No one likes higher taxes. But New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to tax wealthy residents’ second homes has elicited a highly emotional response from two of the city’s richest.
“Creepy and weird,” is what Ken Griffin had to say Tuesday at a conference about Mamdani’s campaign-style video touting the tax outside the hedge fund manager’s $238 million penthouse.

Steven Roth, the CEO of real estate giant Vornado, went further Tuesday on an earnings call.

“I consider the phrase ‘tax the rich’ when spit out with anger and contempt by politicians both here and across the country, to be just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs and even the phrase, ‘from the river to the sea,’” Roth said, referring to the pro-Palestinian phrase that the Anti-Defamation League labels an antisemitic threat.

Mamdani announced a plan last month to tax New York City’s luxury second homes with market values above $5 million, saying it would fulfill his central campaign promise to “tax the rich.” He singled out Griffin’s penthouse as a prime example of the “fundamentally unfair system” that allows the city’s richest to store their wealth in homes that sit empty most of the time without paying city and state income taxes.

Business leaders have rallied to Griffin’s defense and said Mamdani’s video endangered his safety.

“We are all shocked that our young mayor would pull this stunt in front of Ken’s home and single him out for ridicule,” Steven Roth said. “The ugly, unnecessary video stunt is personal for Ken and sort of personal for me.” Vornado is one of the largest real estate companies in New York City and is currently developing a new office tower with Griffin’s hedge fund Citadel.

The rich who Mamdani and other political leaders target “are the epitome of the American dream” and the largest employers and philanthropists, Roth said. “They are at the top of the great American economic pyramid for a reason. They should be praised and thanked.”