Pity the Billionaires: The Wall Street Freakout

The biggest freakout has come from a ruling class that has been coddled for decades and suddenly fears well-deserved expropriation (even though Mamdani is only proposing a small tax hike on them that would have to be approved by the state).

JPMorgan Chase’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, called Mamdani “more a Marxist than a socialist” and said Mamdani was pushing the “same ideological mush that means nothing in the real world.” In a similar panic over even the smallest threat to the prerogatives of wealth, Donald Trump has called him a “pure communist.”

An awkwardly named PAC called New Yorkers for a Better Future Mayor 25, armed with at least $20 million, is backed by hedge funder Bill Ackman, Gristedes supermarket chain founder John Catsimatidis, and other billionaires uninterested in sharing the wealth. According to the Wall Street Journal, this group is in some distress over Mamdani:

How they plan on beating him . . . remains something to be worked out.

Political strategists and financiers say the opening weeks of the general election have been chaotic. They complain the anti-Mamdani bulwark lacks a positive message. And a candidate. And enough voters to win. They worry the flood of outside money could backfire, and make voters suspicious of special interests.

Their complaints are practical — they don’t want to pay more taxes. But they’re also ideological, as Dimon’s comments suggest: they don’t want to see left-wing ideas go mainstream. Their declarations sound almost plaintive. Take the frightened whine of another wealthy Mamdani foe, television star Dr Phil, at a recent fundraiser for Eric Adams: “Nothing is for free, folks.”

Asked to describe the reaction of the New York City ruling class, the level-headed Kathy Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City (essentially the city’s chamber of commerce) on the Bloomberg News podcast Odd Lots said, “‘Hysteria’ is the word I would use.” She laconically noted that these business elites didn’t seriously consider the possibility that Mamdani would win until 10 p.m. on primary night.

“How do we stop this guy?” asked Bo Dietl, former New York Police Department detective and prominent right-wing media personality, who is planning on raising $10 million with former mayor Rudy Giuliani, a disgraced former Trump adviser.

Dr Phil? Bo Dietl? Rudy Giuliani? The anti-Mamdani forces aren’t exactly sending their best. Then again, maybe they are.

The Dead-Enders: Centrist Democrat Freakout

Speaking of has-beens, another relic exhumed from the past is former New York governor David Paterson, who held a press conference last week to answer a question that was on absolutely no one’s mind: What does David Paterson think of Zohran Mamdani?

Paterson sees Mamdani as “dangerous” and, singling out the most easily implemented policy on his platform, said freezing the rent on rent-stabilized apartments was “impossible. There’s no way he could do that.” (The mayor appoints a majority of the members of the Rent Guidelines Board, and Bill de Blasio, as mayor, did indeed do this.) Paterson views defeating Mamdani as an urgent matter and called for centrists to “find a way to unite.” He wants Andrew Cuomo or Adams to drop out — which is not happening since neither have any love for one another or any larger vision other than their own ambition.

Plenty of regular Democratic leaders have declared support for Mamdani — he is, after all, the Democratic nominee. After he won the primary, an initial wave of support included Rep. Jerrold Nadler, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and several large unions that had backed Cuomo, including the United Federation of Teachers and 1199SEIU.

Perhaps more startlingly, some of the local Democratic machine, normally unsympathetic to socialists, came around. First and almost immediately, Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, a state assemblywoman and district leader who wields great influence in Brooklyn and had backed Cuomo, endorsed Mamdani, praising him for turning out young voters and running an exciting campaign. Another big machine endorsement came last week from Rep. Adriano Espaillat, another Cuomo stalwart, and one of the city’s most influential politically centrist Latino leaders.

Then there are the undecideds. Senator Chuck Schumer, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, New York Democratic Party chair Jay Jacobs apparently haven’t decided whether to join Mamdani’s campaign. “I think our nominee is going to have to convince folks that he is prepared to aggressively address the rise in antisemitism in the city of New York, which has been an unacceptable development,” Jeffries babbled yesterday. But the real issue Jeffries is referring to is the Democratic nominee’s stance on Israel. Which brings us to our next type.

Genocide Defenders: The Zionist Freakout

The primary victory of Mamdani, who has been critical of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians and said he would arrest Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a war criminal, has evoked panic among Israel’s defenders. Zionists are trying hard to scare Jews, portraying Mamdani as a Holocaust denier and an antisemite, claiming that Jews in New York won’t be safe with him as mayor.

Jeffries, Rep. Ritchie Torres, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Al Sharpton, and others have fixated on Mamdani’s refusal to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada” — a particularly strange non-scandal, given that Mamdani has never used this phrase publicly and says he does not use it. He says it is not the role of the mayor to police language this way.

Fox News has been featuring the most paranoid Jewish New Yorkers it can find, like “entrepreneur and social media tycoon” Ben Soffer, who said, “We’re very afraid. I never thought I would be afraid to be openly Jewish here,” Soffer said, insisting that condemnation of Zionism and of Judaism is one and the same.

An opinion writer in the Jerusalem Post called Mamdani “the darling of the ‘Israel is genocidal’ crazies,” argued that Jews who voted for Mamdani must be “members of the Indians for Custer club,” suggested Jews should flee New York City, and compared the rise of the Ugandan-born democratic socialist to the plot of Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, in which a totalitarian, bigoted dictator comes to power. To his fellow Jews, the writer warned, “We are the enemy.”

Political commentator Dave Rubin echoed this dangerous hysteria, saying Jews need to “get the hell out of New York” if Mamdani wins. Rubin went further, saying, “There will be pogroms.”

Each of these claims is crazy in its own way, but what they really fear is more rational and reality-based: that fealty to Israel has been successfully challenged in the Democratic Party, and that it’s possible to win elections while telling the truth about genocide in Palestine.

Undisguised Racism: The Far-Right Freakout

“I am Donald Trump’s worst nightmare,” Mamdani has said. Indeed, the paranoia over Mamdani’s (absolutely made-up) antisemitism is closely related to pure Islamophobia and xenophobia. Senator Gillibrand claimed on public radio station WNYC that Mamdani had called for “global jihad.” (This earned a rebuke from New York governor Kathy Hochul, and Gillibrand has since spoken with Mamdani and apologized for the ludicrously bigoted and baseless remarks; he has accepted her apology.)

The racism has been flying fast and furious from the far right, especially from the White House. Republican politicians have called for Mamdani’s denaturalization and deportation, a bizarre and horrifying sign of how totalitarian their mindset is (Mamdani, born in Uganda, is an American citizen). The Trump administration says it’s “looking into it.” But there’s a good chance that this brand of freakout bolsters Mamdani’s support even more by uniting New Yorkers and other Americans behind him.

And Then We Win?

We almost certainly haven’t seen the last of the freakouts. The ruling class, the Right, and defenders of Israel are used to winning, and their intemperate remarks reflect that the Left has them on the backfoot for the first time in years. Hopefully they stay there.