New York —
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani stood outside a luxury skyscraper in Manhattan for a video on Tax Day to deliver on his trademark plan: “We’re taxing the rich.”
The skyscraper, located on ritzy Central Park South and built at a cost of $1.5 billion, seemed a fitting symbol for Mamdani’s video announcing that New York City at long last would institute a so-called pied-à-terre tax on second homes of the city’s wealthiest.
Mamdani singled out billionaire financier Ken Griffin’s $238 million penthouse as a prime example of the “fundamentally unfair system” that allows the city’s richest to store their wealth in homes that sit empty most of the time.
Griffin and opponents of Mamdani were enraged. Griffin said Tuesday that the video was “creepy and weird” and New York “doesn’t welcome success” under Mamdani. He said his investing firm Citadel plans to expand in Miami over New York City in response.
