New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani stood on a Manhattan sidewalk this week, pointed up at a $238 million penthouse, and announced he was coming for its owner's money. The stunt, a promotional video filmed outside hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin's apartment at 220 Central Park South, was meant to sell New Yorkers on a proposed pied-a-terre tax. Instead, it drew sharp criticism from business figures and financial commentators who warned the mayor was doing something reckless: singling out a private citizen by name and address to score political points.
The proposed tax, which Mamdani rolled out as he marked his first 100 days in office, would impose an annual surcharge on luxury homes in New York City valued at more than $5 million if they are used as second residences. The mayor's office expects the levy to raise at least $500 million for city services, as Breitbart reported. Griffin's penthouse, which he purchased in 2019 for what was then a record-setting U.S. residential price, became the centerpiece example.
In the video, Mamdani delivered a line he has repeated since the campaign trail:
"When I ran for mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich. Well, today, we're taxing the rich."
He then gestured toward Griffin's building and explained that the tax would target properties like the hedge fund CEO's penthouse. The clip circulated widely on social media and set off a round of pointed responses.
CNBC anchor Sara Eisen was among the most vocal critics. She laid out a straightforward economic case against publicly targeting one of the city's largest private-sector investors. As the New York Post detailed, Eisen argued that Griffin employs thousands of people in New York and is planning to build what would be the tallest office tower on Park Avenue, a project involving billions in investment and thousands of additional jobs.
"Making him feel unwelcome and demonizing him seems risky."
Eisen didn't leave it there. She reminded viewers that Griffin already walked away from one major American city over what she described as bad policy. In 2022, Griffin relocated his hedge fund Citadel from Chicago to Miami, and sold his penthouse there on the way out.
"Meantime Miami is welcoming him and his firm, with the massive jobs, investment and tax revenue he's bringing."
The warning was not subtle. Cities that treat major employers and investors as political props risk losing them to jurisdictions that don't. Griffin's net worth exceeds $50 billion. His decisions about where to invest, hire, and build carry real consequences for the local tax base, the very tax base Mamdani says he wants to expand.
Mamdani, for his part, has previously dismissed the idea that wealthy residents would flee the city over higher taxes. But Griffin's own biography makes the counterargument for him. He already left one city. His primary residence is now in Miami. The Manhattan penthouse is precisely the kind of property that would face the new surcharge, and precisely the kind of property an owner might choose to sell rather than pay an annual tax on a home he barely uses.
The video outside Griffin's apartment did not happen in a vacuum. Mamdani has built his political identity around confrontation with the city's wealthiest residents, and his democratic-socialist agenda has leaned heavily on class-based rhetoric since before he took office.
That rhetoric has allies who take it further. New York Communities for Change, a left-wing group featured on Mamdani's campaign endorsements page, recently launched what it called a "Department of Class Solidarity" initiative. The group circulated mugshot-style "WANTED" posters targeting prominent business leaders, including Michael Bloomberg, Bill Ackman, and William Lauder, accusing them of being "Wanted for Anti-Zohran Electioneering." Mamdani attended NYCC's annual fundraising gala in April 2025 and appeared with the group again at an event last month, the Washington Free Beacon reported. It remains unclear whether the mayor personally approved the posters.
Taken together, the pattern is hard to miss. The mayor films a video outside a specific billionaire's home. An allied organization prints "WANTED" posters with the faces of wealthy New Yorkers who backed his opponent. And the mayor himself frames the entire enterprise in terms that leave little room for ambiguity.
"No longer will city government be afraid of its own shadow. If anyone should be afraid, it is those who take advantage of working people."
That line, "if anyone should be afraid", is the kind of language that sounds like populist bravado in a campaign speech but takes on a different tone when delivered by the sitting mayor of the nation's largest city while standing outside a named individual's home.
Mamdani's pied-a-terre tax is only one piece of a broader fiscal agenda. His proposed $127 billion budget for 2027 includes higher taxes on wealthy residents and corporations. It also includes a reduction of the NYPD by 5,000 officers.
That combination, raising taxes while cutting police, is a familiar progressive formula, and one that has produced measurable consequences in cities that have tried it. Mamdani's first 100 days in office have already drawn scrutiny for the gap between his promises and his results on housing, homelessness, and public safety.
The 34-year-old mayor has also drawn attention for a Preliminary Citywide Racial Equity Plan released last week, which he used to highlight what he described as stark racial wealth gaps. On Tuesday, Mamdani cited findings showing that the wealth of a median white household in the city exceeds $200,000, while that of a Black household falls below $20,000, a gap of roughly $180,000.
S1 reports that Mamdani allegedly tried to slip diversity, equity, and inclusion measures past the Trump administration by stripping direct references to DEI from the plan. The Daily Mail reported on both the racial equity plan and the broader backlash to the Griffin video. The mayor's office has not commented publicly on the criticism.
Meanwhile, the mayor faces scrutiny from multiple directions. A Senate probe has been launched into Mamdani over scrapped antisemitism protections, adding another layer of political pressure on an administration that seems to generate controversy faster than it delivers results.
The core question raised by the Griffin video isn't whether wealthy New Yorkers should pay more in taxes. Reasonable people can debate that. The question is whether a mayor should use the power and visibility of his office to single out a private citizen by name, stand outside his home, and use his property as a political prop on camera.
Sara Eisen framed the risk in concrete terms. Griffin already left Chicago. He already moved Citadel's headquarters, and its jobs, its tax revenue, and its investment, to Miami. He is, by Eisen's account, planning to invest billions more in New York, including a major office tower on Park Avenue. But he is doing so while maintaining his primary residence in Florida, a state with no income tax and a political climate far friendlier to the kind of capital Mamdani treats as a target.
Mamdani's defenders will say the mayor is simply keeping a campaign promise. He told voters he would tax the rich, and now he's taxing the rich. But there is a difference between enacting a tax policy and turning a specific billionaire's home into a backdrop for a political ad. One is governance. The other is theater, and the kind of theater that tells every major employer in New York exactly how this administration views them.
When you make a man worth $50 billion your personal foil, you had better be sure he doesn't have somewhere else to go. Ken Griffin has already shown he does.
