Hello and welcome to another episode of the OddLots podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

And I'm Tracy Aloway.

A former OddLods guest is very likely to be the next mayor of New York City. That's right. So, we interviewed Zoran Mumdani. 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.

I think we take very, very minor credit. I'm sure it was a coincidence. 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 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 like really interesting and may have contributed to his sort of extraordinary margin, his extraordinary victory.

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 had something more similar to that in say the 1950s, 1960s New York.

But that tension is what I find really fascinating right now.

Yeah. So we have to we have to learn more. I mean, again, in the run-up to the election, like what are New York City's business, financial elites thinking right now? What do they think of a possible Mandani Mery? What do they think about New York City in general? All of this stuff. There's a lot to there's a lot to learn. This is going to be a rich vein of interesting stuff for us for a while.

We're going all New York local politics, I guess. But I do think it has national consequences. So, we should talk about it.

We should definitely talk about it. 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, thinking about the election, the possibility of Madani being the mayor. We're going to be speaking with Kathy Wild. She is the president and CEO of 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,

yeah, words like power brokers, power player comes up

in every single one and so truly the perfect guest. So, Kathy, thank you so much for coming on OddLots.

Thank you for having me, Joe and Tracy.

Absolutely. We're really excited. Why don't you just before we move on, describe what the partnership for New York City is and what you basically do there.

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 1975 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 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 of great economic opportunity.

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?

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 of with the local government in particular, local state government and some extent the federal government when there are overriding issues that make a big impact on New York that are being considered in Washington.

When did Zoron come on the radar of the people that you talked to, of the CEOs, etc. like in the runup like was it a month before? Was he 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.

I would have to say that it was primary night about 10:00.

Really? Yeah. Incredible to me. That's incredible to me.

Well, I I had forewarned them that it was a possibility, but I think Cuomo had been a figure in their lives as Mario's son, as attorney general, as governor for 20ome years. And it was kind of a foregone conclusion is the guy we know who's now running for mayor is going to be mayor.

Yeah.

What was the mood like on primary night? Did everyone immediately go home and start looking up socialism on the internet on chat GPT?

Well, I I would say hysteria would be a good word for it. 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 20 years led efforts to bring congestion pricing to New York City to both manage traffic, but to really make the city a more efficient place. Excess traffic congestion was costing the city $20 billion 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 writers alliance which is a group of 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 1%. And so I met him for coffee at the LPQ at 85 Broad and we had a conversation and I found him to be smart and I took him seriously from then on.

I mean 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 that was your role in that night? Did you feel like a therapist to the members of the partnership

to provide reassurance to the business community? I mean, number one, to remind them that many of the things they were most worried about from a so 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 that the city or the mayor can do. Uh, free buses is not something the mayor can do. and figuring out where you make up that 800 million in um in revenues. So, that was number one, reassuring them that we have a moderate governor who's watching out for business interests, who 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 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 uh construction permits etc. that the mayor does control

basically a huge amount of control over that process. That is the one thing that's local and real estate taxes uh 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.

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 Zoran over coffee, what advice did you give him? What did you actually say to him about a mayoral run?

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, 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 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 $4,000 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 if they can't afford to rent an apartment in New York City? Big frustration. So, that was that was kind of the conversation that we had and he was open to that conversation and and interested in learning. I mean, he impressed me right away as somebody who is interested in learning more, but who has um has very strong opinions and is very committed. And I mean he's 33 years old and the world is his oyster.

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 are you going to visit first? And every candidate Bud Sauron said he was going to they were going to visit Israel. He said he wasn't thinking about was going to visit. Can you explain from the 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

Yeah. Why does the mayor of New York have to have a foreign policy?

Well, their fear is that he has a foreign policy. I 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 uh has a long 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 Technon partnered on uh Technneon's the university in Israel that really led the startup nation movement in Israel and did so much to propel their economy and they were selected under the Bloomberg administration to establish a firstass engineering school in New York on Roosevelt Island which has been very successful and is producing a great number of PhDs. And so at the time that they came in, Technon 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 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 that they are very concerned that the mayor of New York City respect and understand the importance of Israel and our long-term relationship. And that 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 Palestinians and concerns about that. So, it's um 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.

Uh he expanded the electorate to folks who have 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 young people and the social media crowd. And that's not the people who are most concerned.

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 Zoran t-shirts, people wearing those around town, usually young women, as you mentioned. And I'm curious, are any of the people you're speaking to perhaps thinking differently about campaign donations going forward if they donated billions of dollars for Cuomo and Zoran? What?

Well, not billions, but millions.

Okay. Um,

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 of it. They want to meet Zoran 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 to Cromo to Eric Adams, if you will, the somebody that they know they can do business with and who has been supportive of tremendously positive growth in the city from the uh nater of the pandemic and what where our economy was, where our real estate situation. Um, Eric Adams, it should not be ignored that he has, his administration has led reszoning efforts and really changed the zoning code for the first time since 1961. 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 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 in uh in good form.

I noticed you said something in I think your first answer that the um the business elite had accepted Kuomo as who was going to be the nominee. that accepted it does not sound the same as enthusiastically support. I hear that as sort of resigned. Yeah. Okay.

Status quo.

Yeah. And so I'm curious like

come on, you have to laugh at that. Good lines, right? Status. That's a good one actually. Thank you. Thank you.

That was good. But how did they feel actually about Cuomo and also like I know there are some question. It's still unclear whether he's going to run actively in November, but if they do coales around someone, does it definitely seem like it's going to be Adams?

So far, I think yes, I think it's going to be Adams. If if and again, it is um the real estate community that's most concerned. You understand that the financial industry in New York basically is prohibited by federal regulation SEC and FINRA and other regulation from contributing to state and local 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 40% of our tax base who can't participate in supporting candidates of their choice.

Well, they can knock on doors like the Zoron volunteers did. They just can't donate gobs of money

and that would be great but not happening. Okay. Um it's uh most of them are beyond the doornocking age.

Sure.

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 his tenure as attorney general with the business community. So, and 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 some real progress there on Medicaid reform and pension reform as the political winds changed. Uh there wasn't that same relationship with the business community. So with the exception of real estate where he was very progrowth investing in infrastructure supporting real estate development. So I would say that he had relative enthusiasm in the real estate community but not broadly based in the business community.

So on this note, you've emphasized a number of times that a lot of business leaders obviously want to talk to Zoran. 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 9th. How do you decide who gets to be in the room with Zoran?

Well, the first meeting we're doing, and I set this up with Zoran, he called me right after the election and and said he wanted to establish those relationships. And I said, "Well, let's" So, we set up a meeting with the CEOs of the partnership that's on Tuesday. And so, there'll be some will join virtually, but it's going to be mostly an in-person 150 maybe CEOs of major companies, major employers in the city who have never met him. And we'll be for the first time getting the opportunity. That's going to be a conversation with our co-chairs Rob Spire of Tishman Spire and Dr. Albert Burla of Fizer. And so they'll be having a conversation with Sauron and then we'll have some Q&A with our members. And so that's that's number one. And then um

you'll come back next week, right? And we'll do a follow-up to this episode and you just tell us.

It'll be interesting. Yes, I'm 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. Yeah,

Zoran is pretty good at presenting himself and very fast in terms of his thoughtful responses on issues. So I'm looking forward 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 Alley, Ali Corp is the name of his corporation and has has a prolific history of creating tech companies in New York. Kevin is going to moderate a conversation 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.

Okay,

and speaking to him about his path forward. And as I said, there's been a 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 burough president. But when we started out, he didn't know anybody in the New York business community either. But 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 Delasio as mayor, who had nothing to do or to say to them except, "You're awful people." And as Jamie Diamond famously said, "For eight years, I never got a call from Bill Delasio when he was mayor and have never have never had a conversation with him." So Eric immediately reversed the Delasio 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 uh next week. I I don't I think that that he's 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 that the number one concern is is this a dogmatic ideological person who is just going to is is going to be um not interested in what we can contribute to the city or what employers contribute.

You mentioned Kevin Ryan. I used to work for Business Insider which one of the Alley 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, "Are you going to leave New York City? I'm never going to leave New York City." Like, it's the best city in the world, obviously. But, you know, people do leave and in 2021 and 2022, 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, etc. In your view or in the view of the employers of New York City, what are the threats, the substantive threats that would say, okay, this would meaningfully change the desiraability of doing business in this town?

Number one is public safety and that's again they've appreciated particularly under Commissioner Tish and originally under Commissioner uh Kan Su, they have appreciated that the Adams administration has focused on public safety and that we're

and that's more important than things like taxes for them. Yes, absolutely.

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 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 and importantly, Zoran has acknowledged that keeping New York a destination for talent is a priority for him. So, I think that message is is very important. So that that 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 mean already in most sectors New York City salaries have a 20% premium at least over if you're going to locate in Texas or Florida 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 that's the other consideration. So it's it's really having a 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 uh Zoran's campaign.

This is what I was going to ask you. Are there any areas of I guess overlap or agreement between Zoran's agenda and the concerns or the desires of the business community?

Yeah, absolutely. As I mentioned, one of the big questions that'll come up next week, probably the first question that'll come up is what is your commitment to public safety? You know, symbolically, would you keep Jesse Tish as 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 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.

What do you see as the main constraints to affordability? What do you from your just from your perspective, how many years did they were they debating about putting up some houses at the Elizabeth Street Garden? like these the process take forever, but like I know that's like the most hot button topic in the world, but just broadly, what do you perceive as the main constraint towards making rent cheaper in New York City?

30% 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 in these older rent regulated buildings are making a huge profit. It's that their costs have gone up. Their water bills etc. 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 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 yeah collect a lot of rent. Do you think there are meaningful levers that could be pulled to rapidly increase the pace in which we build whether it's affordable housing or market rate housing etc. Like what would you identify?

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 other thing I want to mention that affects the cost of construction very much but also it affects all other costs is the cost of litigation passed along to consumers through 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 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 car insurance costs are 49% higher than the average in the country. Our health insurance costs are 12% higher. These are all costs that we could absolutely contain and control. And the city, which is basically self-insured, ends up paying this out of pocket. So they pay billions of dollars a year in medical malpractice in other

fund a lot of free buses

that would fund a lot of free buses.

Aren't the higher litigation costs aren't they just a reflection of I guess the higher cost of living and materials maybe and things like that

they're they're a reflection of a system where our jury awards are much higher than any place else. They call them nuclear awards. Uh no it's all because of laws. We have one law on the books in Albany. It's part of the labor law. It was passed a hundred years ago and it was passed before we had workers compensation and other protections for construction workers. If you have a gravity related injury and many of these are staged, that one law can add 5 to 7% to the cost of construction just that one law. And so when we say why why does it cost a million dollars to produce a two-bedroom 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 insurance costs and the time that it takes to get anything done, the carrying costs for the time.

I want to ask a sort of social question given your role as therapist to uh the wealthy, but I get 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 who you know or knew um and worked with and him bailing out the city in the 1970s 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. Is that an accurate portrayal of billionaires nowadays? Are they less engaged in overall society?

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, its museums, its universities, its institutions. We have by far the most philanthropic city 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 Aers and many of the families that, you know, the key families of New York did contribute to this. But then you saw the tributes to Leonard Lauder who died a few weeks ago. They were all for 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. I would distinguish that. None of the people that I'm talking about want to be known or proclaim themselves or position themselves as billionaires.

Right.

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 40 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 dawned on them that a socialist could be the uh Democratic nominee at 10 p.m. 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? 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, etc., and what's on the mind of younger voters, period, across a range of issues.

I think that's a a very fair comment. Most of the mature business world is not living on social media.

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, and that's 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. So the fact that we're a headquarters city in all these diverse sectors in fashion, in media, in 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 are sidelines compared. So, it's just the nature of our changing economy over the last 50 years, which has gone from being a local 50 years ago industrial economy to being a service economy to today being a global digital economy. And all of that means that the attention of business 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. Mhm.

I mean, what we try and do at the partnership is synthesize for those global leaders what's happening locally and who's who and what's what. That's what we're doing with regard to the mayoral election now. It's 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 these are people who are running global businesses and that's the that's what's changed. It's not anything else but the focus of attention has to be global and well I I would just mention because we sit here in Bloomberg podcast world that u 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 of the partnership in uh 2000, right before 2001, 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 was a thought leader. He was the leading philanthropist. When people ask me who replaced David Rockefeller as the leading philanthropist in the city was Mike Bloomberg. Simple.

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. So

we didn't tell our guest to describe our boss as the uh the new David Rockefeller.

No, we did not. Um I I just have one

This isn't the first time I've said it.

Okay. Okay. All right. 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 missed something about Zoran 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 actually build more housing or lower rents or whatever or are they still committed very much to uh this not the status quo but the Eric Adams status quo and they want him to win.

Again, 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 uh what's been happening on the ground and they want to plug in. They are really interested. I mean, we've had tremendous interest in meeting Zoron, speaking with him. He's made calls to some businesses.

Yeah. What do they say after like the after those phone calls? Because the 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?

Their response is that he is um you know, they said he's the politician of a generation. I mean, he's a generational figure. They're they're impressed.

Um, after a 10-minute phone call with him because he is he's a very effective communicator and he listens. And, you know, business leaders like to be listened to.

Kathy Wild, that was fantastic. So glad we made this happen. And uh, like I said, maybe we'll maybe we'll have you back at some point or would love to have you back on at some point.

Thank you. 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 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.

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 a Mumani mayorship.

Yeah. No, that's really interesting. This idea that it's uh 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, "Oh, 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 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 connection. I mean it's a it was a really savvy campaign. 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, Quuomo had all the money and terrible ROI.

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 a lot of it is young. There's probably a large portion in there that is, you know, of a progressive event. Yeah. And so a candidate like Zoran might appeal to them and actually bring more people into the city. 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 than 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 have come back for obvious uh for obvious reasons. But it's interesting that it's not even like any of the economic stuff. It's not the uh socialism stuff. It's just the basic safety stuff. And there is I know there's a lot of the question about whether Mani 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 really big thing more than you know the rent freeze or taxes or anything else I think is just going to be an interesting um executive question for uh Mumani.

Lots of interesting questions thrown up by this whole election. Shall we leave it there for now?

Sure. Let's leave it there.

This has been another episode of the OddLotss podcast. I'm Tracy Aloway. You can follow me at Tracee Alaway.

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