July 11, 2025 • 44 mins
When socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic party's nomination for NYC mayor, top business leaders experienced a bout of hysteria. That's according to Kathy Wylde, the president and CEO of the non-profit organization the Partnership for New York City. Founded in 1979, the organization assembles the CEOs of some of the biggest employers in New York City in order to work on city issues. Wylde herself is often characterized as one of the ultimate NYC power brokers. In fact, she's been actively facilitating phone calls and meetings between Mamdani and the CEOs (most of whom backed Cuomo in the primary) who are anxious about what a socialist mayor would mean for the city. We talked to her about what they're most concerned about, what they want to see from Mamdani (if he wins), what could push businesses and people to move out of the city, and what they think about him after they talk.
Read more:
NYC Billionaires Are Richer Than Ever as Mamdani Pushes for Higher Taxes
City-Run Supermarkets Aren’t New. But No One’s Tried Them in a City Like New York
Only http://Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello and welcome to another episode of The Odd Lads podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway, former Odd.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Lad's guest is very likely to be the next mayor
of New York City.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
That's right. So we interviewed Zora and Mumdanie. I think
it was in early May and right after that. I'm
not saying I'm not going to take credit for this,
but right after that he really started to surge in
the polls and he went on to win the Democratic nomination.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
I think we think very very minor credits.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
I'm sure it was a coincidence.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
The thing actually that struck me after that episode was
hearing from a lot of people who were basically like,
I don't like any of his ideas at all, but
I still like the guy, and I still found him
impressive and intelligent and very strong understanding of policy. And look,
I don't think his victory is attributable to us, but
(01:11):
I did think that was telling in the sense that
a lot of people who maybe on paper shouldn't or
wouldn't really like some of his views, didn't seem particularly
threatened by him, which I thought was really interesting and
may have contributed to his sort of extraordinary margin is
extraordinary victory.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
I do think what's interesting about this whole story is
the tension between New York City as this hub of capitalism,
this hub of business. You have a lot of money here,
a lot of billionaires obviously with their own interests, and
now you have this democratic socialist candidate who's proposing something
a little bit new. Although some people would say we
(01:49):
had something more similar to that in say the nineteen
fifties nineteen sixties New York. But that tension is what
I find really fascinating right now.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, so we have to we have to learn more.
I mean again in the run up to the election. Look,
what are New York City's business financial elites thinking right now?
What do they think of a possible I'm Donnie Merrilty.
What do they think about New York City in general?
All of this stuff, There's there's a lot to learn.
This is going to be a rich vein of interesting
(02:18):
stuff for us for a while.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
We're going all New York local politics, I guess, But
I do think it has national consequences.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Internet, so we should talk about it. We should definitely
talk about anyway. I'm really excited. We do have, indeed
the perfect guest to talk about how the city's business elite, billionaires, etc.
Are thinking about the city, think about the election, the
possibility of Donnie being the mayor. We're going to be
speaking with Kathy Wilde. She's the president and CEO of
(02:45):
the Partnership for New York City, which is an organization,
a business leadership organization here all kinds of major employers.
If you read any article about Kathy in the media,
described as sort of one of the ultimate power brokers
of New York City.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Yeah, words like power brokers, power player comes up.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
In every single one, and so truly the perfect guest. So, Kathy,
thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
Oud lots, thank you for having me, Joe and.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
To absolutely we're really excited. What do you just before
we move on, describe what the Partnership for New York
City is and what you basically do there.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
The Partnership is business working in the interests of the city.
It's not a chamber of commerce. It was organized after
the city's nineteen seventy five physical crisis by David Rockefeller,
who was then the chair of Chase Bank. And other
CEOs of the major corporations that were not just businesses
headquartered in New York, but were real citizens of New
(03:43):
York and trustees of its hospitals and museums, and real
contributors to the city as philanthropists. So it is very
much a business organization that is designed to tap the
expertise and the influence of the business community to support
New York City and to maintain it as the city
(04:07):
of great economic opportunity.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
What's the partnership's relationship like typically with the mayoral administration
and are there examples where you've worked together to effectively
do something or maybe change the path of policy.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
Well, absolutely, the partnership's relationship to government is really as
an intermediary between business and government, as I said, to
provide expertise, to provide advice, to give feedback, really to
be a resource more than an adversary with the local government,
in particular local state government and some extent the federal government.
(04:47):
When there are overriding issues that make a big impact
on New York that are being considered in Washington.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
When did Zoron come on the radar of the people
that you talk to, of the CEOs, etc. In the like,
was it a month before?
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Was he?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Were they thinking about him at all? Three months before
the election? I'm sort of curious, like when it may
have flickered in their minds that the Democratic Party could
nominate a socialist.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
I would have to say that it was primary night
about ten o'clock.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Really, it's incredible to me.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
Well, I had forewarned them that it was a possibility,
but I think Cromo had been a figure in their
lives as Mario's son, as attorney general, as governor for
twenty some years, and it was kind of a foregone conclusion,
is the guy we know who's now running for mayor
(05:42):
is going to be mayor? And especially after Mayor Adams
announced he was not going to be in the Democratic primary,
and so they had kind of zeroed in on accepting
that it was going to be Cromo, and really no
one had met zorun.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
What is the mood like on primary night? Did everyone
immediately go home and start looking up socialism on the
internet on chat GPT?
Speaker 4 (06:06):
Well, I would say hysteria would be a good word
for shock. Was first shock first and what happened? And
who is this person? And so I tried to provide
some reassurance. We had for the past twenty years led
efforts to bring congestion pricing to New York City to
both manage traffic but to really make the city a
(06:29):
more efficient place. Excess traffic congestion was costing the city
twenty billion dollars a year with lost time, lost productivity,
and what makes New York a great place to work
is the productive workforce. So we'd been an advocate of
congestion pricing, and I had actually met Zoron in that
context at the Rider's Alliance where it's a group of
(06:53):
subway riders advocates, and had found him to be a
very smart, interesting young man. So I had known him,
and then he reached out to me last September and said,
I'd like to talk to you about my mayoral prospects
when he was polling at one percent, and so I
(07:13):
met him for coffee at the LPQ at eighty five
Broad and we had a conversation, and I found him
to be smart, and I took him seriously from then on.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
HM. I'm impressed from his perspective that that early on
he wanted to sort of build that connection or make
that connection with you before you talk more about him.
A friend of mine described you as a therapist to
the New York City billionaires. They were hysterical on or
they're experiencing hysteria on primary night. Did you feel like
(07:48):
that was your role in that night? Did you feel
like a therapist to the members of the partnership?
Speaker 4 (07:52):
To provide reassurance to the business community, I mean, number one,
to remind them that many of the things they want
are most worried about from a Democratic Socialist candidate were
things that he has absolutely no capacity to execute on. So,
for example, raising corporate and income taxes is not something
(08:14):
that the city or the mayor can do. Free buses
is not something the mayor can do, and figuring out
where you make up that eight hundred million in revenues.
So that was number one, reassuring them that we have
a moderate governor who's watching out for business interests, who
(08:38):
says she's not going to further raise taxes in New York,
which is the highest tax city in the country and
in most cases the world for both individual income tax
and corporate tax. So that was number one, providing reassurance
that as mayor, he would have an agenda. But there
are a lot of checks and balances to work through
(08:59):
in New York and it's not a unilateral post. Now.
That was more difficult with the real estate community because
their concerns having to do with land use proceedings and
approvals and construction permits, etc. That the mayor does control
basically huge amount of control over that process. That is
(09:19):
one thing that's local and real estate taxes where the
mayor has significant influence. So it was more difficult with
members of the real estate community, who after the primary
quickly pivoted to remembering what a good friend Mayor Adams was.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
So I want to talk more about the concerns of
the business community, obviously, but before we do, I can't
resist asking, when you first met zoron over coffee, what
advice did you give him? What did you actually say
to him about a mayor run.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Number One, I said that you can't lead New York
City unless you have a constructive relationship with the Jewish community,
because that was the most obvious source of concern that
he seemed not able to address. That worried me a lot.
Number Two, that the solution to affordability is not for government,
(10:19):
local government to spend more money. That the money that
local government spends has to be accounted for that you
need to raise taxes to support it, and ultimately that
just ups the cost of living and the cost of
doing business in New York and that all ends up
getting passed along to consumers. So the affordability question, which
(10:43):
he was absolutely right to emphasize and emphasize from the beginning,
that we've got to make New York more affordable to
not just poor people, to the middle class, to those
people who rent an apartment and now the average rents
almost four thousand dollars a month. This is the big
concern of employers, and I said, this is their number
one concern. How do we keep and retain young talent
(11:06):
if they can't afford to rent an apartment in New
York City? Big frustration. So that was kind of the
conversation that we had, and he was open to that
conversation and interested in learning. I mean, he impressed me
right away as somebody who is interested in learning more,
but who has has very strong opinions and is very committed.
(11:31):
And I mean he's thirty three years old. In the
world is his oyster.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Yeah, you mentioned the importance of relations with the Jewish community,
and I saw I watched that. I didn't watch the
whole debate, but I did watch the last debate and
there was that question about which country you're going to
visit first, and every candidate blood store On said they
were going to visit Israel. He said he wasn't thinking
about is going to visit. Can you explain from the
(11:56):
perspective of the business leaders new York City, why do
they perceive that good relations with Israel is such an
important aspect of the job of Why does the.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Mayor of New York have to have a foreign policy?
Speaker 4 (12:10):
Well, their fears that he has a foreign policy. I
don't think anybody thinks the Mayor of New York has
to have a foreign policy. But he has a record
of speaking out on issues that impact the Jewish community
about Israel that they're very concerned about, and so their
concern is not having. New York City has a long
(12:35):
history of values that are very strong on supporting a
diversity of people, are very tolerant of various religious beliefs,
and a long history with Israel. I mean, when Cornell
Technion partnered on Technion's the university in Israel, that really
(12:57):
led the Startup Nation movement in his and did so
much to propel their economy. And they were selected under
the Bloomberg administration to establish a first class engineering school
in New York on Roosevelt Island, which has been very
successful and is producing a great number of PhDs. And
(13:19):
so at the time that they came in, Technioy came in,
they told me how they had been funded. Originally it
was New York Jewish philanthropists that funded that effort. So
there's this long term relationship. And obviously we have many
people in New York who are family of Holocaust victims
(13:40):
and survivors, and for whom the fact of a Jewish
homeland a safe space for Jews around the world is
of top area of importance. I think that that they
are very concerned that the mayor of New York City
respect and understand the importance of Israel and our long
(14:05):
term relationship, and that worries them a lot. And that's
an issue that I think he has yet to resolve.
I think it's difficult because he has strong support in
the young Jewish community, and so I'm sure he feels
that he's got a lot of people who are with
him on the issues of protecting the rights of the
(14:27):
Palestinians and concerns about that. So it's this is an
area again where the fact that he ran a campaign
and had built relationships that are a piece of New
York City. He expanded the electorate to folks who have
(14:47):
not participated, but he really did not develop much of
a relationship with the historic electorate. He was running against
the democratic establishment, not with it, and so the communities
where much of the Jewish population is concentrated were not
communities he was necessarily reaching out to, except for the
(15:10):
young people and the social media crowd, and that's not
the people who are most concerned.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
So on the topic of the campaign, I mean, this
was one of the really surprising things of him winning.
He had this sort of grassroots campaign which was very
much focused on social media, lots of merchandise with really
interesting designs. I've seen the hot girls for zor and
T shirts. People wearing those around town, usually young women,
as you mentioned. And I'm curious, are any of the
(15:55):
people you're speaking to perhaps thinking differently about campaign donators
going forward if they donated billions of dollars for Cuomo
and zorin.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
Well, not billions but millions. Okay, yes, yes, I would
say that for the most part, what I'm hearing is
that people feel that they contributed to Cuomo and that
they don't feel they got a very good campaign out
(16:28):
of it. They want to meet Zoron and I think
they're making There are many, particularly in the real estate community,
that are stepping up to transfer whatever donations they were
making Cuomo to Eric Adams, if you will, the somebody
that they know they can do business with, then who
(16:50):
has been supportive of tremendously positive growth in the city
from the nature of the pandemic and where our economy was,
where our real estate situation. I'm Eric Adams. It should
not be ignored that he has his administration has led
rezoning efforts and really changed the zoning code for the
(17:12):
first time since nineteen sixty one. So he's made a
tremendous investment in trying to begin the process of making
it easier and less expensive to develop housing in the
city and supported economic growth overall. So there was concern.
I mean, obviously he's the first mayor that's been indicted,
(17:32):
and when he dropped out of the Democratic primary, I
think that solidified most of the money going to Cuomo,
but Eric is back in the general and in good form.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
I noticed you said something. I think your first answer
that the business elite had accepted Cuomo as who was
going to be the nominee. Accepted, it does not sound
the same as enthusiastically support. I hear that is sort
of resigned.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Yeah, okay, status Cuomo.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Yeah, and so I'm curiously.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Come on, you have to laugh at that.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Good lie here, right, status quo. That's a good one.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
That was good. But how did they feel actually about Cuomo?
And also, like I know there's some question it's still
unclear whether he's gonna run actively in November, but if
they do coalesce around someone, does it definitely seem like
it's going to be Adams so.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
Far, I think yes, I think it's going to be
Adams if and again, it is the real estate community
that's most concerned. You understand that the financial industry in
New York basically is prohibited by federal regulation sec IF
in run other regulation from contributing to state and local
(18:48):
candidates beyond a nominal amount of a few hundred dollars.
So they are not, for the most part, money players
in state and local elections, which has really disadvantaged New
York's business community, which represents like forty percent of our
tax base, who can't participate in supporting candidates of their choice.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
They could knock on doors like the Zorone volunteers did,
they just can't donate gobs of money.
Speaker 4 (19:15):
And that would be great, but not happening. Okay, most
of them are beyond the door knocking age. But your
question about Cuomo. Cuomo was Attorney General during the financial
crisis and was not very friendly toward the financial industry
and did not develop relationships that were very positive during
(19:37):
his tenure as Attorney General with the business community. So
that was his job to be an enforcer. And during
his term as governor he came in with a very
strong agenda to try and get state spending under control
and get taxes under control. But having made some of
some real progress there on medicaid reform and pension reform,
(20:00):
as the political wins changed, there wasn't that same relationship
with the business community. So with the exception of real estate,
where he was very pro growth, investing in infrastructure, supporting
real estate development. So I would say that he had
relative enthusiasm in the real estate community, but not broadly
(20:22):
based in the business community.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
So on this note, you've emphasized a number of times
that a lot of business leaders obviously want to talk
to Zorin. They want to get in the room with him,
and you are organizing, I believe, discussions between the business
community and the mayoral candidate. I think next week we're
recording this on let's see July ninth. How do you
decide who gets to be in the room with Zorin?
Speaker 4 (20:46):
Well, the first meeting we're doing and I set this
up with Zorn He called me right after the election
and said he wanted to establish those relationships, and I said, well,
it's so we set up a meeting with the CEOs
of the partnership that's on Tuesday, and so they'll be
some will join virtually, but it's going to be mostly
(21:08):
an in person one hundred and fifty maybe CEOs of
major companies, major employers in the city who have never
met him and will be for the first time getting
an opportunity. And that's going to be a conversation with
our co chairs, Rob Speyer of Tishman Speyer and doctor
Albert Borla of Pfizer and so they'll be having a
(21:30):
conversation with Solorn and then we'll have some Q and
A with our members, and so that's that's number one.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
And then I'll come back next week, right, and I
will follow up to this episode.
Speaker 4 (21:42):
Interesting. Yes, I'm looking forward. I'm looking forward to that conversation,
but I think again it's an introduction and I have
full confidence as you know having met him, Zorn is
pretty good at presenting himself and very fast in terms
of his thoughtful responses on issues. So I'm looking forward
(22:02):
to that because it'll save me a lot of time
reassuring him that he's not the devil. He's okay. And
then on Wednesday, Kevin Ryan, who is kind of the
father of Silicon Ali Ali Corp. Is the name of
his corporation, has a prolific history of creating tech companies
in New York. Kevin is going to moderate a conversation
(22:26):
with him which will be heavily tech focused, more entrepreneurs
than corporate finance types. So that'll be on Wednesday, and
then I should add that on Thursday, we'll be doing
breakfast with Mayor Eric Adams and speaking to him about
his path forward. And as I said, there's been a
(22:47):
lot of support for the policies that Eric Adams has
he started out as mayor. I had the same conversation
with Eric. I'm a Brooklyn person, so I've known Eric
for many years and most recently in his capacity as
Brooklyn Boro President. But when we started out, he didn't
know anybody in the New York business community either. But
(23:08):
he introduced himself as saying, my number one priority is
public safety, and my number two priority is a thriving economy.
And I'm with you, and having lived through eight years
of Bill Deblasio as mayor, who had nothing to do
or to say to them except your awful people. And
as Jamie Diamond famously said, for eight years, I never
(23:29):
got a call from Bill Deblasio when he was mayor
and have never had a conversation with him. So Eric
immediately reversed the Deblasio big business is bad for New York,
and Eric said, I want wealthy people in New York.
I want big business in New York. So I don't
expect that from Zoran next week. I think that he's
(23:54):
not going to have the same unbridled enthusiasm for billionaires,
but I do expect that he will come across as
a responsible person who's thinking seriously and is open to learning,
which is most important to listening and learning. And I
think that that the number one concern is, is this
a dogmatic, ideological person who is just going is going
(24:19):
to be not interested in what we can contribute to
the city or what employers contribute.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
You mentioned Kevin Ryan. I used to work for Business Insider,
which was one of the Ali Corp companies, so I'm
a beneficiary of his New York City investments. You know,
when the night of the primary, I got some random
messages online. They're like, oh, are you going to leave
New York City. I'm never gonna leave New York City,
Like it's the best city in the world, obviously, but
you know, people do leave, And in twenty twenty one
(24:47):
and twenty twenty two, people pretended to think that Miami
was a better option for them. I think a bunch
of them came back or they spent just the you know,
minimum amount of time there so they could you know,
qualify for their local taxes, et cetera. In your view
or in the view of the employers of New York City,
what are the threats the substance of threats that would say, Okay,
(25:10):
this would meaningfully change the desirability of doing business in
this town.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
Number One is public safety, and that's again they've appreciated,
particularly under Commissioner Tish and original and Er Commissionery Key
chance Sewell, they have appreciated that the Atoms administration has
focused on public safety and that we're.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
That's more important things like taxes for them.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
Yes, absolutely, because the whole basis of business being here
is the talent pool. And if talent doesn't want to
be here, if they're scared to leave it be in
New York City. If they're worried to go on the
subway because they might get mugged or pushed in front
of a train, that's the worst thing that could happen
to New York. So and importantly, Zoran has acknowledged that
(25:55):
keeping New York a destination for talent is a priority
for him. So I think that message is very important.
So the public safety number one. And then, as I
said before, affordable housing and affordability that again allows talent
to be here and doesn't have a premium cost. I
(26:16):
mean already in most sectors New York City salaries have
a twenty percent premium at least over if you're going
to locate in Texas or Florida or whatever. When it
gets higher than that, it becomes hard to explain to
shareholders why you're here and why you're creating jobs here.
So that's the other consideration. So it's really having a
(26:38):
safe city and having an affordable city are the top criteria,
And at least in terms of having an affordable city,
they've got common cause with Zorin's campaign.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
This is what I was going to ask you. Are
there any areas of I guess overlap or agreement between
Zorn's agenda and the concerns or the desires of the
business community.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
Yeah, as I mentioned, one of the big questions that'll
come up next week. Probably the first question that will
come up is what is your commitment to public safety?
You know, symbolically, would you keep Jesse Tish's police commissioner,
And she certainly won't stay if he's going to defund
the police because she's looking for more officers, more resources
to really make sure that we stay the safest city
(27:21):
in America and the world. Hopefully, So that'll be public safety,
and then on affordability, it'll be hoping that they can
communicate that just having city government increase its budget does
not improve affordability. We've got to be more creative than that.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
What do you see as the main constraints to affordability?
What do you from just from your first petive? How
many years did they were they debating about putting up
some houses at the Elizabeth Street garden like these The
process take forevers But like I know, it's like the
most hot button topic in the world. But just broadly,
what do you perceive is the main constraints towards making
(28:16):
rent cheaper?
Speaker 4 (28:16):
In New York City, thirty percent of rent is real
estate taxes in rent regulated buildings, So government spending that
depends on real estate taxes, that's where the majority of
the city revenues come from, is driving high rents. Uh,
It's not that developers and these older rent regulated buildings
are making a huge profit. It's that their costs have
(28:38):
gone up, their water bills, et cetera. All these are
on water and sewer. These are under control of the city.
So there are things government can do very quickly to
reduce costs.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
As an example, what about just sheer volume of housing production.
Because right in the end, like most people. Okay, rent
is very expensive. It's also scarce, and that contributes to
the fact that rent prices go up and that landlords
can collect a lot of rent. Do you think there
are meaningful levers that could be pulled to rapidly increase
the pace and which we build, whether it's affordable housing
(29:13):
or market rate housing, etc. What would you identify?
Speaker 4 (29:16):
Absolutely Again, it's reducing government bureaucracy. Right now, I'm on
the City Charter Revision Commission, which is going to put
resolutions before the public I believe in November, to look
at how we can cut down on the time and
cost associated with development approvals, especially for smaller projects. The
(29:36):
other thing I want to mention that affects the cost
of construction very much, but also affects all other costs
is the cost of litigation passed along to consumers through
the high insurance costs. We have the highest claims and settlements.
We have the highest degree of litigation in the country.
It's almost impossible to get anything through the legislature that
(29:58):
doesn't include a private right of action. The trial lawyers
are the strongest lobby in Albany also have a lot
of influence within the city and we have to get
down our litigation costs. Our insurance costs are substantially higher
than anywhere else in the country. Our curR insurance costs
are forty nine percent higher than the average in the country.
Our health insurance costs are twelve percent higher. These are
(30:21):
all costs that we could absolutely contain in control, and
the city, which is basically self insured, ends up paying
this out of pockets with a pee billions of dollars
a year in medical mailpractice.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
In other government, a lot of free buses.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
That would fund a lot of free busses.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Aren't the higher litigation costs. Aren't they just a reflection
of I guess the higher cost of living and materials.
Speaker 4 (30:45):
No, they're a reflection of a system where our jury
awards are much higher than any place else. They call
them nuclear awards. No, it's all because of laws. We
have one law in the books in Albany. It's part
of the labor law was passed one hundred years ago,
and it was passed before we had workers' compensation and
other protections for construction workers. If you have a gravity
(31:08):
related injury, and many of these are staged, that one
law can add five to seven percent to the cost
of construction, just that one law. And so when we
say why does it cost a million dollars to produce
a two bedroom and rental apartment in New York? To
build it? When you look at it, you'll see that
a big chunk of that is the result of the litigation,
(31:30):
insurance costs, and the time that it takes to get
anything done, the carrying costs for the time.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
I want to ask a sort of social question, given
your role as therapists to the wealthy, But I got
a sense sometimes that there is a feeling out there
among maybe a lot of people that billionaires are less
charitable than they once were, certainly going back to earlier
in the century perhaps, and I think back to like Rockefeller,
(31:59):
who you know or knew and worked with, and him
bailing out the city in the nineteen seventies, Like that
was an act where he decided, I am going to
spend money in order to save New York and contribute
to New York's future.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Is that an.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Accurate portrayal of billionaires nowadays? Are they less engaged in
overall society?
Speaker 4 (32:21):
Well, in many cases, the family wealth, like in the
Rockefeller family, has diversified, so you don't have one person
who is as wealthy. It's spread out. But the commitment
to New York, to its hospitals, it's museums, its universities,
its institutions. We have by far the most philanthropic city
(32:43):
in the world. I get visitors from all over the world,
from Paris, from London, from la from San Francisco, all
of whom say, how does New York create a culture
which is so giving, which is so generous? And the
Rockefellers and the Astors and any of the families that
you know, the key families of New York did contribute
(33:04):
to this. But then you saw the tributes to Leonard
Latter who died a few weeks ago. If they were
all differ from every nonprofit institution, the generosity of New
Yorkers is huge. The label billionaire is often attached to
self promoters who are promoting themselves as billionaires. Yeah, I
(33:27):
would distinguish that none of the people that I'm talking
about want to be known or proclaim themselves or position
themselves as billionaires.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Yeah, that definitely resonates. I want to go back to
something you know. You mentioned the generational divide among New
York City's Jewish community and the idea that the under
forty crowd may have a very different perception of the
relationship that New York City should have about the state
of Israel or state of Israel period. And you also
mentioned that you know, for many of the people that
you work with, it only on them that Socialists could
(34:02):
be the Democratic nominee at ten pm on election night,
which makes me wonder, like how plugged they are in
because certainly, in at least the month prior to the election,
it became very obvious to me that this was like
a very real possibility that he could win. Like, is
there a persistent problem of sort of like generational awareness?
(34:22):
And I'm thinking also about affordability and housing and some
of these other issues where I don't want to say
like out of touch, but I guess out of touch
between the business elites, the CEOs, et cetera, and what's
on the mind of younger voters period, across a range
of issues.
Speaker 4 (34:39):
I think that's a very fair comment. Most of the
mature business world is not living on social media, so
they're well, they're not They're not plugged into that world,
and that's that's a great contributor to the generational divide.
I mean I still read a paper, a real paper,
(35:00):
and that's a differentiator. And the other thing is that
the globalization of the economy has meant I mean New
York is a center of world industry leadership and they
are focused and spending their life traveling all over the world.
(35:20):
So the fact that we're a headquarters city in all
these diverse sectors in passion and media, and it means
that the focus is global rather than local. Politically, especially
the focus is Washington, which is where most of the
regulatory activity is coming from, not local. City and state
(35:43):
are sidelines compared. So it's just the nature of our
changing economy over the last fifty years, which has gone
from being a local fifty years ago industrial economy to
being a service economy to today being a global digitally
and all of that means that the attention of business
(36:05):
leadership has been largely externally focused on the world business,
world markets, and on Washington. That just there's only so
many hours in a day. What we try and do
with the partnership is synthesized for those global leaders what's
(36:26):
happening locally and who's who and what's what. That's what
we're doing with regard to the mayor election now is
trying to bring them into the conversation at a point
where they're taking it seriously and they have to prioritize it.
But these are people who are running global businesses and
that's the whole that's what's changed. It's not anything else,
(36:50):
but the focus of attention has to be global. And well,
I would just mention, because we sit here in Bloomberg
Podcast world, that Mike Bloomberg changed that when he was mayor.
He brought the attention of our global leaders back to
New York, which was extremely useful. I started as CEO
(37:12):
of the partnership in two thousand, right before two thousand
and one, before Mike was elected, and I took advantage
of re engaging you. If you went to a cocktail
party in New York that Mike Bloomberg is going to
be at, you had to talk New York. And he
(37:32):
was a thought leader. He was the leading philanthropist when
people ask me who replaced David Rockefeller as the leading philanthropist,
and he was Mike Bloomberg.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
Simple.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
I have to do the disclaimer here, which is, of course,
Bloomberg News Bloomberg Media is part of Bloomberg LP, which
is owned by Mike Bloomberg.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
So we didn't tell our guests to see jobdives as the.
Speaker 3 (37:55):
No, we did not.
Speaker 4 (37:56):
I just have this isn't the first time I've said it.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
Okay, I just have one more question, which is, have
you noticed or seen at all I guess moments of
introspection among the business community, this idea that like, oh,
maybe we miss something about Zoren, Maybe we missed why
he's resonating so much in the city. Maybe we should
start doing something different, Maybe we need to, you know,
(38:20):
actually build more housing or lower rents or whatever. Or
are they still committed very much to this, not the
status quomo, but the Eric Adams status quo and they
want him to win again.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
Distinguishing between the real estate community that sees the potential
of an existential threat to private development putting that aside.
In terms of the general business community. I think your
point that they're feeling a little out of touch with
what's been happening on the ground and they want to
(38:56):
plug in. They are really interested in me, and we've
had tremendous interest in meeting Zorn speaking with him. He's
made calls to some business what.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Do they say after like the after those phone calls,
because they've you know, you mentioned the meetings that are
coming up, but some have already they've already chatted like
what is what? What is their response?
Speaker 4 (39:19):
Their response is that he is you know, they said,
he's the politician of a generation. I mean, he's a
generational figure. They're they're impressed after a ten minute phone
call with him because he is he's a very effective
communicator and he listens on you know, business leaders like
(39:44):
to be listened to.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Kathy Wilde, that was fantastic. So glad we made this happen.
And like I said, maybe we'll maybe we'll have you
back at some fun or would love to have you
back on it.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Nice to be here, Tracy. I really like that conversation.
There was a lot to pull from this idea. There
are a number of things. This idea that the CEOs
(40:17):
who are headquartered here in New York City, just by
the nature of the changing economy, are less New York
City focused themselves, to me, is like something I hadn't
really thought about but makes a lot of sense to me.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
Yeah, I thought that was really interesting. The other interesting
point that Kathy brought up was I guess the divergence
between you know, Wall Street CEOs and perhaps other businesses
versus real estate, which really seems to be freaking out
about the prospects of Mumdani mayorship.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
No, that's really interesting, this idea that it's not monolithic.
I said it in the intro, or I said it
early on. You know, I think a lot of people
who are on paper they're like, well, you look down
the list of his policies. Maybe not something that they're
too into, but the fact that they don't like find
him to be threatening or they don't find him to
be repellent in some way. And so it's striking that
(41:07):
already he's having these conversations. Also, like, it is just
striking to me that you know, people see him as
you know, potentially this extremely ideological person, and yet from
the very beginning of his campaign in September was reaching
out to Kathy and like making these connections. I mean,
it was a really savvy campaign.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
Well, the other thing on that note, First of all,
I'm really fascinated to see whether or not this starts
to change campaign finance and the way it works, because
again Cuomo had all the money. Yeah, exactly. And the
other thing I'm really interested in is, Okay, the business community,
Kathy was saying one of their primary concerns is attracting
talent into the city. Well, you know that talent, presumably
(41:49):
a lot of it is young. There's probably a large
portion in there that is, you know, of a progressive bent,
and so a candidate like Zoraen might appeal to them
and actually bring more peace into the city.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
So it's also interesting, I mean, the safety and crime
thing is the number one thing right that would cause
people to leave because and again there's a lot more
talk about leaving New York City though there is actually
leaving New York City. And it is true that I
think a lot of those people who thought they were
going to DeCamp to Miami during the post pandemic period
(42:22):
of comeback for obvious for obvious reasons. But it's interesting
that it's not even like any of the economic stuff.
It's not the socialism stuff. It's just the basic safety stuff.
And there is I know, there's a lot of the
question about whether Mamdani, if he wins, will keep the
police commissioner. The crime stats have improved quite a bit
in recent years. The idea that this is like the
(42:44):
really big thing more than you know, the rent freeze
or taxes or anything else. I think it's just going
to be an interesting executive question for Mamdani.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Lots of interesting questions thrown up by this whole election.
Shall we leave it there for now?
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Sure, let's leave it.
Speaker 3 (42:59):
There has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway and.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
I'm Jill Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen armand Dashel Bennett
at Dashboud and Kilbrooks at Kilbrooks. From our Odd Lots content,
go to Bloomberg dot com slash od Lots for the
daily newsletter and all of our episodes, and you can
chat about all of these topics twenty four to seven
in our discord Discord dot gg slash odlog.
Speaker 3 (43:26):
And if you enjoy Odd Lots, if you like it
when we do local New York politics that has national relevance,
then please leave us a positive review on your favorite
podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber,
you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad free.
All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel
on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening,
(44:08):
bend
Speaker 2 (44:13):
In
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello and welcome to another episode of The Odd Lads podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway, former Odd.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Lad's guest is very likely to be the next mayor
of New York City.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
That's right. So we interviewed Zora and Mumdanie. I think
it was in early May and right after that. I'm
not saying I'm not going to take credit for this,
but right after that he really started to surge in
the polls and he went on to win the Democratic nomination.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
I think we think very very minor credits.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
I'm sure it was a coincidence.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
The thing actually that struck me after that episode was
hearing from a lot of people who were basically like,
I don't like any of his ideas at all, but
I still like the guy, and I still found him
impressive and intelligent and very strong understanding of policy. And look,
I don't think his victory is attributable to us, but
(01:11):
I did think that was telling in the sense that
a lot of people who maybe on paper shouldn't or
wouldn't really like some of his views, didn't seem particularly
threatened by him, which I thought was really interesting and
may have contributed to his sort of extraordinary margin is
extraordinary victory.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
I do think what's interesting about this whole story is
the tension between New York City as this hub of capitalism,
this hub of business. You have a lot of money here,
a lot of billionaires obviously with their own interests, and
now you have this democratic socialist candidate who's proposing something
a little bit new. Although some people would say we
(01:49):
had something more similar to that in say the nineteen
fifties nineteen sixties New York. But that tension is what
I find really fascinating right now.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, so we have to we have to learn more.
I mean again in the run up to the election. Look,
what are New York City's business financial elites thinking right now?
What do they think of a possible I'm Donnie Merrilty.
What do they think about New York City in general?
All of this stuff, There's there's a lot to learn.
This is going to be a rich vein of interesting
(02:18):
stuff for us for a while.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
We're going all New York local politics, I guess, But
I do think it has national consequences.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Internet, so we should talk about it. We should definitely
talk about anyway. I'm really excited. We do have, indeed
the perfect guest to talk about how the city's business elite, billionaires, etc.
Are thinking about the city, think about the election, the
possibility of Donnie being the mayor. We're going to be
speaking with Kathy Wilde. She's the president and CEO of
(02:45):
the Partnership for New York City, which is an organization,
a business leadership organization here all kinds of major employers.
If you read any article about Kathy in the media,
described as sort of one of the ultimate power brokers
of New York City.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Yeah, words like power brokers, power player comes up.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
In every single one, and so truly the perfect guest. So, Kathy,
thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
Oud lots, thank you for having me, Joe and.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
To absolutely we're really excited. What do you just before
we move on, describe what the Partnership for New York
City is and what you basically do there.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
The Partnership is business working in the interests of the city.
It's not a chamber of commerce. It was organized after
the city's nineteen seventy five physical crisis by David Rockefeller,
who was then the chair of Chase Bank. And other
CEOs of the major corporations that were not just businesses
headquartered in New York, but were real citizens of New
(03:43):
York and trustees of its hospitals and museums, and real
contributors to the city as philanthropists. So it is very
much a business organization that is designed to tap the
expertise and the influence of the business community to support
New York City and to maintain it as the city
(04:07):
of great economic opportunity.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
What's the partnership's relationship like typically with the mayoral administration
and are there examples where you've worked together to effectively
do something or maybe change the path of policy.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
Well, absolutely, the partnership's relationship to government is really as
an intermediary between business and government, as I said, to
provide expertise, to provide advice, to give feedback, really to
be a resource more than an adversary with the local government,
in particular local state government and some extent the federal government.
(04:47):
When there are overriding issues that make a big impact
on New York that are being considered in Washington.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
When did Zoron come on the radar of the people
that you talk to, of the CEOs, etc. In the like,
was it a month before?
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Was he?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Were they thinking about him at all? Three months before
the election? I'm sort of curious, like when it may
have flickered in their minds that the Democratic Party could
nominate a socialist.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
I would have to say that it was primary night
about ten o'clock.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Really, it's incredible to me.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
Well, I had forewarned them that it was a possibility,
but I think Cromo had been a figure in their
lives as Mario's son, as attorney general, as governor for
twenty some years, and it was kind of a foregone conclusion,
is the guy we know who's now running for mayor
(05:42):
is going to be mayor? And especially after Mayor Adams
announced he was not going to be in the Democratic primary,
and so they had kind of zeroed in on accepting
that it was going to be Cromo, and really no
one had met zorun.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
What is the mood like on primary night? Did everyone
immediately go home and start looking up socialism on the
internet on chat GPT?
Speaker 4 (06:06):
Well, I would say hysteria would be a good word
for shock. Was first shock first and what happened? And
who is this person? And so I tried to provide
some reassurance. We had for the past twenty years led
efforts to bring congestion pricing to New York City to
both manage traffic but to really make the city a
(06:29):
more efficient place. Excess traffic congestion was costing the city
twenty billion dollars a year with lost time, lost productivity,
and what makes New York a great place to work
is the productive workforce. So we'd been an advocate of
congestion pricing, and I had actually met Zoron in that
context at the Rider's Alliance where it's a group of
(06:53):
subway riders advocates, and had found him to be a
very smart, interesting young man. So I had known him,
and then he reached out to me last September and said,
I'd like to talk to you about my mayoral prospects
when he was polling at one percent, and so I
(07:13):
met him for coffee at the LPQ at eighty five
Broad and we had a conversation, and I found him
to be smart, and I took him seriously from then on.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
HM. I'm impressed from his perspective that that early on
he wanted to sort of build that connection or make
that connection with you before you talk more about him.
A friend of mine described you as a therapist to
the New York City billionaires. They were hysterical on or
they're experiencing hysteria on primary night. Did you feel like
(07:48):
that was your role in that night? Did you feel
like a therapist to the members of the partnership?
Speaker 4 (07:52):
To provide reassurance to the business community, I mean, number one,
to remind them that many of the things they want
are most worried about from a Democratic Socialist candidate were
things that he has absolutely no capacity to execute on. So,
for example, raising corporate and income taxes is not something
(08:14):
that the city or the mayor can do. Free buses
is not something the mayor can do, and figuring out
where you make up that eight hundred million in revenues.
So that was number one, reassuring them that we have
a moderate governor who's watching out for business interests, who
(08:38):
says she's not going to further raise taxes in New York,
which is the highest tax city in the country and
in most cases the world for both individual income tax
and corporate tax. So that was number one, providing reassurance
that as mayor, he would have an agenda. But there
are a lot of checks and balances to work through
(08:59):
in New York and it's not a unilateral post. Now.
That was more difficult with the real estate community because
their concerns having to do with land use proceedings and
approvals and construction permits, etc. That the mayor does control
basically huge amount of control over that process. That is
(09:19):
one thing that's local and real estate taxes where the
mayor has significant influence. So it was more difficult with
members of the real estate community, who after the primary
quickly pivoted to remembering what a good friend Mayor Adams was.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
So I want to talk more about the concerns of
the business community, obviously, but before we do, I can't
resist asking, when you first met zoron over coffee, what
advice did you give him? What did you actually say
to him about a mayor run.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Number One, I said that you can't lead New York
City unless you have a constructive relationship with the Jewish community,
because that was the most obvious source of concern that
he seemed not able to address. That worried me a lot.
Number Two, that the solution to affordability is not for government,
(10:19):
local government to spend more money. That the money that
local government spends has to be accounted for that you
need to raise taxes to support it, and ultimately that
just ups the cost of living and the cost of
doing business in New York and that all ends up
getting passed along to consumers. So the affordability question, which
(10:43):
he was absolutely right to emphasize and emphasize from the beginning,
that we've got to make New York more affordable to
not just poor people, to the middle class, to those
people who rent an apartment and now the average rents
almost four thousand dollars a month. This is the big
concern of employers, and I said, this is their number
one concern. How do we keep and retain young talent
(11:06):
if they can't afford to rent an apartment in New
York City? Big frustration. So that was kind of the
conversation that we had, and he was open to that
conversation and interested in learning. I mean, he impressed me
right away as somebody who is interested in learning more,
but who has has very strong opinions and is very committed.
(11:31):
And I mean he's thirty three years old. In the
world is his oyster.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Yeah, you mentioned the importance of relations with the Jewish community,
and I saw I watched that. I didn't watch the
whole debate, but I did watch the last debate and
there was that question about which country you're going to
visit first, and every candidate blood store On said they
were going to visit Israel. He said he wasn't thinking
about is going to visit. Can you explain from the
(11:56):
perspective of the business leaders new York City, why do
they perceive that good relations with Israel is such an
important aspect of the job of Why does the.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Mayor of New York have to have a foreign policy?
Speaker 4 (12:10):
Well, their fears that he has a foreign policy. I
don't think anybody thinks the Mayor of New York has
to have a foreign policy. But he has a record
of speaking out on issues that impact the Jewish community
about Israel that they're very concerned about, and so their
concern is not having. New York City has a long
(12:35):
history of values that are very strong on supporting a
diversity of people, are very tolerant of various religious beliefs,
and a long history with Israel. I mean, when Cornell
Technion partnered on Technion's the university in Israel, that really
(12:57):
led the Startup Nation movement in his and did so
much to propel their economy. And they were selected under
the Bloomberg administration to establish a first class engineering school
in New York on Roosevelt Island, which has been very
successful and is producing a great number of PhDs. And
(13:19):
so at the time that they came in, Technioy came in,
they told me how they had been funded. Originally it
was New York Jewish philanthropists that funded that effort. So
there's this long term relationship. And obviously we have many
people in New York who are family of Holocaust victims
(13:40):
and survivors, and for whom the fact of a Jewish
homeland a safe space for Jews around the world is
of top area of importance. I think that that they
are very concerned that the mayor of New York City
respect and understand the importance of Israel and our long
(14:05):
term relationship, and that worries them a lot. And that's
an issue that I think he has yet to resolve.
I think it's difficult because he has strong support in
the young Jewish community, and so I'm sure he feels
that he's got a lot of people who are with
him on the issues of protecting the rights of the
(14:27):
Palestinians and concerns about that. So it's this is an
area again where the fact that he ran a campaign
and had built relationships that are a piece of New
York City. He expanded the electorate to folks who have
(14:47):
not participated, but he really did not develop much of
a relationship with the historic electorate. He was running against
the democratic establishment, not with it, and so the communities
where much of the Jewish population is concentrated were not
communities he was necessarily reaching out to, except for the
(15:10):
young people and the social media crowd, and that's not
the people who are most concerned.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
So on the topic of the campaign, I mean, this
was one of the really surprising things of him winning.
He had this sort of grassroots campaign which was very
much focused on social media, lots of merchandise with really
interesting designs. I've seen the hot girls for zor and
T shirts. People wearing those around town, usually young women,
as you mentioned. And I'm curious, are any of the
(15:55):
people you're speaking to perhaps thinking differently about campaign donators
going forward if they donated billions of dollars for Cuomo
and zorin.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
Well, not billions but millions. Okay, yes, yes, I would
say that for the most part, what I'm hearing is
that people feel that they contributed to Cuomo and that
they don't feel they got a very good campaign out
(16:28):
of it. They want to meet Zoron and I think
they're making There are many, particularly in the real estate community,
that are stepping up to transfer whatever donations they were
making Cuomo to Eric Adams, if you will, the somebody
that they know they can do business with, then who
(16:50):
has been supportive of tremendously positive growth in the city
from the nature of the pandemic and where our economy was,
where our real estate situation. I'm Eric Adams. It should
not be ignored that he has his administration has led
rezoning efforts and really changed the zoning code for the
(17:12):
first time since nineteen sixty one. So he's made a
tremendous investment in trying to begin the process of making
it easier and less expensive to develop housing in the
city and supported economic growth overall. So there was concern.
I mean, obviously he's the first mayor that's been indicted,
(17:32):
and when he dropped out of the Democratic primary, I
think that solidified most of the money going to Cuomo,
but Eric is back in the general and in good form.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
I noticed you said something. I think your first answer
that the business elite had accepted Cuomo as who was
going to be the nominee. Accepted, it does not sound
the same as enthusiastically support. I hear that is sort
of resigned.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Yeah, okay, status Cuomo.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Yeah, and so I'm curiously.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Come on, you have to laugh at that.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Good lie here, right, status quo. That's a good one.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
That was good. But how did they feel actually about Cuomo?
And also, like I know there's some question it's still
unclear whether he's gonna run actively in November, but if
they do coalesce around someone, does it definitely seem like
it's going to be Adams so.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
Far, I think yes, I think it's going to be
Adams if and again, it is the real estate community
that's most concerned. You understand that the financial industry in
New York basically is prohibited by federal regulation sec IF
in run other regulation from contributing to state and local
(18:48):
candidates beyond a nominal amount of a few hundred dollars.
So they are not, for the most part, money players
in state and local elections, which has really disadvantaged New
York's business community, which represents like forty percent of our
tax base, who can't participate in supporting candidates of their choice.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
They could knock on doors like the Zorone volunteers did,
they just can't donate gobs of money.
Speaker 4 (19:15):
And that would be great, but not happening. Okay, most
of them are beyond the door knocking age. But your
question about Cuomo. Cuomo was Attorney General during the financial
crisis and was not very friendly toward the financial industry
and did not develop relationships that were very positive during
(19:37):
his tenure as Attorney General with the business community. So
that was his job to be an enforcer. And during
his term as governor he came in with a very
strong agenda to try and get state spending under control
and get taxes under control. But having made some of
some real progress there on medicaid reform and pension reform,
(20:00):
as the political wins changed, there wasn't that same relationship
with the business community. So with the exception of real estate,
where he was very pro growth, investing in infrastructure, supporting
real estate development. So I would say that he had
relative enthusiasm in the real estate community, but not broadly
(20:22):
based in the business community.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
So on this note, you've emphasized a number of times
that a lot of business leaders obviously want to talk
to Zorin. They want to get in the room with him,
and you are organizing, I believe, discussions between the business
community and the mayoral candidate. I think next week we're
recording this on let's see July ninth. How do you
decide who gets to be in the room with Zorin?
Speaker 4 (20:46):
Well, the first meeting we're doing and I set this
up with Zorn He called me right after the election
and said he wanted to establish those relationships, and I said, well,
it's so we set up a meeting with the CEOs
of the partnership that's on Tuesday, and so they'll be
some will join virtually, but it's going to be mostly
(21:08):
an in person one hundred and fifty maybe CEOs of
major companies, major employers in the city who have never
met him and will be for the first time getting
an opportunity. And that's going to be a conversation with
our co chairs, Rob Speyer of Tishman Speyer and doctor
Albert Borla of Pfizer and so they'll be having a
(21:30):
conversation with Solorn and then we'll have some Q and
A with our members, and so that's that's number one.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
And then I'll come back next week, right, and I
will follow up to this episode.
Speaker 4 (21:42):
Interesting. Yes, I'm looking forward. I'm looking forward to that conversation,
but I think again it's an introduction and I have
full confidence as you know having met him, Zorn is
pretty good at presenting himself and very fast in terms
of his thoughtful responses on issues. So I'm looking forward
(22:02):
to that because it'll save me a lot of time
reassuring him that he's not the devil. He's okay. And
then on Wednesday, Kevin Ryan, who is kind of the
father of Silicon Ali Ali Corp. Is the name of
his corporation, has a prolific history of creating tech companies
in New York. Kevin is going to moderate a conversation
(22:26):
with him which will be heavily tech focused, more entrepreneurs
than corporate finance types. So that'll be on Wednesday, and
then I should add that on Thursday, we'll be doing
breakfast with Mayor Eric Adams and speaking to him about
his path forward. And as I said, there's been a
(22:47):
lot of support for the policies that Eric Adams has
he started out as mayor. I had the same conversation
with Eric. I'm a Brooklyn person, so I've known Eric
for many years and most recently in his capacity as
Brooklyn Boro President. But when we started out, he didn't
know anybody in the New York business community either. But
(23:08):
he introduced himself as saying, my number one priority is
public safety, and my number two priority is a thriving economy.
And I'm with you, and having lived through eight years
of Bill Deblasio as mayor, who had nothing to do
or to say to them except your awful people. And
as Jamie Diamond famously said, for eight years, I never
(23:29):
got a call from Bill Deblasio when he was mayor
and have never had a conversation with him. So Eric
immediately reversed the Deblasio big business is bad for New York,
and Eric said, I want wealthy people in New York.
I want big business in New York. So I don't
expect that from Zoran next week. I think that he's
(23:54):
not going to have the same unbridled enthusiasm for billionaires,
but I do expect that he will come across as
a responsible person who's thinking seriously and is open to learning,
which is most important to listening and learning. And I
think that that the number one concern is, is this
a dogmatic, ideological person who is just going is going
(24:19):
to be not interested in what we can contribute to
the city or what employers contribute.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
You mentioned Kevin Ryan. I used to work for Business Insider,
which was one of the Ali Corp companies, so I'm
a beneficiary of his New York City investments. You know,
when the night of the primary, I got some random
messages online. They're like, oh, are you going to leave
New York City. I'm never gonna leave New York City,
Like it's the best city in the world, obviously, but
you know, people do leave, And in twenty twenty one
(24:47):
and twenty twenty two, people pretended to think that Miami
was a better option for them. I think a bunch
of them came back or they spent just the you know,
minimum amount of time there so they could you know,
qualify for their local taxes, et cetera. In your view
or in the view of the employers of New York City,
what are the threats the substance of threats that would say, Okay,
(25:10):
this would meaningfully change the desirability of doing business in
this town.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
Number One is public safety, and that's again they've appreciated,
particularly under Commissioner Tish and original and Er Commissionery Key
chance Sewell, they have appreciated that the Atoms administration has
focused on public safety and that we're.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
That's more important things like taxes for them.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
Yes, absolutely, because the whole basis of business being here
is the talent pool. And if talent doesn't want to
be here, if they're scared to leave it be in
New York City. If they're worried to go on the
subway because they might get mugged or pushed in front
of a train, that's the worst thing that could happen
to New York. So and importantly, Zoran has acknowledged that
(25:55):
keeping New York a destination for talent is a priority
for him. So I think that message is very important.
So the public safety number one. And then, as I
said before, affordable housing and affordability that again allows talent
to be here and doesn't have a premium cost. I
(26:16):
mean already in most sectors New York City salaries have
a twenty percent premium at least over if you're going
to locate in Texas or Florida or whatever. When it
gets higher than that, it becomes hard to explain to
shareholders why you're here and why you're creating jobs here.
So that's the other consideration. So it's really having a
(26:38):
safe city and having an affordable city are the top criteria,
And at least in terms of having an affordable city,
they've got common cause with Zorin's campaign.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
This is what I was going to ask you. Are
there any areas of I guess overlap or agreement between
Zorn's agenda and the concerns or the desires of the
business community.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
Yeah, as I mentioned, one of the big questions that'll
come up next week. Probably the first question that will
come up is what is your commitment to public safety?
You know, symbolically, would you keep Jesse Tish's police commissioner,
And she certainly won't stay if he's going to defund
the police because she's looking for more officers, more resources
to really make sure that we stay the safest city
(27:21):
in America and the world. Hopefully, So that'll be public safety,
and then on affordability, it'll be hoping that they can
communicate that just having city government increase its budget does
not improve affordability. We've got to be more creative than that.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
What do you see as the main constraints to affordability?
What do you from just from your first petive? How
many years did they were they debating about putting up
some houses at the Elizabeth Street garden like these The
process take forevers But like I know, it's like the
most hot button topic in the world. But just broadly,
what do you perceive is the main constraints towards making
(28:16):
rent cheaper?
Speaker 4 (28:16):
In New York City, thirty percent of rent is real
estate taxes in rent regulated buildings, So government spending that
depends on real estate taxes, that's where the majority of
the city revenues come from, is driving high rents. Uh,
It's not that developers and these older rent regulated buildings
are making a huge profit. It's that their costs have
(28:38):
gone up, their water bills, et cetera. All these are
on water and sewer. These are under control of the city.
So there are things government can do very quickly to
reduce costs.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
As an example, what about just sheer volume of housing production.
Because right in the end, like most people. Okay, rent
is very expensive. It's also scarce, and that contributes to
the fact that rent prices go up and that landlords
can collect a lot of rent. Do you think there
are meaningful levers that could be pulled to rapidly increase
the pace and which we build, whether it's affordable housing
(29:13):
or market rate housing, etc. What would you identify?
Speaker 4 (29:16):
Absolutely Again, it's reducing government bureaucracy. Right now, I'm on
the City Charter Revision Commission, which is going to put
resolutions before the public I believe in November, to look
at how we can cut down on the time and
cost associated with development approvals, especially for smaller projects. The
(29:36):
other thing I want to mention that affects the cost
of construction very much, but also affects all other costs
is the cost of litigation passed along to consumers through
the high insurance costs. We have the highest claims and settlements.
We have the highest degree of litigation in the country.
It's almost impossible to get anything through the legislature that
(29:58):
doesn't include a private right of action. The trial lawyers
are the strongest lobby in Albany also have a lot
of influence within the city and we have to get
down our litigation costs. Our insurance costs are substantially higher
than anywhere else in the country. Our curR insurance costs
are forty nine percent higher than the average in the country.
Our health insurance costs are twelve percent higher. These are
(30:21):
all costs that we could absolutely contain in control, and
the city, which is basically self insured, ends up paying
this out of pockets with a pee billions of dollars
a year in medical mailpractice.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
In other government, a lot of free buses.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
That would fund a lot of free busses.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Aren't the higher litigation costs. Aren't they just a reflection
of I guess the higher cost of living and materials.
Speaker 4 (30:45):
No, they're a reflection of a system where our jury
awards are much higher than any place else. They call
them nuclear awards. No, it's all because of laws. We
have one law in the books in Albany. It's part
of the labor law was passed one hundred years ago,
and it was passed before we had workers' compensation and
other protections for construction workers. If you have a gravity
(31:08):
related injury, and many of these are staged, that one
law can add five to seven percent to the cost
of construction, just that one law. And so when we
say why does it cost a million dollars to produce
a two bedroom and rental apartment in New York? To
build it? When you look at it, you'll see that
a big chunk of that is the result of the litigation,
(31:30):
insurance costs, and the time that it takes to get
anything done, the carrying costs for the time.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
I want to ask a sort of social question, given
your role as therapists to the wealthy, But I got
a sense sometimes that there is a feeling out there
among maybe a lot of people that billionaires are less
charitable than they once were, certainly going back to earlier
in the century perhaps, and I think back to like Rockefeller,
(31:59):
who you know or knew and worked with, and him
bailing out the city in the nineteen seventies, Like that
was an act where he decided, I am going to
spend money in order to save New York and contribute
to New York's future.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Is that an.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Accurate portrayal of billionaires nowadays? Are they less engaged in
overall society?
Speaker 4 (32:21):
Well, in many cases, the family wealth, like in the
Rockefeller family, has diversified, so you don't have one person
who is as wealthy. It's spread out. But the commitment
to New York, to its hospitals, it's museums, its universities,
its institutions. We have by far the most philanthropic city
(32:43):
in the world. I get visitors from all over the world,
from Paris, from London, from la from San Francisco, all
of whom say, how does New York create a culture
which is so giving, which is so generous? And the
Rockefellers and the Astors and any of the families that
you know, the key families of New York did contribute
(33:04):
to this. But then you saw the tributes to Leonard
Latter who died a few weeks ago. If they were
all differ from every nonprofit institution, the generosity of New
Yorkers is huge. The label billionaire is often attached to
self promoters who are promoting themselves as billionaires. Yeah, I
(33:27):
would distinguish that none of the people that I'm talking
about want to be known or proclaim themselves or position
themselves as billionaires.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Yeah, that definitely resonates. I want to go back to
something you know. You mentioned the generational divide among New
York City's Jewish community and the idea that the under
forty crowd may have a very different perception of the
relationship that New York City should have about the state
of Israel or state of Israel period. And you also
mentioned that you know, for many of the people that
you work with, it only on them that Socialists could
(34:02):
be the Democratic nominee at ten pm on election night,
which makes me wonder, like how plugged they are in
because certainly, in at least the month prior to the election,
it became very obvious to me that this was like
a very real possibility that he could win. Like, is
there a persistent problem of sort of like generational awareness?
(34:22):
And I'm thinking also about affordability and housing and some
of these other issues where I don't want to say
like out of touch, but I guess out of touch
between the business elites, the CEOs, et cetera, and what's
on the mind of younger voters period, across a range
of issues.
Speaker 4 (34:39):
I think that's a very fair comment. Most of the
mature business world is not living on social media, so
they're well, they're not They're not plugged into that world,
and that's that's a great contributor to the generational divide.
I mean I still read a paper, a real paper,
(35:00):
and that's a differentiator. And the other thing is that
the globalization of the economy has meant I mean New
York is a center of world industry leadership and they
are focused and spending their life traveling all over the world.
(35:20):
So the fact that we're a headquarters city in all
these diverse sectors in passion and media, and it means
that the focus is global rather than local. Politically, especially
the focus is Washington, which is where most of the
regulatory activity is coming from, not local. City and state
(35:43):
are sidelines compared. So it's just the nature of our
changing economy over the last fifty years, which has gone
from being a local fifty years ago industrial economy to
being a service economy to today being a global digitally
and all of that means that the attention of business
(36:05):
leadership has been largely externally focused on the world business,
world markets, and on Washington. That just there's only so
many hours in a day. What we try and do
with the partnership is synthesized for those global leaders what's
(36:26):
happening locally and who's who and what's what. That's what
we're doing with regard to the mayor election now is
trying to bring them into the conversation at a point
where they're taking it seriously and they have to prioritize it.
But these are people who are running global businesses and
that's the whole that's what's changed. It's not anything else,
(36:50):
but the focus of attention has to be global. And well,
I would just mention, because we sit here in Bloomberg
Podcast world, that Mike Bloomberg changed that when he was mayor.
He brought the attention of our global leaders back to
New York, which was extremely useful. I started as CEO
(37:12):
of the partnership in two thousand, right before two thousand
and one, before Mike was elected, and I took advantage
of re engaging you. If you went to a cocktail
party in New York that Mike Bloomberg is going to
be at, you had to talk New York. And he
(37:32):
was a thought leader. He was the leading philanthropist when
people ask me who replaced David Rockefeller as the leading philanthropist,
and he was Mike Bloomberg.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
Simple.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
I have to do the disclaimer here, which is, of course,
Bloomberg News Bloomberg Media is part of Bloomberg LP, which
is owned by Mike Bloomberg.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
So we didn't tell our guests to see jobdives as the.
Speaker 3 (37:55):
No, we did not.
Speaker 4 (37:56):
I just have this isn't the first time I've said it.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
Okay, I just have one more question, which is, have
you noticed or seen at all I guess moments of
introspection among the business community, this idea that like, oh,
maybe we miss something about Zoren, Maybe we missed why
he's resonating so much in the city. Maybe we should
start doing something different, Maybe we need to, you know,
(38:20):
actually build more housing or lower rents or whatever. Or
are they still committed very much to this, not the
status quomo, but the Eric Adams status quo and they
want him to win again.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
Distinguishing between the real estate community that sees the potential
of an existential threat to private development putting that aside.
In terms of the general business community. I think your
point that they're feeling a little out of touch with
what's been happening on the ground and they want to
(38:56):
plug in. They are really interested in me, and we've
had tremendous interest in meeting Zorn speaking with him. He's
made calls to some business what.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Do they say after like the after those phone calls,
because they've you know, you mentioned the meetings that are
coming up, but some have already they've already chatted like
what is what? What is their response?
Speaker 4 (39:19):
Their response is that he is you know, they said,
he's the politician of a generation. I mean, he's a
generational figure. They're they're impressed after a ten minute phone
call with him because he is he's a very effective
communicator and he listens on you know, business leaders like
(39:44):
to be listened to.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Kathy Wilde, that was fantastic. So glad we made this happen.
And like I said, maybe we'll maybe we'll have you
back at some fun or would love to have you
back on it.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Nice to be here, Tracy. I really like that conversation.
There was a lot to pull from this idea. There
are a number of things. This idea that the CEOs
(40:17):
who are headquartered here in New York City, just by
the nature of the changing economy, are less New York
City focused themselves, to me, is like something I hadn't
really thought about but makes a lot of sense to me.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
Yeah, I thought that was really interesting. The other interesting
point that Kathy brought up was I guess the divergence
between you know, Wall Street CEOs and perhaps other businesses
versus real estate, which really seems to be freaking out
about the prospects of Mumdani mayorship.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
No, that's really interesting, this idea that it's not monolithic.
I said it in the intro, or I said it
early on. You know, I think a lot of people
who are on paper they're like, well, you look down
the list of his policies. Maybe not something that they're
too into, but the fact that they don't like find
him to be threatening or they don't find him to
be repellent in some way. And so it's striking that
(41:07):
already he's having these conversations. Also, like, it is just
striking to me that you know, people see him as
you know, potentially this extremely ideological person, and yet from
the very beginning of his campaign in September was reaching
out to Kathy and like making these connections. I mean,
it was a really savvy campaign.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
Well, the other thing on that note, First of all,
I'm really fascinated to see whether or not this starts
to change campaign finance and the way it works, because
again Cuomo had all the money. Yeah, exactly. And the
other thing I'm really interested in is, Okay, the business community,
Kathy was saying one of their primary concerns is attracting
talent into the city. Well, you know that talent, presumably
(41:49):
a lot of it is young. There's probably a large
portion in there that is, you know, of a progressive bent,
and so a candidate like Zoraen might appeal to them
and actually bring more peace into the city.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
So it's also interesting, I mean, the safety and crime
thing is the number one thing right that would cause
people to leave because and again there's a lot more
talk about leaving New York City though there is actually
leaving New York City. And it is true that I
think a lot of those people who thought they were
going to DeCamp to Miami during the post pandemic period
(42:22):
of comeback for obvious for obvious reasons. But it's interesting
that it's not even like any of the economic stuff.
It's not the socialism stuff. It's just the basic safety stuff.
And there is I know, there's a lot of the
question about whether Mamdani, if he wins, will keep the
police commissioner. The crime stats have improved quite a bit
in recent years. The idea that this is like the
(42:44):
really big thing more than you know, the rent freeze
or taxes or anything else. I think it's just going
to be an interesting executive question for Mamdani.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Lots of interesting questions thrown up by this whole election.
Shall we leave it there for now?
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Sure, let's leave it.
Speaker 3 (42:59):
There has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway and.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
I'm Jill Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen armand Dashel Bennett
at Dashboud and Kilbrooks at Kilbrooks. From our Odd Lots content,
go to Bloomberg dot com slash od Lots for the
daily newsletter and all of our episodes, and you can
chat about all of these topics twenty four to seven
in our discord Discord dot gg slash odlog.
Speaker 3 (43:26):
And if you enjoy Odd Lots, if you like it
when we do local New York politics that has national relevance,
then please leave us a positive review on your favorite
podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber,
you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad free.
All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel
on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening,
(44:08):
bend
Speaker 2 (44:13):
In
Hosts And Creators
Joe Weisenthal
Tracy Alloway
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.