Robert Hornak
Former executive director of the queens republican party
rahornak@gmail.com
Robert Hornak is a veteran political consultant who previously served as deputy director of the Republican assembly leader’s NYC office and as executive director of the Queens Republican Party. He can be reached at rahornak@gmail.com and @roberthornak on X.
It’s not even 100 days into Zohran Mamdani’s first year as mayor and his agenda appears to be hitting the fan.
One of Mamdani’s top prom- ises, which became more of a rally cry for his candidacy, was to tax the rich. What should be seen as a mere means to an end–and not a particularly good one depending on the economists you listen to – has be- come an objective of its own to this radical mayor.
So much so, in fact, that when it became clear that Gov. Hochul would oppose his agenda for raising taxes on income and businesses, one dependent on approval from Albany, Mamdani had a fit and threatened to raise property taxes on everyone. It was a move that directly under- mined his main campaign theme to make NYC more affordable.
But now the City Council, previously assumed to be more amenable to Mamdani’s tax schemes, has in- stead declared itself a no go zone for property tax increases. At least for now. And it’s not sitting well with this temperamental mayor.
Council Speaker Julie Menin put her financial brains to work, and they came up with an alternate $127 billion budget plan with no service cuts, doesn’t raid cash reserves, and, ready for this, is balanced without raising property taxes.
While cutting any of the $7 billion increase over FY2026 would have been a better way to go, this at least shows that “tax the rich” isn’t the only path forward. And that makes Mamdani and his allies very unhappy.
Mamdani responded on social media, posting a video where he accused the Council of planning to cut billions from city agencies. Numerous Council members responded, claiming Mamdani was outright lying.
Newly elected Councilwoman Virginia Maloney maybe said it best, saying in a drop the mic post “I know math is hard, but the @NYC- Council finance team did the work” and “The City’s not broke, we’re just badly managed. And we can balance this budget responsibly without put- ting our long-term fiscal health at risk.”
Even Tiffany Cabán, Alexa Avilés, Shahana Hanif and Chi Ossé, the DSA members of the council, were not jumping to Mamdani’s defense, issuing a joint statement “We appreciate that the Council budget seeks creative solutions to closing the budget deficit. We are also encouraged that the Mayor and Speaker are both working towards a balanced budget that maintains essential programs for New Yorkers.”
And the group most aligned with the Mayor, the Democratic Social- ists, is reported to be unhappy with Mamdani also. The word is they also are unhappy he’s not delivering on his tax the rich promises.
The DSA’s main agenda is Tax the Rich. That and opposing Isra- el appear to be all they really care about. They have swag including Tax the Rich t-shirts, and hold Tax the Rich phone banks, door knocking, and socials. More experienced pols understand that just raising taxes doesn’t immediately solve problems. And it chases productive people out of the state. The numbers don’t lie. But DSA wants what they want.
Mamdani is arguably the second most powerful elected official in NY, and all his allies are putting distance between him and them. Meanwhile, he needs things from Hochul to move his agenda. And the DSA is attacking Hochul as if she were a MAGA Trump supporter.
In one of their recent Tax the Rich emails they say, “Raising tax- es on the rich is a no-brainer, but Kathy Hochul is playing games with the budget to protect her billionaire donors. Hochul is using every trick in the book to slash healthcare, food aid and other social services while giving massive handouts to the rich from the Trump cuts.”
Mamdani is going to war with the progressive City Council while failing to deliver for the DSA. All this infighting doesn’t bode well for him this early.
Normally, Democrat factions find a way to come together as long as they can divide up the spoils. But the “tax the rich” faction doesn’t want to share in the spoils. They want total control over the agenda and are willing to burn the house down to get it. This might be the fault line that reshapes the Democratic Party in NY and beyond.
