New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat and proud outspoken socialist, stated on April 15, 2026, that the notion people are fleeing from the city in a mass exodus is nothing more than a figment of folks’ imagination. The reason the idea has been spreading in the first place is due to a large number of affluent residents leaving the city because of high taxes.
Many of these wealthy people are leaving the Big Apple for Florida, a state with significantly lower taxes. This was a big story during the run-up to the 2025 mayoral election. On the campaign trail, Mamdani made call after call for major tax increases to secure funding for a bunch of social welfare programs. Reports of a mass exodus of rich residents exploded in the media as the chances of Mamdani securing a victory became more likely.
However, during a Tax Day event on April 15, while speaking in front of a “Tax the Rich” banner, the mayor said that no such exodus was taking place, calling it “imaginary” and attempting to make the case that the opposite was happening, that those with healthy bank accounts were actually moving into the city instead of away from it.
“So for all of the discussion of the imagined exodus that would take place were we to tax the wealthiest New Yorkers by the appropriate amount — I say imagined because before I was a mayor I was a state legislator and I was part of an effort to increase taxes on millionaires at that time — we were told the same thing then — and what we find now is that we have more millionaires today than we did at that time even after having passed that tax,” Mamdani stated during his speech, according to the Daily Caller.
“And so for all of that conversation about this imagined exodus, we have to reckon with the very real exodus that we are seeing in the city, an exodus of working class people, an exodus of those who cannot afford to live here,” Mamdani told those attending the event. Yet that seems to fly in the face of a statement, or more accurately, a plea, made by Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul.
On March 11, 2026, Hochul practically begged wealthy Americans to come back to New York from Florida in order to help fund the state’s “generous social programs,” pointing out that a large portion of the state’s tax base had packed up and moved to Palm Beach. “For many who work here who now find their residence in Jersey City or in Connecticut or in Pennsylvania, anywhere else where their dollar can go a little bit further,” Mamdani remarked.
“And we’ve seen just in a snapshot from 2000 to 2020, the city lost 200,000 of its black residents,” the mayor added. After Mamdani won the Democratic Party primary in June 2025, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis joked that his leftist agenda could lead to mass migration from New York City, which could cause a major boom in Florida’s real estate market.
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“If this socialist mayor candidate wins – you’re gonna see real estate value skyrocket even more in Palm Beach, because people are gonna get out of that city,” DeSantis went on to say. “As bad as DeBlasio was, this guy is like going to be way, way, worse.” A Siena College poll from 2023 indicated that 27% of New York residents planned to leave the state within five years, with 31% saying they planned to do so upon retiring.
Featured Image: screenshot from embedded video