The other day, a group of wealthy real estate executives huddled to try to find a way to stop Zohran Mamdani from becoming our next mayor. Their odds of success aren’t great, but more important, their underlying premise is off. Panicking at the last minute never works. If the business community wants to start electing centrists, they need to do more than throw money at a problem after it’s already too late.
I started working in New York politics in the mid-1990s. Even back then, the far left was starting to organize. Make the Road was a new organization. The Working Families Party came just a year later. These groups weren’t just ideological policy wonks — they knew politics. They recruited candidates. They trained candidates. They figured out what messages worked for the people who actually vote in primaries.
The far left put in the work and that effort was rewarded, first with Bill de Blasio’s ascension to mayor and Tish James to public advocate in 2013, then to James as New York attorney general in 2019 and likely now with Mamdani, plus a host of councilmembers and state legislators. I disagree with them on many (if not most) issues, but I respect the work they’ve done.
The business community has failed to do any of that. During the 12 years of Bloomberg, it didn’t matter because Mike had the power to ensure that common sense policies were consistently enacted. But Bloomberg made a pledge to not interfere after leaving office and he stuck to it. Which created a large chasm in the city’s politics.
That void should have been filled by centrist versions of the Democratic Socialists of America, the WFP, Make the Road. But they weren’t. The business organizations we have today either pointedly avoid electoral politics or focus on it so narrowly, their work has little impact on the greater good.
Over the past 30 years, I’ve learned that politicians make decisions based on what will impact their next election. They just assess whether working with you will either help them win their next primary or if not working with you could cost them their next primary and if the answer is no to both, you don’t matter. And as a result, the business community in New York almost never matters.
If you want that to change, you need to follow the lead of the left and start putting the actual work in. Recruit good candidates who can both appeal to current primary voters and bring out new ones. Organize New Yorkers based on quality of life and affordability issues they actually care about whether it’s stopping NIMBY’s from blocking affordable housing or stopping far left policies from allowing endless shoplifting and homelessness or protecting kids from a variety of obvious harms ranging from illegal weed shops to e-bikes.
Have funds ready to support candidates at all levels of government on the front end of the campaign, not in mid-September when it’s way too late. Build a political and policy operation that understands the zeitgeist instead of just assuming they can dictate the narrative — and then run candidates who can speak credibly to those issues.
All of it requires sustained, hard work. It requires constant effort, money and dedication. It is eminently achievable — but only if the resources are there. Most local policy fights are winnable.
Just out of my foundation, Tusk Philanthropies, alone, over the last few years, we’ve funded and helped win campaigns on local issues ranging from ending brokers’ fees for rental apartments to finally limiting the endless scaffolding to ensuring universal school meals across New York to mandating e-bike safety for kids to protecting doctors who prescribe abortion medication via telemedicine.
And we’re just one small organization and it’s a small part of our overall mission. Imagine what could be done with a concerted, organized, well resourced effort. There are so many incredibly talented business leaders who truly love this city. But they need to recognize that getting the politics right requires the same sort of thought, effort and process that they put into their day job.
Far left elected officials are not inevitable. But they’re also not going to go away just because a bunch of billionaires notice at the last second and try to stop it. We can elect centrist candidates in New York. We can enact centrist policies. We can create a better city and a better state. But we have to put the work in when it counts — at the beginning and over the long haul. Otherwise, none of it matters.
Tusk is a venture capitalist, political strategist and philanthropist.