (Bill Di Blasio, New York’s mayor from 2014-2021 had many progressive ideas that were thwarted by the implacably hostile governor at the time, Andrew Cuomo, the same guy Mamdani defeated in last year’s mayoral election).
Several cities around the world including Paris, and Vancouver already have pied-à-terre taxes, but Mamdani’s version has been opposed by several New York oligarchs in tones so drenched in hysteria that one would think that a revival of the guillotine was at hand rather than a surtax on mansions that owners don’t occupy most of the time.
Mamdani announced the new law on April 15, (“tax day”) in a video shot on Central Park South in front of a building that contains a $238 million condo owned by hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin. Mamdani explained that the tax is “specifically designed for the richest of the rich, those who store their wealth in New York City real estate but don’t actually live here… but even so they are able to reap the huge financial rewards of owning property in, dare I say, the greatest city in the world.”
When I first read about this announcement, I was a little uncomfortable with the idea of focusing on a single rich guy but there is no question that the mayor knows how to market an idea. Although a big part of Mamdani’s brand is his perpetual smile and sunny optimism about the city’s future, his mystique is also enhanced by a fearlessness of reactionary forces regardless of how wealthy or politically powerful they are. More than 50 million people have viewed Mamdani’s clip on various social media.
Since the tax was announced, several local zillionaires have bitterly complained that Mamdani is being mean to them, and their allies in the media have been trying to convince the public that the problems of private plane owners are relevant to people who can’t afford groceries. An August 18 story in the New York Post described a recent City Council meeting on the subject, “Fuming and flummoxed New Yorkers testified Tuesday that Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s botched rollout of the new pied-à-terre tax left them flailing for answers — and feeling under ‘direct attack’ from the government.”
With a tone deaf pose of victimization, Griffin’s fellow, New York billionaire Steve Roth, said that the phrase “tax the rich” can be “just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs.” Roth added that the top 1% should be “praised and thanked.”
At a recent session of the Milken conference, Griffin said that Mamdani was “making it really clear: New York doesn’t welcome success” Griffin threatened to pull out of New York city in favor of Miami, but as he is still a partner in a $4 Subtitles/Closed captions
Mamdani. 5 billion project for 62-story building in Manhattan. ( Despite anti-Mamdani claims that that the specter of the pied-à-terre tax would deter buyers of luxury real estate, sales of Manhattan properties in the $10 million to $20 million range increased 38.6% in the second quarter of this year compared with the same period last year. )
The argument that the pied-à-terretax and wealth taxes, “punish success” is “an old argument” according to Robert Kuttner co-founder of the Economic Policy Institute, which was formed in the 1980s at the peak of Ronald Reagan’s dismantling of much of the New Deal. Kuttner rhetorically asked me, “These people have so much money, why should paying a little more in taxes, why should that be seen as punishment?” Even the editorial board of New York Times which has often been critical of the mayor, wrote “The second home tax is a win for New York.”
New York City’s most famous pied-a-terre owner has also weighed in on the side of his billionaire friends. In a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump called the tax … “pure amateur hour”… sad watching the saga play out “especially [in] a place I once loved…The NYC Pied-a-Terre Tax is costing New York City and State a fortune… the money… is very little compared to … the TAXES PAID by the tens of thousands of people who are fleeing the City, never to return. Florida, Texas, and numerous other States, are making an absolute fortune!…This dangerous political ‘experiment’ in New York will destroy what was once a great City and State…This doesn’t work in America, and must be stopped, NOW!”
In a similar vein, Betsey McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor of New York under Republican George Pataki and an economic advisor to the 2026 Trump campaign warned New York Post readers that “ new forms of taxation — including wealth taxes, mansion taxes and second-home taxes — are fueled by jealousy and hatred for our free-market system, the work ethic and everything American. “
Mamdani says that the new tax will raise around $500 million a year which, although significant, represents a small fraction of New York’s annual $125 billion budget. However, in addition to the fact that every half a billion matters, the debate about the tax serves a larger purpose. Kuttner believes that there is a “virtue is in terms of building a constituency for understanding just how much money the oligarchy has that there is even a category of people who even have pied-a-terre’s.”
Mamdani and his generally formidable staff are not perfect, and they may have made a tactical mistake in the way they announced the tax by sending 17,000 owners of luxury properties a notice that they would be obligated to pay the new tax on their property unless they could demonstrate that it is their primary residence. That process was fodder for outrage among the mayor’s opponents, but the requirement for citizens to show proof that they are not subject to the tax is similar to how many other government policies work.
As New York’s DSA chapter posted on X, “As anyone who has ever received unemployment insurance or SNAP benefits would know, working class New Yorkers have to do a lot more than prove residency in order to receive basic public benefits, so why all this fuss over uploading a PDF?”
The talking points of the real estate industry were on display at the recent New York City Council hearing on the subject. As the New York Post reported, “Robert Bertagna, an Upper East Side retiree who has lived in his home for 30 years, recounted receiving a notice from the city Department of Finance … that he’d be on the hook for $52,000 annually under the surcharge, unless he successfully applied for an exemption. {Bertagna said}, ‘This is… intimidation by our government and, frankly, a direct attack and a target on private wealth. I filed an exemption, but that’s not the point. The point is the government is assuming that I’m guilty unless I can prove myself to be innocent.”
At the same hearing, Karen Young, who received the same kind of letter from the city, used the same talking point “Instead of the American way, you’re innocent until proven guilty, I very much felt that the way this was positioned was, you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent.” Republicans gleefully piled on. Staten Island borough president, Vito Fossella, said, “ This is more like Havana than New York City.”
In a lame effort to fabricate a grass roots opposition to the tax, a the Post described “nearly 20 real estate agents” gathered on City Hall’s steps ahead of the hearing, holding signs declaring “Guilty until proven resident.”
Attorney Randy Mastro, Deputy Mayor for Mamdani’s predecessors, Eric Adams and Rudy Guiliani, filed a lawsuit on behalf of three homeowners because of what he called “A botched rollout.” Staten Island Supreme Court Justice Wayne Ozzi ordered the city to pause the implementation of the tax because of the way that homeowners were informed and ruled that all roughly 17,000 notices sent out must be “cancelled,” and the city Department of Finance must start from scratch and resend them individually.
Another lawsuit against the tax was filed last week by casino mogul Steve Wynn and Trump’s former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, both of whose primary residences are in Palm Beach, Florida, but who own pieda-terres in New York. They fancifully claimed that the tax is “unconstitutional.” City officials are confident that legal challenges to the tax will ultimately fail.
Meanwhile, the mayor continues to balance his larger goals with a keen sensitivity to day-to-day urban life. In August he announced the creation of a “Renew Crew,” a designated group of city workers whose job it is to repair children’s playgrounds and sports courts in several city locations, and last week Mamdani filmed alongside his former Republican opponent, Curtis Sliwa, while they both got flu shots.
Danny Goldberg is the author of six books, most recently “Liberals with Attitude: The Rodney King Beating and the Fight for the Soul of Los Angeles.