Mayor Mamdani Says Exodus From New York Is Just Your Imagination

Democrat and socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Wednesday the city is not actually experiencing a much-reported exodus of wealthy residents over high taxes.

A surge of affluent New Yorkers leaving the city and moving to places with lower taxes such as Florida was a major story in the run-up to the 2025 mayoral election. Mamdani repeatedly called for massive tax increases to pay for a slew of social welfare programs and reports of the exodus exploded as his win looked increasingly likely. But when speaking at his Tax Day event on Wednesday, Mamdani denied there has been any such exodus, calling it imaginary and arguing that the opposite was true.

“So for all of the discussion of the imagined exodus that would take place were we to tax the wealthiest New Yorkers by the appropriate amount — I say imagined because before I was a mayor I was a state legislator and I was part of an effort to increase taxes on millionaires at that time — we were told the same thing then — and what we find now is that we have more millionaires today than we did at that time even after having passed that tax,” Mamdani said.

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“And so for all of that conversation about this imagined exodus, we have to reckon with the very real exodus that we are seeing in the city, an exodus of working class people, an exodus of those who cannot afford to live here,” Mamdani continued.

Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul pleaded