Last week, Mayor Zohran Mamdani highlighted a new proposal, introduced by Governor Kathy Hochul, that would charge a yearly surcharge on pricey second residences in the city that remain largely unoccupied by their wealthy, out-of-town owners.
In a Tax Day–themed video, the mayor touted the proposed pied-à-terre levy as a fulfillment of his campaign promise to tax the rich and name-checked one owner in particular: Citadel CEO Ken Griffin. “This is an annual fee on luxury properties worth more than $5 million whose owners do not live full-time in the city. Like for this penthouse, which hedge-fund CEO Ken Griffin bought for $238 million,” Mamdani said as he gestured toward 220 Central Park South, which sits along 57th Street’s “Billionaires Row.” In 2019, Griffin purchased a massive 24,000-square-foot penthouse apartment in the building, paying the most for a home or apartment in American history.
I'm quoting a story from New York magazine. It appears under the scoldy headline "Mamdani Has Mightily Pissed Off One of NYC’s Richest People." Gothamist, a local news outlet that is usually better than this, now asks:
Did Mamdani’s 'Tax the Rich' Video Outside a Billionaire's NYC Penthouse Cross a Line?Oh, please.
Gothamist tells us that the video
is sparking a backlash from members of New York City’s business community who say the mayor went too far in an era of increasing political violence.That would be this Kathryn Wylde, who recently retired after a quarter century as CEO of the Partnership for New York, which represents the interests of the very, very rich:
Kathy Wylde, a longtime power broker between City Hall and business leaders, said Mamdani’s video outside hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin’s 23,000-square-foot penthouse comes amid genuine safety concerns among executives.
Wylde, who turns 80 in June, is one of the most connected and influential people in New York. She is in regular contact with financial titans like JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, KKR co-founder Henry Kravis, and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink — leaders who shape the city’s economic and political landscape behind closed doors.I guess the rich have figured out that they embarrass themselves when they compare tax-increase proposals to Hitler invading Poland, as Blackstone Group founder Steven Schwarzman did in 2011, or compare anti-rich protests to Kristallnacht, as venture capitalist Tom Perkins did in 2014. Wylde has defends the rich by talking about their safety.
Wylde joined the Partnership for New York City in 1982 and became CEO in 2000. Founded in 1979 by David Rockefeller, the Partnership brings together top business leaders to work alongside the government to shape the city’s future. Its 350 members span Fortune 500 CEOs, tech founders, and real estate heavyweights whose companies employ about one million people in New York City. Membership is by invitation only, with annual dues ranging from $25,000 to $125,000 depending on a company’s size and industry.
Last summer, a gunman killed four people and himself at a Midtown building that housed NFL offices and the investment giant Blackstone. Luigi Mangione is awaiting trial for the alleged assassination of an insurance CEO in Midtown in 2024.A Blackstone executive was among those killed in that shooting at a Midtown building, but the target was the NFL -- the shooter blamed football for his traumatic brain injury, and spared NFL executives because he took the wrong elevator. And the shooting of United Healthcare's Brian Thompson was inspired by Mangione's dealings with the healthcare system, not by any publicity surrounding his target.
“In the current political environment, you can’t personalize policy issues without negative repercussions, as we saw with the UnitedHealthcare CEO,” said Wylde....
If we argue that it's wrong to criticize anyone who could conceivably be shot by an angry person, that requires us to be silent about every public figure in America.
This jamoke also weighs in:
Kevin O’Leary, the star of the entrepreneurial reality show Shark Tank, said Mamdani needed to do some “soul searching.”I guess O'Leary forgot the period during the mayoral race when Andrew Cuomo incessantly attacked Mamdani for living in a rent-stabilized apartment in Queens.
“How would he like it if Ken took a video crew outside his house and say, ‘Mamdani lives here. This is where he lives,’” he said during an interview on the cable channel NewsNation. “Think about what that means for personal safety.”
Somewhere last night in New York City, a single mother and her children slept at a homeless shelter because you, assemblyman @ZohranKMamdani are occupying her rent controlled apartment.
— Andrew Cuomo (@andrewcuomo) August 8, 2025
You grew up rich and married an even wealthier woman. You’ve had weddings on 3 continents.… https://t.co/kWXUI0MxdA pic.twitter.com/mvYZfCO8Af
A New York Post story about Cuomo's attacks appeared under the headline "Champagne Socialist Zohran Mamdani Slammed for Hogging $2,300 Apartment — Despite Six-Figure Salary, Wealthy Family"; it included a photo of Mamdani's building. Other news outlets published Mamdani's address. And, of course, every New Yorker knows where Mamdani lives now, because he's moved into Gracie Mansion, the city-owned mayoral residence.
Mamdani haters routinely ascribe great wealth to him, even though his father is a college professor and his mother makes art-market films, none of which have made as much money at the box office as the Michael Jackson biopic made yesterday alone.
Ken Griffin, by contrast, has a net worth of more than $50 billion. And it's not as if his many real estate purchases are a secret -- this 2020 CNBC story not only reports on (and gives the address of) Griffin's $238 million apartment in New York, it also provides a photograph and the address for his
16,000-square-foot mansion located near Buckingham Palace in the heart of London. The home, which is the most expensive home sold in London since 2008, is a 19th Century townhouse that previously housed French statesman Charles de Gaulle during World War II. The mansion features an indoor swimming pool and spa, staff quarters and private gardens.We also get a link to a story about Griffin's 2018 purchase of the most expensive home in Chicago, a four-story condo bought for $58.5 million; the story includes the building's address and a photo of the lobby. (Griffin also has homes in Miami, Aspen, and Hawaii, CNBC tells us.)
So Griffin's properties, like the properties owned by most rich and famous people, aren't shrouded in mystery. It's easy to find out where they are. The rich have to keep themselves safe (and they certainly have the money to do so).
The Gothamist story tells us that Mamdani might cost the city some jobs:
“Attacking one of the city’s largest and most important employers is definitely a strategy, but it’s not a good one,” said Howard Wolfson, who worked as a top aide to former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, on X.The thin-skinned Griffin moved his company's Chicago operations to Miami in response to a referendum that, if passed, would have raised rich people's income taxes; he did this while spending $50 million in a successful campaign to defeat the referendum.
“Ken’s company is a major employer in NYC of very high paying jobs which drive a considerable amount of our tax base,” said Bill Ackman, a fellow billionaire and critic of the mayor. “We wouldn’t want him to move even more employees to Miami.”
Would Griffin do the same thing to New York? Maybe. But his company, Citadel is not really "one of the city’s largest and most important employers." It employs 1,346 people in the city, far fewer people than the six-figure head counts of companies such as Ernst & Young and JPMorgan Chase. And even many ordinary right-wing voters understand now that the rich aren't paying enough in taxes. Economic populism might eventually come for Ken Griffin no matter where he is.
Griffin is highly unlikely to be killed because of Mamdani's video -- and besides, how risky is it to show his New York apartment building if he doesn't actually live there? And wouldn't people be less angry at Griffin if they thought he was willingly paying his fair share of taxes?
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