Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s inner circle is preparing a taxpayer-funded influencer drive against New York business leaders to sell steep tax hikes, a charge City Hall brands a complete lie.
The New York Post reported that two sources briefed on the matter say Mamdani’s closest City Hall advisers are looking to target senior executives, including leaders at the Partnership for New York City, through a coordinated digital operation tied to the mayor’s tax-and-spend agenda.
The paper described the effort as a roughly 200-strong “influencer army” run with public resources. Mamdani spokesperson Dora Pekec rejected the account after publication and offered no specific corrections.
“This is categorically false. The New York Post is publishing a complete lie,” Pekec said. She refused to identify any claimed inaccuracies.
Sources told the Post the planning is underway in the City Hall “bullpen,” the open-plan war room where advisers work desk to desk. They said the digital push is being led by Office of Mass Engagement Director Tascha Van Auken and Director of New Media and Cultural Communications Emilia Rowland.
Van Auken is a longtime Democratic Socialists of America organizer who previously ran Mamdani’s campaign ground operation. Rowland is a former Democratic National Committee press secretary who shaped the mayor’s social media strategy.
One person briefed on the bullpen’s plans put the approach in blunt terms.
"They are piecing together ideas on how to take them on."
Another description from the same briefing circle was broader still.
"Anybody is fair game as long as you’ve got money. There is a menu of options that is presented to the mayor."
The Post reported the operation has been coordinated on Democratic Socialists of America Signal groups. The immediate political target, sources said, is the Partnership for New York City, the city’s premier business advocacy group, and the executives around it.
Steve Fulop took over as Partnership CEO in January, succeeding longtime leader Kathryn Wylde. Sources cast Fulop, the former Jersey City mayor, as the softer mark.
One source said the bullpen wants to blindside him while he is still finding his footing.
"They want to punch Fulop in the face."
Another source drew the contrast with Wylde directly.
"Kathy Wylde knew the ropes. Fulop is new, so there’s never been a better opportunity to go at CEOs. More attacks are planned against the executive board of the Partnership throughout the rest of this year."
Names floated in the targeting talk, the Post reported, include Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla and Related Companies CEO Jeff Blau. Bourla was discussed in connection with drug prices. Blau’s name came up alongside a potential squeeze on Related’s $2 billion Hudson Yards expansion.
State election records cited in the reporting show Bourla donated to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s first campaign for governor, and Pfizer’s PAC has given more than $36,000 to state Democratic groups.
The alleged campaign does not arrive in a vacuum. Earlier this year, the Post reported Mamdani was preparing a tax-the-rich rollout for early fall, timed to lock in a large state money infusion at the start of 2027.
In April, the mayor promoted a pied-à-terre tax in a video. On Tax Day, his orbit staged a stunt outside Citadel founder Ken Griffin’s $238 million Central Park South penthouse. Griffin called the maneuver a “creepy and weird” personal attack and said it endangered his safety. He also suggested he might scrap a planned $6 billion Park Avenue development.
A source later described that episode as deliberate.
"The Griffin thing was completely pre-planned. It was a test to see how the Partnership would react."
One source summarized the larger play now under discussion.
"They have a plan to attack CEOs while they push for a slew of tax increases."
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon confronted Mamdani in a closed-door meeting in May. Afterward, Dimon warned he has seen mayors “fail abysmally” when “ideology blinds them to practical, realistic, real-world policy.”
In his annual shareholder letter this past April, Dimon wrote that “individuals vote with their feet” and that “you can already see a fairly large exodus of people and jobs out of some states with high taxes and high expenses,” pointing to lower-tax destinations such as Florida and Texas.
A Democratic insider questioned whether online pressure would move a banker of Dimon’s scale.
"Do they seriously think [JPMorgan Chase CEO] Jamie Dimon, who is responsible for overseeing $5 trillion in assets, is going to buckle because a few teenagers are pressuring him on TikTok?"
The policy stakes are concrete. Mamdani wants a 2-percentage-point income-tax hike on earners making more than $1 million and a jump in the top corporate tax rate from 7.25% to 11.5%. If Albany approves the package, the combined city-and-state top marginal rate on New York City’s wealthiest would reach 16.8%, the highest in the nation.
The nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission has projected the city’s fiscal gap will swell to $13.2 billion by fiscal year 2028. City Hall’s reported answer is to raise revenue from high earners and corporations while using digital pressure to keep business opposition off balance.
That mix lands hardest on taxpayers and employers who cannot treat New York as a messaging lab. Companies already weighing Miami, Texas, or other lower-cost states do not need a social-media pile-on to finish the argument Dimon has been making in public for months.
Governor Hochul is the state gatekeeper for the tax rates Mamdani wants. Ryan Adams, managing director at the consulting firm Actum, said Wall Street still casts her as the adult in the room, while working families credit her for helping on childcare without seeing her as the lead architect.
“That framing holds until somebody makes her choose,” Adams said. He added that nearly half of likely voters already say she is not in touch with average New Yorkers, per Siena, and that “a campaign about her donors gives that feeling a face.”
Nassau County Republican Bruce Blakeman has closed to within single digits of Hochul in one recent poll, raising the cost of any city-driven fight that paints Albany as a rubber stamp for democratic-socialist revenue grabs.
The Partnership was approached for comment in the Post’s reporting. The paper’s account rests on anonymous sources briefed on internal planning, paired with a flat City Hall denial that named no factual errors.
What remains clear is the pattern already on the record: a Tax Day spectacle at a private home, a closed-door clash with the city’s top banker, open talk of an early-fall tax offensive, and now fresh claims that City Hall wants taxpayer-backed influencers to rough up the executives who write the city’s private-sector paycheck.
New Yorkers who pay the bills should not have to underwrite a political hit squad aimed at the people still willing to invest here.
