Business leaders in the city are scratching their heads over recent remarks by Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio.
Describing how he plans to govern once he takes office next year, the mayor-elect declared flatly that he doesn’t believe in the free-market system.
At least Comrade Bill was being honest.
“Everything you heard about me is true. . . I am not a free-marketeer. . . I believe in the heavy hand of government,” de Blasio stated matter-of-factly during an hour-long presentation to some of the city’s biggest real-estate developers.
The meeting occurred several weeks before the election with de Blasio way ahead in the polls and New York’s business elite hoping and praying he wasn’t as much of a leftist as he said he was on the campaign trail.
Now that de Blasio’s been elected mayor with a resounding 73 percent of the vote, his comments have become a hot topic for business people trying to digest what life will be like with Comrade Bill in charge.
Attendees of the gathering with de Blasio included Jared Kushner of Kushner Properties, Stephen Green of SL Green Realty, Douglas Durst of the Durst Organization and Jeff Blau, chief executive of the Related Companies. Scott Rechler of RXR Realty, who hosted the event at his offices, served as moderator (that is, to the extent it’s possible to moderate de Blasio).
“It was startling to hear someone in this day and age boldly proclaim he’s not a ‘free marketeer,’ ” said one person in attendance.
“To be fair, [de Blasio] also said he knows that the economy must grow in order to help poor people. But he did not back off his principles.”
“Scary” was how another person with direct knowledge of the event described his statements. “People were shocked and speechless,” said another person who was there.
Through a spokeswoman, de Blasio offers this explanation for what went down, and it’s not quite a denial: “Mayor-elect de Blasio obviously believes that government has an important role to play in addressing the crisis of inequality and affordability in New York City,” the spokeswoman said.
“He made this plain during the campaign and will make it a focus of his administration. To contort his very clear views into some sort of long-debunked caricature is silly and desperate.”
Of course it’s difficult to “caricature” de Blasio as a leftist because that’s exactly what he is.
This is a guy who honeymooned in Cuba, gave aid and comfort to the communist Sandinista rebels and never apologized for his radical past. In fact, he’s built upon it, advocating a distinctly far-left agenda — further left, in fact, than any mayor since David Dinkins. That includes everything from bashing the police to demanding higher taxes and much bigger government, which he believes will alleviate a fictional narrative: that one of the most generous cities in the world to poor people is really a Dickensian hell hole.
Business people care about these things for obvious reasons. Higher taxes usually come out of their pockets. It forces them to cut costs and lay people off. Contrary to popular belief, companies like a stable workforce, so cutting jobs isn’t something they want to do.
Nor do the businesses that are here really want to move to Texas. But they will if they have to — if crime is high, for example. In the end, the economy will surely suffer, because people don’t want to do business in a pre-Rudy Giuliani New York.
Since being elected, de Blasio, I am told, has been making the rounds and meeting with business leaders, including recently with executives at JP Morgan.
In the meeting, he asks executives how he can help ensure that the bank keeps as many jobs as possible in New York City. JP Morgan employs roughly 27,000 New Yorkers and is the city’s largest private employer.
“We basically said don’t raise taxes,” one bank executive said. With the “heavy hand” of Bill de Blasio, higher taxes are just the beginning of the business community’s problems.
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