Last month, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani celebrated Tax Day by making good on a campaign promise. “When I ran for mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich,” Mamdani said in a viral video posted to social media. “Today, we’re taxing the rich.”
Mamdani went on to describe New York’s proposed pied-á-terre tax, a collaboration with Gov. Kathy Hochul. The tax specifically targets the owners of residential properties in New York City worth more than $5 million that they don’t live in full time, or “the richest of the rich,” as Mamdani called them in his video.
One such property that would be subject to the new tax belongs to billionaire Citadel CEO Kenneth Griffin. In 2019, Griffin bought a Manhattan penthouse for $239 million, the most expensive residential sale in U.S. history, though the unit doesn’t serve as Griffin’s primary residence. To make his point, Mamdani used Griffin’s penthouse as the backdrop for his video, a callout that earned him kudos across social media.
But one person wasn’t happy with Mamdani’s choice of setting: Griffin himself, who responded to Mamdani’s video in a new interview.
Beyond saying that Mamdani filming outside his home was in “really poor taste,” Griffin said the mayor’s new tax exemplifies everything wrong with New York City—and that as far as Griffin is concerned, his home city of Miami is poised to usurp it as the business capital of America.
Making Miami the new NYC
In his interview with CNBC, Griffin said Mamdani’s pied-á-terre tax is likely to drive America’s business leaders away from New York City. “The tax itself is a tax that discriminates against a narrow group of people,” he said.
The tax has led Griffin to question his hedge fund Citadel’s planned $6 billion investment in New York City, a proposed supertall office tower at 350 Park Avenue. “Are they going to now have a special tax rate for those that own office buildings who live out of state?” Griffin asked. “Where does this stop in New York?”
Though Griffin said Citadel is still likely to go through with the investment, he added that Mamdani’s video encouraged him to reinvest in other ventures, including his company’s Miami headquarters.
“We’ve added several hundred thousand square feet of new space in our new building,” Griffin said. “We will add far more jobs in Miami over the next decade as an immediate and direct consequence of the mayor’s poor decision here, with respect to his posting of that video.”
Florida is an especially attractive state for high earners, given the state’s lack of an income tax. In contrast, just 1% of New York’s registered filers were responsible for 40% of the state’s income tax as of 2022, a stat that Griffin says puts New York City in “a precarious position if they make those who create value feel like they’re best off moving their businesses and their lives to other jurisdictions.”
“The progressive left goes, ‘Good riddance,’” he added. “But who’s going to pay the bills?”
Griffin comes for Mamdani and Hochul
Beyond his financial objections to New York’s new tax, Griffin took personal issue with Mamdani’s choice to feature his penthouse in that viral video, which has garnered more than 52 million views on social media.
“What really upset me about the video was the fact that he put me in harm’s way,” Griffin said. “You know, he seems to have forgotten that the CEO of another American company was assassinated just blocks where I live in New York,” he continued, likely referring to the 2024 shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. “And to put any citizen in harm’s way is just inappropriate for one of our political leaders.”
“I have no longstanding fights or issues or dynamics between Mamdani and me,” he continued. “To turn me into a political puppet was just in poor taste, really poor taste.”
Since the video’s release, Griffin has also met with Gov. Hochul to discuss the tax. After initially declining to comment on that meeting, Griffin eventually said he was disappointed by comments from the governor’s office that “Mamdani scored political points” with his video.
“Wow, that’s real leadership, Governor Hochul,” Griffin said. “I’m being as sarcastic as I could be here.”
