New York City real-estate leaders worried about democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani becoming mayor are backing incumbent Mayor Eric Adams.
SL Green Realty Corp CEO Marc Holliday will host a roof-top fundraiser for Adams on Wednesday at one of his Manhattan office towers, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Dozens of the city's top real-estate executives have been invited and will pay about $2,000.
The Holliday get-together follows a weekend fundraiser that was hosted by real estate power couple Kenneth and Maria Fishel in the Hamptons. Billionaires John and Margo Catsimatidis, real-estate investor Jared Epstein, and others were among the guests.
"There's going to be a lot of these fundraisers," New York City luxury real-estate broker Noble Black told the Journal. "Everyone is talking about how much wealth is aligning against Mamdani."
For example, Epstein is planning other events for Adams in August, including a private dinner, the media outlet added. He's also said to be organizing campaign events in Montauk on Long Island, and Brooklyn to target young voters.
Mamdani, the Democrat candidate for mayor in November's election, has promised to immediately freeze the rent for all stabilized tenants, and to triple the city's production of permanently affordable, union-built, rent-stabilized homes.
Adams, who ran and won as a Democrat in his first mayoral bid in 2021, has launched a reelection campaign as an independent. He and former Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo, also planning to run as an independent, are calling on each other to drop out of the mayoral race to stop Mamdani.
Just weeks ago, real-estate leaders mostly backed Cuomo, the Journal reported. The industry donated millions of dollars to Cuomo's primary campaign, according to public filings.
The former governor, though, is considering waiting until at least September to officially launch a campaign, the Journal reported.
Black said that at smaller parties he attended in the Hamptons over the Fourth of July weekend, real-estate, tech, and Wall Street leaders were partly focused on how to pressure Cuomo to bow out, which would help unify support behind Adams.
While energizing the city's progressives, Mamdani frightens people in the city's real estate industry, The New York Times reported.
Mamdani's primary victory was a "crushing defeat" for the real estate industry and "dooms struggling rent-stabilized buildings," according to the trade publication The Real Deal.
Reuters contributed to this story.
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Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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