New York City businessmen are already looking for the exits as newly elected democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani keeps promising “free” stuff they’ll be forced to subsidize.
Mamdani ran his campaign on a litany of socialist fever dreams like frozen rents, free city buses, and city-run grocery stores — but almost every one of his major policies is dependent on on a robust local economy replete with multi-millionaire and billionaire business owners who are willing to turn the other cheek while he robs them blind. Thus far, business owners don’t appear inclined to bite.
Apollo Global Management’s CEO, according to a report from The New York Post, is eyeing Florida and Texas as possible new hubs for the massive private equity firm. Billionaire CEO Marc Rowan has already begun to build up a presence in Florida, and he’s been scouting office locations in Miami and Palm Beach as well as in Austin, Texas.
Apollo alone paid more than $1 billion in income taxes in the past two years ($1.062 billion in 2024 and $1.276 billion in 2025), and although it is not clear how much of that went directly into the city’s coffers, it is clear that New York City would take a sizable hit if that money went elsewhere.
Billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, majority owner of Citadel LLC., also announced a plan to expand in Florida — and directly tied it a video that Mayor Mamdani posted recently.
Mamdani stood in front of Griffin’s Midtown penthouse to tout his plan for a “pied à terre” tax — which would slap additional taxes on second homes valued at over five million dollars — and Griffin made it clear that he did not appreciate the gesture.
“We will add far more jobs in Miami over the next decade as an immediate and direct consequence of the mayor’s poor decision here with respect to his posting of that video,” Griffin said, calling Mamdani’s video “creepy.”
The Citadel CEO’s threats are not likely to be idle, either — he relocated part of his company from Chicago to Miami in 2022 because of increasing crime and poor city and state leadership under then Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D-Chicago) and Governor J.B. Pritzker (D-IL). Citadel still has a large part of its company based in New York City.
“I think looking at what Mamdani just did to me, and more broadly is doing to the city of New York, is triggering of the trauma I went through in Chicago. Chicago went through a renaissance during most of my 30 years there, and then under the leadership of J.B. Pritzker, Lori Lightfoot, and the current mayor, has just devolved into a state that has lost its way,” he said.
Griffin and Rowan aren’t likely to be the only two considering escape, Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow John Ketcham warned.
“New York City is losing its competitive edge and Mayor Mamdani makes it far less competitive,” he explained. “Investors and job creators have options and they will go where they’re treated well. Increasingly New York City has treated them inhospitably. New York City leaders have assumed they can’t do business elsewhere, even though we have seen in the last several years a dramatic expansion of the financial sector’s activities in states like Florida and Texas.”
The Partnership for New York City, a pro-business group, estimates that Mamdani’s policies could cost the city more than $168 million in annual city and state tax revenue – more than 2,500 jobs in the financial sector alone.
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