If Zohran Mamdani weaponizes public funds to push his hateful agenda, the poor and minorities will suffer most

Over the next four years, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will not only lead the world’s financial capital, but he’ll also have control over public funds topping $1 trillion.

This includes roughly $500 billion in operating budgets, $200 billion in capital projects and, at least in part, $300 billion in pension assets.

That’s an extraordinary amount of power in the hands of one official.

The question is: Will he weaponize those funds to carry out his anti-Zionist agenda, even if at great expense to the public?

Indeed, Mamdani could turn municipal governance into a weapon of ideology in an extraordinary, unprecedented way.

Take his support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. As mayor, he’ll have the authority to translate that backing into policy, through contracts, investments and city partnerships.

During college, Mamdani founded a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine and later represented the Democratic Socialists of America in the Assembly, two groups that openly back BDS.

Throughout his campaign, he publicly embraced BDS, which calls for unrelenting economic pressure on Israel.

In May 2025, he defended his support for BDS at a UJA-Federation forum and later said he favored ending the city’s investments in Israel Bonds.

Set aside the immoral double standard in singling out the world’s only Jewish state while not boycotting countries that enforce harsh legal, social and institutionalized discrimination against the LGBT+ community or China for its treatment of Muslim Uyghurs; the potential financial harm this policy would inflict on the city should concern all New Yorkers.

His most consequential lever is the city’s $300 billion pension system: The mayor appoints trustees across each of the five pension boards.

Mamdani or his appointees could pressure the boards to divest from companies linked to Israel, including major firms like Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Lockheed Martin, all long targeted by BDS activists.

The economic consequences of such divestment could be catastrophic for taxpayers and retirees alike.

A 2024 Jlens-ADL analysis of university endowment portfolios found that excluding BDS-targeted companies shrunk returns by 1.8 percentage points a year.

If we applied this same return gap to the pension assets, it would translate into an estimated $32 billion in lost value over a decade — funds the city would ultimately have to replace through higher taxpayer contributions.

This would hit the pocketbook of every single New Yorker, including working folks, immigrants, minorities and other groups Mamdani promises to support.

Procurement represents another powerful lever. Many of the companies targeted by the BDS movement — Dell, Microsoft, Motorola and others — are deeply embedded in the infrastructure that keeps New York running.

The city holds contracts worth about $400 million with Dell, $300 million with Motorola and $100 million with Microsoft — covering everything from laptops in the schools to police and emergency communications.

Walking away from those partnerships under the banner of “human rights” might make for good headlines but would dramatically punish our nation’s largest city: disrupting services, inflating costs and compromising public safety.

Again, the economically mobile could cope with such irritations, but the pain would be felt by lower-income families and those most dependent on municipal services.

Beyond pensions and procurement lies the city’s budget itself, the engine of New York’s daily life.

New York City’s $116 billion expense budget already faces projected gaps of $5 billion to $6 billion annually. 

Personal and business income taxes contribute more than $30 billion of revenue to the budget.

If a Mamdani administration signaled that ideology — not prudent financial considerations — would now drive New York, companies may well flee or restrict investment.

The resulting decline in tax receipts would further deepen the deficit.

That’s before even considering yet another risk: retaliation from Albany or Washington.

New York’s budget depends $7.5 billion in federal aid and nearly $20 billion from the state. If City Hall were to politicize the use of federal and state grants, those funds could be at risk.

Even a modest reduction could strain an already fragile budget, forcing either cuts in expenditures or increased taxes.

True, some checks and balances may hold off some of these actions. But no one should underestimate the enormous power of the mayoralty.

Once the mayor flings open the window on cutting ties to Israel, far worse could be in store.

The irony is the people Mamdani claims to champion — working families, immigrants, vulnerable communities — would be the ones most hurt by these fundamentally doctrinaire policies.

Rising borrowing costs would squeeze funding for social programs. Lower pension returns would jeopardize retirement security.

Lost business confidence would mean fewer jobs and less investment in neighborhoods that need them most.

Make no mistake: Ideology disguised as policy might bankrupt a city as fast as any fiscal crisis.

Jonathan Greenblatt is CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League. Ari Hoffnung, managing director of JLens and ADL’s senior adviser on corporate advocacy, has served as the city’s deputy comptroller.