After decades of running Gristedes Supermarkets, the iconic Manhattan-based grocery chain, billionaire John Catsimatidis says one thing could cause him to throw in the towel: if 33-year-old socialist Zohran Mamdani becomes the next mayor of New York City.
“We may consider closing our supermarkets and selling the business,” the 76-year-old entrepreneur told me. “We have other businesses. Thank God, we have other businesses.”
He went a step further, saying he might even move Red Apple Group, his conglomerate with assets in real estate, energy, and other industries, across the river.
“There’s the possibility we’d move our corporate offices to New Jersey. Why not?” he said. “Then you’d have four years of peace.”
The city’s business class isn’t waiting to see what a Mamdani administration might look like—they’re already gaming out exit plans. In interviews with The Free Press, several billionaires said they would curtail their time in the five boroughs, shift their investments elsewhere, or, like Catsimatidis, consider pulling up stakes entirely.
Their fear isn’t just higher taxes or stricter regulations—it’s that a democratic socialist with a history of railing against Wall Street could bring an adversarial ethos into City Hall, targeting the very class that powers the city’s economy.