New Yorkers deserve straight talk, not campaign theater, and what’s being passed around online as Zohran Mamdani’s sudden “pro-business” pivot is exactly that — theater. His campaign ad cheerfully promises to “cut red tape,” slash fines, and appoint a Mom-and-Pop czar to help small businesses, a message that sounds comforting to mom-and-pop owners who’ve been crushed by pandemic-era lockdowns and bureaucracy. But the applause line in a video cannot be the end of our scrutiny; voters should demand to see the ledger behind these promises.
Peel back the PR and you find the rest of his platform: massive new taxes, city-owned enterprises, rent freezes, and a guaranteed $30 minimum wage — policies that require billions in new revenue and statewide cooperation to implement. Mamdani’s plan to raise the corporate tax to 11.5 percent and add a 2 percent tax on New Yorkers earning over $1 million is the financing mechanism he touts, but those numbers are aspirational and politically fraught. You can’t promise both relief for small businesses and a tax regime that chases away the investors and payrolls local shops depend on.
That’s the political illusion: offer headline-friendly fixes for small fry while starving the very economy that sustains them. A Mom-and-Pop czar who halves fines and speeds permitting sounds reasonable until you realize the funding and regulatory rollback he’ll need to deliver it come from the same pool he wants to drain with tax hikes and expanded municipal control. Voters must ask why any serious small-business owner would trust a plan that simultaneously promises relief and a decade of higher operating costs imposed indirectly through new taxes and regulation.
Economic reality is not partisan poetry; it reacts to incentives. Economists and business groups warned that steep local tax increases and more government intervention risk speeding the exodus of high earners, shrinking the tax base, and leaving fewer employers and customers for neighborhood stores. New York’s unique geography makes it easy for high-income residents to move just across a municipal line, meaning the revenue Mamdani projects could be far smaller if people and businesses rearrange where they declare residence or invest.
Politics also limits policy: New York City cannot unilaterally impose many of the taxes Mamdani proposes without Albany’s approval, and the governor and state legislature have already signaled skepticism about sweeping local tax hikes. That reality means many of his marquee programs — from free buses to city-run grocery stores — are structurally dependent on cooperation that may never materialize, leaving New Yorkers with broken promises and higher expectations underwritten by scant results. Voters should prefer leaders who propose reforms within the city’s real authority and that protect future budgets from volatile assumptions.
Meanwhile, the downtown elites and national media will sell narratives about compassion and redistribution, but ordinary New Yorkers care about practical outcomes: steady jobs, safe streets, reliable transit, and honest government. Conservatives know that the best way to help mom-and-pop shops is through lower taxes, leaner regulation, and honest enforcement of public safety — not by turning neighborhoods into testing grounds for ideological experiments that prioritize expanded government over enterprise. The promise of a czar won’t keep a deli open if customers flee and suppliers raise prices under heavier corporate levies.
Don’t be fooled by polished ads and TikTokable lines; judge politicians by what their policies will actually do, not by the catchy sound bites they replay. If Mamdani truly wants to help small businesses, he should present a realistic plan that cuts needless regulation without simultaneously threatening the capital and consumers those businesses need to survive. Hardworking Americans deserve leaders who put prosperity and public safety first, not another round of socialist experiments that threaten to turn our vibrant city into something unrecognizable.
