New York City’s mayoral upset unfolded like a Wall Street trading floor gone haywire: Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist once branded the harbinger of “hot commie summer,” swept to victory Tuesday, turning billionaire broadsides into belated bromances.
The pre-election onslaught was a spectacle of excess. Deep-pocketed detractors unleashed floods of cash, caustic quips, and X posts sharp enough to slice a bond prospectus, all aimed at derailing Mamdani’s march to City Hall.
Bill Ackman led the charge with the ferocity of a short seller spotting overvalued stock. His tweetstorm was so volcanic that Mamdani, on the Flagrant podcast last month, deadpanned it cost more than any tax hike he’d ever dream up.
Yet victory tastes sweetest when seasoned with schadenfreude. Ackman’s post-election X missive arrived like a white flag waved from a yacht: “Congrats on the win. Now you have a big responsibility. If I can help NYC, just let me know what I can do.”
It was the digital equivalent of a poker player folding a full house. Across Manhattan’s moneyed corridors, similar sentiments bubbled up, as if Mamdani’s ballot-box blitz had reprogrammed the profit motive.
Ralph Schlosstein, the finance veteran who co-founded BlackRock and helmed Evercore, wasted no time donning his diplomat’s hat. Despite four decades dodging anything redder than a stoplight, he’s plotting to join a business brain trust advising the mayor-elect.
“I’m certainly not a socialist,” Schlosstein confessed, his words landing like a banker admitting to enjoying kale smoothies. “But I care about this city more than my portfolio—mostly.”
His outreach quells whispers of a wealthy exodus, the kind where limos honk all the way to Miami. Tax-hike jitters had tycoons twitching like day traders at a Fed meeting, but now they’re sketching survival strategies instead of escape routes.
Mark Kronfeld, ex-BlackRock bigwig and eternal New Yorker, dismissed doomsday vibes with the briskness of a cabbie dodging potholes. “Is this some Mad Max meltdown because Mamdani won? Hardly—it’s just Tuesday in the Big Apple, hold the Armageddon.”
He likened Mamdani’s campaign to a mirror image of a certain orange-hued operator, thriving on elite enmity as free publicity. The more the moneyed class maligned him, the more voters marveled at his moxie, turning taunts into turnout gold.
Michael Nelson, a headhunter who’s placed more CEOs than a game of musical chairs, spotted the silver lining in the snobbery. Wall Street’s self-serious swagger, he noted, often inspires the masses to murmur, “Let them eat cake—then tax it.”
Even closet admirers emerged from the shadows. A Bank of America earner raking in eight figures whispered support for Mamdani, but only if no one overheard—lest his corner office turn into a reeducation seminar.
Crypto king Mike Novogratz preached pragmatism over panic. “He’s nailing the narrative of our split-screen city, straight out of Dickens with extra Dickensian despair,” Novogratz said. “Let’s fix affordability without flushing finance down the Hudson.”
JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, who’d once pegged Mamdani as more Marxist than mayo on a club sandwich, extended an olive branch last month. Skepticism shelved, he vowed collaboration, as if prepping for a summit where spreadsheets meet solidarity.
Robert Wolf, ex-UBS Americas chief, echoed the epiphany. “Plenty in business played hard to get during the race,” he said. “But with Mamdani at the helm, it’s time to row together—or at least not rock the boat.”
Citigroup’s Jane Fraser chimed in with corporate cheer. “We’re eager to team up with the mayor-elect,” she declared, “to polish New York into an even shinier gem for our folks and financiers.”
Lingering landmines dot the landscape, though. Mamdani’s sharp words on Israel have some suits shifting uncomfortably, especially amid rising antisemitic incidents. Kathy Wylde, head of the Partnership for New York City—a CEO salon with 350 members—urged gentle reassurances for the Jewish community.
Ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who barnstormed as an Israel advocate after his primary drubbing, snagged 40% in the general but couldn’t close the gap. (Bloomberg, the media mogul and Cuomo backer, funneled funds to his PAC, proving even billionaires bet on long shots.)
Mamdani’s mending fences with flair. At a hush-hush hedge fund huddle, one founder caught him softening socialist steel into pragmatic putty, flexible enough to bend without breaking—though skepticism lingered like a bad aftertaste.
Enter the advisory alliance luring Schlosstein: a dream team spanning finance, real estate, tech, health, and government, featuring investors Kevin Ryan and Andrew Milgram. Milgram, who scooped distressed taxi medallions via Marblegate, recalls Mamdani’s hunger-strike solidarity with debt-drowned drivers.
It wasn’t glad-handing glamour; Mamdani muscled through a $400 million loan forgiveness, haggling like a vendor at Canal Street. “No photo-op fluff,” Milgram marveled. “He herded cats into consensus.”
Mamdani’s base? Not just the bootstrappers, but budding ballers—six-figure strivers squeezed by sky-high rents. Over 65,000 households in the $100K-$300K bracket fork over a third of pay to landlords, fueling his primary surge in pricey precincts.
Crypto fund founder David Tawil shrugged off the squeeze with Jersey Shore swagger—he’d already bailed on Manhattan’s maw. “Affordability? Tough nut in this town,” he quipped. “Wall Street didn’t build it for bargains.”
Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs legend who weathered Occupy’s Zuccotti zealots blocks from his HQ, stays sanguine. Mamdani must swap firebrand flair for functional fixes, he advised—trash hauled, snow shoveled, streets safe.
“Folks like AOC or Sanders can coast on charisma forever,” Blankfein noted of Mamdani’s cheerleaders. “Mayors? Miss the mundane, and you’re yesterday’s headlines—no sequel for socialists.”
As the Mamdani era dawns, New York buzzes with wary wonder. Will the wallet warriors truly team up, or is this just a timeout till tax time? One thing’s clear: in the city that never sleeps, even billionaires hit snooze on grudges.
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