Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s inner circle is plotting a string of coordinated smears on top New York CEOs, deploying the hard-left Hizzoner’s 200-strong “influencer army” to bash Big Apple business leaders and drum up support for his tax-and-spend agenda, The Post has learned.
Two sources briefed on the matter said Mamdani’s closest City Hall advisers — known as the bullpen, a reference to the open-plan war room where the mayor and his top aides sit desk-to-desk to plan political hits — are looking to target senior executives with their taxpayer-funded troll farm just months after an ugly spat with Citadel founder Ken Griffin.
The insiders said the self-styled democratic socialists are zeroing in on top bosses at the Partnership for New York City, explicitly looking to capitalize on a leadership transition earlier this year at the city’s premier business advocacy group.
The Post revealed earlier this year that Hizzoner was hatching a plot to roll out his tax-the-rich agenda in early fall to try to solidify a massive influx of money from the state at the start of 2027.
And no one with deep pockets is safe.
Sources said that the business-bashing left-wingers have already floated Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla as a possible target over drug prices and potentially sabotaging the $2 billion Hudson Yards expansion led by Jeff Blau, the CEO of Related Companies.
“They are piecing together ideas on how to take them on,” one person briefed on the bullpen’s plans said. “Anybody is fair game as long as you’ve got money. There is a menu of options that is presented to the mayor.”
The primary strategy is to “blindside” the Partnership’s new CEO, former Jersey City mayor Steve Fulop, who succeeded veteran corporate fixer Kathryn Wylde in January and whom they see as “inexperienced.”
“They want to punch Fulop in the face,” a source told The Post. “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.”
The operation, coordinated on Democratic Socialists of America Signal groups, aims to systematically tear down bigwigs as the mayor tries to close a fiscal gap that is projected to balloon to $13.2 billion by fiscal year 2028, according to the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan fiscal monitor.
Mamdani is desperately trying to raise extra revenue to close the black hole in New York’s finances, including a 2-percentage-point hike for earners making over $1 million.
“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?” one Dem insider said of the pressure campaign.
The timing could prove to be a political headache for Gov. Kathy Hochul as she fends off a gubernatorial challenge from Nassau County Republican Bruce Blakeman, who has come within single digits in one recent poll.
Bourla donated to Hochul’s first campaign for governor, and Pfizer’s PAC has donated more than $36,000 to state Dem groups, according to state election records.
“Right now, Wall Street thinks Governor Hochul is the adult in the room, and working families in the city think she’s the one who helped, but did not lead, in delivering childcare wins,” said Ryan Adams, a managing director at the consulting firm Actum.
“That framing holds until somebody makes her choose,” Adams said. “Nearly half of likely voters already say she’s not in touch with average New Yorkers, according to Siena. A campaign about her donors gives that feeling a face.”
If approved in Albany, the combined city-and-state top marginal rate for New York City’s wealthiest would hit 16.8%—the highest in the nation. The mayor also wants to raise the top corporate tax rate from 7.25% to 11.5%.
To get there, the administration is relying on a digital drive-by operation is being spearheaded by one of the mayor’s most senior aides: Office of Mass Engagement Director Tascha Van Auken and Emilia Rowland, the city’s Director of New Media and Cultural Communications.
Van Auken, a 50-year-old veteran DSA organizer, previously led Mamdani’s massive campaign ground operation, while Rowland, a former Democratic National Committee press secretary, developed the mayor’s social media strategy.
“They have a plan to attack CEOs while they push for a slew of tax increases,” one source said, adding that the mayor’s viral Tax Day stunt outside Ken Griffin’s $238 million Central Park South penthouse was a calculated hit. “The Griffin thing was completely pre-planned. It was a test to see how the Partnership would react.”
The Post has approached The Partnership of New York for comment.
In a statement issued after publication of this story, Mamdani spokesperson Dora Pekec said: “This is categorically false. The New York Post is publishing a complete lie.”
Pekec, however, refused to identify any specific inaccuracies in The Post’s reporting.
The previously undisclosed plans for a state-sponsored smear campaign are likely to send shivers down the spines of the city’s business community.
Following Mamdani’s April video promoting a pied-à-terre tax, Griffin — whose firm also has an HQ in Miami — fired back, calling the maneuver a “creepy and weird” personal attack that endangered his safety.
The hedge fund billionaire even suggested he might pull the plug on a planned $6 billion Park Avenue development. The hostile climate and looming tax hikes have sounded alarms at the highest levels of American finance.
Dimon confronted Mamdani in a closed-door meeting in May. The CEO publicly warned afterward that he has seen mayors “fail abysmally” when “ideology blinds them to practical, realistic, real-world policy.”
Dimon has repeatedly cautioned that the administration’s smash-and-grab tax strategy is driving a corporate exodus to lower-tax states like Florida and Texas.
“Individuals vote with their feet,” the Wall Street veteran wrote in his annual shareholder letter this past April. “You can already see a fairly large exodus of people and jobs out of some states with high taxes and high expenses.”
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