New York State Legislator and Assembly Ways and Means Committee member Ed Ra wonders if Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s tax plans could become a reality.
Some of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s socialist policy goals may now be within reach as political pressure mounts on Gov. Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers to help her deliver on her promises, an insider told FOX Business.
Although Mamdani’s sudden rise to power was driven by big promises of lowering the cost of living through city grocery stores, universal child care, free buses, and more, many expressed doubts about his ability to convince Albany State leaders to raise taxes to achieve his goals.
However, according to New York State Assemblyman Ed Ra, the ranking member of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee responsible for tax policy, the conditions may be ripe for Mamdani to realize his socialist utopia. The consequences, Ra said, will be catastrophic not only for the city’s residents but for New Yorkers across the state.
“It’s no secret that we’ve had an out-migration problem in New York state over the years,” Ra said. “The fact is that the top 1 percent already pays 41 percent of taxes in the state. And the combined city and state top rate is already 14.776 percent. So if we continue to lose these types of taxpayers, it’s going to have a huge impact. Not only on the tax base of the city itself, but on the state as a whole.”
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Gov. Kathy Hochul, D-N.Y., celebrates with New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, left, during a campaign rally at Forest Hills Stadium October 26, 2025 in the Queens borough of New York. (Photo by Andres Kudacki/Getty Images / Getty Images)
Ra said the heckling Hochul faced from the crowd at the “New York is Not for Sale” rally in Queens shortly before the election was a good illustration of the pressure she faces from her left to endorse Mamdani’s plan to create a 2 percent income tax on anyone earning more than $1 million and raise the state’s top corporate tax rate to 11.5 percent.
After the crowd repeatedly drowned Hochul in chants of “taxing the rich,” Mamdani finally had to come to his rescue, shaking his hand and escorting him off stage.
Ra said Hochul faced similar pressure in Albany as she did in Queens.
“There is support within the Legislature and that part of the Democratic Party is certainly going to put pressure on the governor on this issue, which I think we saw pretty strongly at this rally about a week after Election Day,” he said.
“There are already people talking about gubernatorial primaries, obviously, including his sitting lieutenant governor, [Antonio Delgado]which is already there, I think, to support these types of policies,” Ra explained.
“As there has been a rise in more progressive democratic socialist policies, that certainly causes members of the Legislature to not want to be the next one to be voted out in a primary. So they become more supportive of those types of policies, just as we would expect the governor to do if he’s worried about a primary challenger.”
He noted that although she had previously expressed opposition to raising taxes, Hochul may have already given herself a way out of that commitment by saying she wouldn’t approve income tax increases, which, he said, “doesn’t mean she might not opt for some type of business tax increase or other types of consumption taxes.”
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New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and Governor Kathy Hochul hold hands on stage as they attend a “New York is Not for Sale” rally at Forest Hills Stadium in the Queens borough of New York on October 26, 2025. (Reuters/Eduardo Munoz / Reuters)
Ra said several business tax rates in the state are set to expire soon, giving the Mamdani camp an additional opportunity to push for increases. Each of these tax increases, he said, will only further fuel the exodus of businesses out of New York.
“The state’s tax structure depends a lot on Wall Street, certainly on bonuses and those kinds of things. So if we continue to lose higher income individuals, it will impact the entire state,” he explained.
“We talk a lot about free buses, we talk about supermarkets, all that kind of stuff, ultimately that term should be funded by taxpayers,” he said.
“Somebody’s paying for them, right? So whether it’s income tax increases, or other types of taxes that this administration is putting in place across Albany, I think one way or another it’s going to have an impact on the costs for people.”
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Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, during a hearing of the House Education and the Workforce Committee in Washington, DC, U.S., Tuesday, December 5, 2023. (Haiyun Jiang/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
That being said, Ra said he thinks the conditions could be right for another unthinkable in New York, a Republican governor. After months of intense speculation, Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., has officially launched a bid for governor of New York as a Republican.
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Although New York is widely considered a deep blue bastion, Ra said the backlash from the Mamdani moment could give rise to “a real opportunity to elect a Republican governor.”
“People see that Albany has overspent, overtaxed and been mismanaged for a very long time under total Democratic control,” he said. “People are ready to change that and hopefully change the direction of New York State. So I think the circumstances are really good for a Republican to take the governor’s mansion next year.”
