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Are Zohran Mamdani and the next NYC Council speaker spoiling for a corporate crackdown?
By
Elizabeth Kim
Published Dec 4, 2025
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William Alatriste/NYC Council Media Unit
By
Elizabeth Kim
Published Dec 4, 2025
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This column originally appeared in The Politics Brief, our weekly newsletter on the people, power and policies that shape New Yorkers' lives.
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Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and the presumptive City Council speaker are signaling a new era of stricter corporate regulation is on the horizon — and business leaders are becoming uneasy.
Mamdani has been voicing his support for Starbucks workers striking over stalled contract negotiations. On Monday, he joined workers on a picket line in front of a Brooklyn branch and pledged to “hold these kinds of corporations accountable.”
City Councilmember Julie Menin, who last week announced she had enough votes to become speaker, said she wants to use the Council’s subpoena powers to go after “bad actor corporations.”
Taken together, the developments are yet another sign that corporations that call New York City home should brace for increased scrutiny in the coming years. After wooing business leaders during the general election, Mamdani now appears to be taking an adversarial stance on the city’s corporations. Executives who were counting on the next Council speaker to be a potential check on Mamdani may now have to question that thinking given Menin’s positioning.
Mamdani criticized the “billionaire class” during his election night victory speech. The next day he appointed Lina Khan, the former Federal Trade Commission chair known for taking on big corporations, as co-chair of his transition team. The antitrust expert has said she’s reviewing local laws that could be used to implement Mamdani’s affordability agenda, like lowering the cost of health care and beers at Yankee Stadium.
Menin, meanwhile, previewed her speakership by vowing to enforce laws protecting workers.
“We pass some laws and then oftentimes are completely ignored,” Menin, who previously led the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, said last week on NY1. “We need to be far more proactive and actually I think by suing these bad actor corporations, it's in line with the mayor-elect's agenda.”
Advocates for the city’s business community pushed back on Menin’s proposal.
“This is a bad message to business because they seem like sweeping gestures,” said Kathy Wylde, the head of the Partnership for New York City, a business advocacy group, and a member of Mamdani’s transition team.
Mamdani and Menin are “playing to the audience of frustrated and unhappy workers” who are their constituents, Wylde said. “They’ve got to be equally clear in messaging to employers about their support and what they plan to do to encourage them to invest in New York City.”
Mamdani has said he wants state legislators to raise the maximum corporate tax rate from 7.25% to 11.5% to fund his affordability agenda.
Mitchell Moss, an urban policy professor at NYU who worked in the Bloomberg administration, described the latest rhetoric from Mamdani and Menin as a more “confrontational style” akin to Washington D.C. lawmakers.
“If you can afford a ticket to Yankee Stadium, you can afford the f—ing hot dog,” Moss said about Khan’s proposal. He added: “Some people enjoy confrontational politics. But they aren’t genuinely able to go to battle.”
New York City, he argued, is “a much more complicated ecosystem,” where businesses range from taxi drivers and food vendors to big banks and real estate giants. He warned that litigation can be costly and take time to resolve.
Just look at Starbucks, where Mamdani joined workers along with Sen. Bernie Sanders. The city celebrated a nearly $35 million settlement with Starbucks over violations of a law that guarantees workers’ reliable schedules. The deal was reached three years after the city began an investigation prompted by worker complaints about the coffee chain.
“Today’s victory serves as a message to corporations: NYC will protect workers and hold violators accountable,” Menin, who last year called on the city to take aggressive action against Starbucks, wrote on social media.
Starbucks on Monday called the city’s laws “notoriously challenging for businesses to navigate.”
For Mamdani, the battle with Starbucks continues. He’s urging New Yorkers to boycott the coffee stores until the union’s strike over stalled labor negotiations is over.
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Politics
Zohran Mamdani
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new york city
Elizabeth Kim
Elizabeth Kim is a reporter on the People and Power desk who covers mayoral power. She previously covered the pandemic, housing, redevelopment and public spaces. A native of Queens, she speaks fluent Mandarin. Got a tip? Email [email protected]
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