Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s brazen “tax the rich” ultimatum puts Gov. Kathy Hochul in the crosshairs of both lefties and Republicans alike — with insiders telling The Post he may be shooting Democrats in the foot during an election year.
More than one local Dem exclaimed “It’s an election year!” when asked about Mamdani’s brash demand Tuesday that Hochul and Albany either pass a 2% increase on millionaires — or he’d be “forced” to hit New Yorkers with a 9.5% property tax hike to balance the city’s budget.
“Middle class homeowners shouldn’t be used as a bargaining chip,” Queens Borough President Donovan Richards said in an interview.
Richard feared Mamdani’s big move could jeopardize the Democratic Party’s momentum going into the November election season, where Hochul, who is running for re-election, will be at the top of the ticket.
“We don’t want to give Republicans talking points while we’re trying to win back the House of Representatives,” he said.
State Assemblyman Michael Benedetto, a Bronx Democrat, agreed, saying bluntly: “I’m not enthusiastic about raising taxes in an election year.”
The move put Hochul in a tight spot ahead of her re-election bid, in which she’ll face Republican Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman — who has already come out swinging against her for “bailing out” the city with another $1.5 billion in state funds.
Mamdani, who just unveiled a whopping $127 billion preliminary budget proposal, has used the city’s now-estimated $5.4 billion fiscal gap to push his Democratic Socialists of America-supported tax hike on the wealthy.
Hochul has insisted she opposes raising income taxes, and also said she is not in favor of hiking city property tax, the only local levies controlled by the mayor, but which would still need to be approved by the City Council.
“I don’t support a property tax increase on New Yorkers and I’m not wavering from my position that I don’t want to drive more people out of our state by increasing taxes from what is already a high-tax state. I’m the one who’s trying to cut taxes,” she reiterated Wednesday following an unrelated press conference in New Rochelle.
“My position is very clear,” she told reporters. “I have said that I am a partner of the mayor’s. We just allocated $1.5 billion to help them with their financial struggles. This is early in the process. It is his preliminary budget and what I would say is, there is other recourses to follow.”
Still, both the state Senate and Assembly have included income and corporate tax increases in their largely symbolic one-house budgets in recent years. Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Westchester) and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) have also each broadly said they’re supportive of raising taxes.
But Heastie stopped short of signing onto giving Mamdani a tax hike this year, even though he’s broadly supported the proposal in the past.
“I think at the end of the day, we will be fine. The city will be fine. We’re not going to leave the city on a ledge,” he said after the Democratic Convention in Syracuse earlier this month.
Mamdani called his tax plans a “last resort” to close a deficit in the city budget, a gap he’s been trying to frame as a crises for weeks.
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Some local Dems were outraged that Mamdani was apparently using the city’s home and business owners — some 3 million residential properties and 100,000 commercial — as leverage in a political game.
Others noted that while headline-grabbing, Mamdani’s threat seemed to be an empty one as city legislators were far from likely to approve his property tax hike proposal if it reached a vote.
“He’s made a calculated error,” one former Democratic lawmaker said.
“If he thinks the City Council is going to vote to increase property taxes 9.5%, that boy needs psychiatric help.”
The last time the city hiked property taxes was in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, under Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who presided over an 18% increase.
Insiders noted that Mamdani’s budget proposal — which increases city spending by $11 billion from 2026 — included few substantial cuts, and even many Democrats weren’t buying Hizzoner’s fiscal crisis claims.
“I don’t think the city is in that kind of situation. I think taxes in general should be a last resort. There’s plenty of savings that can be found,” said Assemblyman David Weprin (D-Queens), a former City Council member elected in 2002, when the Big Apple faced its post-9/11 financial crisis.
“I don’t think we’re at that desperate situation at this point,” he said, adding Mamdani “has a lot more work to do” balancing the books before he should consider raising taxes.
“A major property tax increase would be detrimental to people across the board,” Weprin said, dismissing taxing the rich as a “political thing” that doesn’t work in practice.
“It sounds good,” he said. “It polls well, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good tax policy.”
One place Mamdani could look for savings is the Department of Education, which makes up about 40% of the city’s budget — and has seen its funding increase, even though enrollment has dropped by 12% since the COVID pandemic, according to Citizens Budget Director executive director Andrew Rein.
“Readjusting school funding based on actual enrollment could save $400 million,” Rein said. “We should focus less on added spending and more on improving education for our kids.”
DOE funding could be curtailed if Albany repealed a cost-driving 2022 law which mandated smaller class sizes, and Mamdani should be “asking for relief” there instead of picking fights, Rein said.
Instead, Mamdani might be drawing the ire of Hochul — who just a day before the ultimatum was wheeled out had pledged the $1.5 billion to help close the city’s budget gap — with insiders saying her office was left fuming by the move.
“They negotiated all weekend to give him the money,” a source told The Post, “and said it was a major slap in the face.”