A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Wall Street CEOs and other billionaires spent more than $40 million trying to stop Zohran Mamdani from winning the New York City mayor's race. Now, since that wasn't successful, what's next for New York's business leaders? NPR finance correspondent Maria Aspan is based in New York. So, Maria, big picture, why were New York's biggest business leaders so opposed to Mamdani?
MARIA ASPAN, BYLINE: Well, Mamdani campaigned on addressing the city's affordability crisis. But he proposed doing that with some policies that will cost businesses money, like a rent freeze and higher taxes on both companies and wealthy people. Now, he can't actually raise taxes without the state government's help but suggesting it still didn't win him points among the billionaires who run big companies and hate taxes. And some of the reaction also feels more like branding. He's a democratic socialist, which is a term that freaks out capitalists. And he's only 34, where most Wall Street CEOs are a few decades older. I talked about all of this yesterday with Kathryn Wylde. She runs a prominent business group. And this is how she described CEOs' initial take on Mamdani.
KATHRYN WYLDE: The universal reaction was, is this young man somebody you would hire to run a 300,000-person corporation? And of course, the answer was no way.
ASPAN: Wylde runs the Partnership for New York City. It represents more than 300 large companies. And she's been helping to broker meetings between her members and Mamdani. She also pointed out that there's been another, more emotional issue overshadowing this election. That's the conflict between Israel and Hamas and Mamdani's criticisms of Israel's government.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah, and that turned out to be a pretty big factor in the New York City election.
ASPAN: It did. And that's because New York is home to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel. That includes a lot of prominent Wall Street CEOs and other billionaires, many of whom gave a lot of money to Mamdani's opponents. For example, Bill Ackman, the hedge fund billionaire. You may remember his name for his campaign against Harvard over its responses to the October 7 attacks by Hamas. This year, Ackman became one of Mamdani's biggest and loudest opponents. He gave some $2 million to efforts to defeat him. Now, Mamdani has disavowed antisemitism. And he said yesterday that he looks forward to working with Jewish leaders across the city.
MARTÍNEZ: So now that he's won, though, what's next for Wall Street?
ASPAN: Well, some CEOs are still in their feels, but some are resigned. And even Bill Ackman congratulated Mamdani in a post on social media. And Wylde points out that most CEOs are ultimately practical.
WYLDE: Zohran has won resoundingly. So we will seek to be his partner in dealing with the issues, challenges facing the city, which are considerable right now.
ASPAN: Among them, of course, is that big affordability crisis that Mamdani campaigned and won on.
MARTÍNEZ: So this might be a naive question by me. But, I mean, why wouldn't New York CEOs want their city to be more affordable for the people they hire?
ASPAN: (Laughter) Right. They do if they decide to stay here. Now, some businesses have made noises about moving jobs to other cities. But Wylde at least shrugs off that threat. And she points out that a lot of companies have invested in huge headquarters here, and they do need people to work in those headquarters.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. That's NPR finance correspondent Maria Aspan. Thanks a lot.
ASPAN: Thank you.
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