After New York state legislator Zohran Mamdani — a self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist — won the New York mayoral primary in June, Palm Beach County business and government leaders began positioning the area to capitalize on his rise.
Anticipating increased business migration and economic growth in South Florida, they have been actively wooing uneasy New York City firms.
“We welcome millionaires and billionaires and good quality employers creating good jobs,” said Kelly Smallridge, CEO of the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County.
“We are not trying to run them out like New York is.”
Mamdani, the popular, online-savvy mayoral candidate, is known for policy proposals like a rent freeze and city-owned grocery stores. He said, in a recent ad, that he’s running for “working people” who are “pushed out of a city they built.”
He wants higher taxes on millionaires and corporations to fund those public services — and that seemed like an opportunity to Palm Beach County leaders. After his primary win, Smallridge told WLRN there's been an uptick in interest from wealthy executives in the Big Apple.
“Businesses [are] looking to inquire about available real estate, the timing of getting their children in school, what types of industrial or office buildings could be available,” she said.
“It's more of a ‘Let's check it out and if he wins, we would like to explore South Florida.’ They are very uncertain about the economy, about the government, and they're asking us questions about our government,” she said.
Smallridge said the current buzz reminds her of the COVID-era exodus. In the past five years, 140 companies from the Northeast and other regions, from tech to finance, have relocated or expanded to Palm Beach County.
In August, Smallridge’s team brought 500 invitation packets to New York City, targeting tech, finance and science firms with leases expiring in 2026 and 2027.
“We'd be very happy if we had 10 to 20 solid companies in our pipeline,” she added.
Smallridge focused on companies offering salaries near the county average of $80,000 and who could make 8–10-year commitments.
Enthusiasm for business relocation and Mamdani’s political rise extends beyond business agencies. Boca Raton Mayor Scott Singer, a Republican, is also seizing the opportunity.
Singer has been openly critical of Mamdani’s tax proposals, especially those targeting millionaires. “I expect more executives to be moving companies here,” he told WLRN. “If they can, they will.”
Singer said he has “ongoing conversations with several prospects” interested in relocating their business to Boca Raton.
Boca Raton spent $70,000 tax dollars on a billboard in Times Square this summer. The campaign, including news coverage, reached more than 100 million people, according to the city.
Singer said the campaign to attract major corporations is carefully targeted, shooting down local critics' fears that more people could change the cultural fabric of Boca.
"Realistically, it's not going to change the fabric in the slight. Our city's more than a 100,000 people, and we regularly have people coming and going," Singer said.
“Again, we're going after high paying jobs, the type that sustains our economy. So there are not droves of people who are going to move here,” he added.
“It's going to be a select audience, and that's why our message has been expressly more targeted at business executives looking to relocate companies.”
Widespread prosperity
However, urban policy expert Daniel Wortel-London, a visiting assistant professor of history at Bard College, questions whether such strategies foster widespread prosperity.
“Real prosperity isn’t just the amount of wealthy people in a city,” Wortel-London told WLRN. “It’s the amount of wealth being built up in the city, and how it’s distributed.”
He also argues equitable wealth distribution must go beyond increasing the number of wealthy individuals in a city.
“If you're dependent on outsiders moving in, those people often can just as easily move out," he said. "You’re going to have to keep subsidizing them to stay."
And as for fears of a mass corporate exodus from New York? Wortel-London argues those claims are overstated.
“Even during the height of the fiscal crisis of the '70s, New York was already growing increasingly as a corporate capital," he said. "Businesses are still concentrating there.”
He told WLRN many businesses stayed despite tax increases or proposals from former mayors Michael Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio. Bloomberg raised New York City taxes by up to $3 billion, mainly through a record property tax hike and higher personal and sales taxes, which reversed former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s tax-cutting policies.
And despite concerns from business leaders, most major firms stayed, and New York City kept its status as a top financial and commercial hub.
However a 2025 report by the Citizens Budget Commission found that New York City lost roughly $9.2 billion in income to Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties between 2017 and 2022.
The pandemic sped things up as remote work, lifestyle changes and Florida’s no-income-tax appeal drew many people south. That migration pushed home prices up 28% in Miami-Dade and massive 45% in Palm Beach by mid-2021. Before eventually endorsing Mamdani, even New York's governor had previously criticized his tax hike proposals, saying “I don’t want to lose any more people to Palm Beach.”
Still, New York City’s population bounced back in 2023 and 2024, reversing its pandemic decline, which was driven by record-high international migration.
Wortel-London said businesses that have remained in NYC will “come to terms with Zohran [Mamdani] very quickly.”
That is, if he wins. Mayor Eric Adams, who had been running as an independent, recently dropped out of the race. Now Mamdani's biggest rival is another independent candidate: former Governor Andrew Cuomo.
