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Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo reminded business leaders on Wednesday that socialism already failed New York City when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and progressive activists rallied against Amazon’s plan to build a headquarters in Queens.
During Crain’s New York Business mayoral forum Wednesday morning, less than one month away from Election Day, Cuomo railed against the threat that Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani’s policies pose to the city’s economy.
“We are not socialists,” Cuomo said. “We all saw the foreshadowing of the danger of this philosophy when we lost the Amazon project in Queens and 50,000 jobs due to socialist opposition.”
Cuomo told business leaders New York City is at a crossroads — it will either “decline dramatically” under Mamdani or “pivot and actually see a rebirth.”
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“My opponent’s proposal to provide free everything funded by raising taxes is pure ideological fantasy,” Cuomo said during his opening remarks.
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And Cuomo is pointing to one consequential business flop as proof that socialism has no place in the capitalist capital.
“We are a financial and commercial capital. We are a regulated capitalist economy,” Cuomo said, clearly criticizing Mamdani’s self-identified “Democratic socialist” policies and distaste for capitalism.
During his tenure as governor, Cuomo courted Amazon to build its second headquarters in New York, personally urging founder and CEO Jeff Bezos to choose Long Island City and offering billions in state and city incentives, along with infrastructure and workforce commitments to seal the deal.
But the deal was met with mounting backlash from community activists and progressive lawmakers, such as Ocasio-Cortez, who rejected the estimated $2.5 billion in incentives for Amazon.
“Now what I DON’T want is for our public funds to be funding freebie helipads for Amazon+robber baron billionaires,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in 2018, “all while NYCHA and public schools go underfunded & mom+pops get nowhere near that kind of a break.”
In 2019, Amazon announced they had decided that “after much thought and deliberation” not to move forward with their plan to build headquarters in Long Island City in Queens.
“A number of state and local politicians have made it clear that they oppose our presence and will not work with us to build the type of relationships that are required to go forward with the project we and many others envisioned in Long Island City,” Amazon shared in a statement.
Alfredo Ortiz, CEO of Job Creators Network, told Fox News at the time that Ocasio-Cortez’s “reckless scuttling of the Amazon deal cannot be overstated.”
“Not only did AOC cost New York 25,000 good-paying jobs, she sent a message to job creators everywhere that they were no longer welcome in her city,” he said.
Amazon had anticipated creating at least 25,000 jobs in Long Island City, with the governor’s office projecting the potential growth to 40,000 jobs over 15 years.
During Mamdani’s remarks at the business forum on Wednesday, the socialist candidate quoted Bezos, whom he described as “a man whose tax burden I would love to significantly raise.”
“Jeff once said — not to me personally, but in public — ‘You have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.’ And make no mistake, my friends: when I am mayor, this city is going to innovate,” Mamdani told the room of New York City business leaders.
But Mamdani’s plans to raise taxes on corporations and the top 1% of New Yorkers to pay for ambitious campaign promises, like free buses, free childcare and city-run grocery stores, have triggered skepticism among the business community.
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Cuomo, in particular, has seized on that skepticism in the race for Gracie Mansion, telling business leaders on Wednesday that “now is the moment for New York City to regain the crown as the greatest city on the globe.”
Mamdani and Ocasio-Cortez did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.
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