Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. With us now, former Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, who has just made a surprising, to many people, transition to a job in New York just after he ran as a progressive for governor of New Jersey last year. He is now the top dog for the group that pushes the interests of the most powerful corporations in New York City and is working hard against parts of Mayor Mamdani's agenda already.

For example, he's already called Mamdani's corporate tax hike proposal suicide for the city. New York Magazine had a story called New York's CEOs Are Gearing Up for a Battle With Mamdani about Fulop taking the reins and what the members want. We'll hear some of his policy positions and arguments for them, and also ask, has Steve Fulop sold out to the oligarchy? The job is president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City.

Now, the Partnership's website says it represents "more than 300 preeminent corporate, investment, and entrepreneurial firms." They span the alphabet from American Express to Coca-Cola to DoorDash to Live Nation to the New York Stock Exchange itself to Paramount Skydance to also a few that might surprise you, like the WNBA and The New York Times. Steve Fulop, thanks for coming on in this new role. Welcome back to WNYC.

Steve Fulop: Brian, thanks for having me. I love that introduction.

Brian Lehrer: Well, let me go right to that question of who you are that you could run to the left of Mikey Sherrill in the primary, but now take this job advocating for many of the most powerful corporations in the world, largely in battle mode with Mayor Mamdani to a meaningful degree, according to New York Magazine. Just for a little more background for our listeners in New York who may not have followed the New Jersey race as an example, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee associated with Elizabeth Warren endorsed you or Ras Baraka and said not Mikey Sherrill.

That's one prominent example. Now, the progressive view might be that you've signed on to represent the oligarchy. For people who don't get the transition, who are saying, "Steve Fulop, wait, what?" how should anyone understand you in relation to this leap?

Steve Fulop: Let me say a couple of things to that, if I may.

Brian Lehrer: Of course.

Steve Fulop: Let me start by saying that the thing that is most interesting to me is that there's 800,000 employees that this group represents, and many of the things they care about are consistent with everyday New Yorkers. I don't view it as adverse or at war or looking for conflict with Mayor Mamdani. We actually have a pretty good relationship. We're looking for opportunities to overlap, and my job is making sure that New York City stays competitive.

With regards to your comment on running to the left of Mikey in New Jersey, for those that are familiar with it, sometimes it gets conflated the anti-establishment with progressives. I wasn't the most progressive, furthest-left candidate, but the biggest differences were establishment versus anti-establishment. Finally, I would just tell you, for 20 years on the City Council and as mayor in Jersey City, I ran as a nonpartisan election. We didn't have Republicans or Democrats. Republicans supported me, Independents supported me, and Democrats supported me. I view myself as a compassionate, thoughtful, problem-solving Democrat.

Brian Lehrer: You were quoted in November on the corporate tax hike proposal from Mamdani that it would be "absolute suicide for New York City and an absolute dream for New Jersey." "Suicide" is a strong word. If you want people to believe that you're actually concerned about most New Yorkers and those 800,000 employees, like you just said, and you're not just playing hardball for your richest of the rich constituency, make your case.

Steve Fulop: Yes. Let me start by saying that the things that the Partnership advocates for are not only taxes. People think of it in that context, but I'll point out, there's 800,000 employees. They have a venture fund that seeds early-stage New York startup companies, creating thousands of jobs. We have an accelerator that overlaps with technology between the private sector and the public sector, creating thousands of jobs.

We seed and fund early-stage childhood centers, childcare centers, infrastructure. We're part of the intersection of the public and private sector in many ways that people don't even realize. The tax conversation is important, and it's nuanced. I just want to take you back to the fact that Mayor Mamdani ran as a candidate. He said, "These are my objectives to get accomplished, and it doesn't matter how we fund them, as long as we get them accomplished."

About eight days after he took office, he stood with Governor Hochul and said, "I'm very proud that we're going to be able to get the things accomplished that I find most important at this moment, particularly childcare." Subsequent to that, a couple of weeks later, he said, "We need to have a tax increase," and there wasn't a lot of clarity on why we need to have a tax increase.

There wasn't a lot of clarity of what we need to fund. He just said, there's a huge budget gap, which is standard practice for new mayors to blame their old mayors. The talking point that he had, Brian, was that we need to move New York tax rates on the corporate side to replicate New Jersey. Coincidentally, I have familiarity with both of those. Currently, when you layer on all of the different taxes for corporations in New York, you are at 17%, which is marginally more than New Jersey already.

If you replicate the tax rate for New Jersey, you would move New York City to 22%, versus New Jersey staying at 11%. All I said was that at some point, you hit a tripwire, and people do make a decision to leave. If your taxes are 100% higher, and you could have them a mile away, people are going to make that decision. It's not overnight, but some people will make that decision, and it will be bad for New York.

Brian Lehrer: This weekend, as a follow-up, as I was asking myself, Steve Fulop is doing what? Wait, what?" I looked at your Democratic primary for governor campaign website, which is still up. You had a section called Affordability, and two of the topics within that were what you called a corruption tax and income tax. On income tax, you wrote, "Federal aid to New Jersey is likely to continue to decline under the Trump administration, bringing the state to a fiscal cliff.

"Meanwhile, the 2017 federal tax law cuts taxes for the wealthiest individuals and corporations to address the issues of income disparity, tax fairness, and fiscal responsibility. As governor, Fulop would revise the state income tax to add brackets for higher-income residents, including new rates on earners over $2 million, $5 million, and $10 million in income. These new tax brackets will provide much-needed revenue for public investments." From your campaign website sounds like just the opposite of what you're representing for your high-income members now in New York. Why not?

Steve Fulop: Okay, well, first of all, I would point on the fact that what I outlined there was revenue gaps in New Jersey and some ways that you could potentially solve it. I think the starting point is, where are the gaps in New York, and the proposed solutions? The proposed solutions, as I said today, are to be 100% higher than new Jersey. I'll go back to the fact that for 20 years on the City Council and as the Mayor, where I've been on taxes has been remarkably consistent.

For 8 of the 12 years, as I was the Mayor in Jersey City, we didn't raise taxes. We were very, very militant about the fact that making New Jersey, and particularly Jersey City, is competitive. I would say none of that stuff has changed. One other point, again, that people conflate the Partnership with just speaking about the CEOs and saying that they're opposed to taxes, which isn't true. There's 800,000 employees, number one. Most of what they do is not actually about taxes.

There's been tax increases in the history of New York City that have been necessary, and the Partnership has actually supported. I would go back to the fact and say if you have a justifiable reason and you have a conversation and it doesn't feel like it's going into some abyss and you're not nebulous on details, it's a conversation to have. The Partnership was the first amongst organizations to support the congestion pricing.

You wouldn't think they would, but they did. Mayor Bloomberg solicited them for help on a tax increase. The Partnership was supportive of that, actually. I don't think it's fair to characterize it that way. It's how things are positioned at what moment in time is the right way to do it, and it's hard to compare New Jersey to New York in that exact context, as you did.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take some questions for the new head of the Partnership for New York City. Maybe some of you know the name Kathy Wylde, who is the outgoing president and CEO. Now it's Steve Fulop, the former mayor of Jersey City, who's coming in. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Following up on what you just said about not raising taxes for most of your time as mayor of Jersey City, I also heard when you told Michael Hill in an interview on Morning Edition, "We had eight years of no tax increases. We prioritized making the city affordable by not having tax increases, and that was the main priority."

On calling no tax hikes your main priority for making Jersey City affordable, why wouldn't that just make it more affordable for the better-off people who pay a lot of taxes? Affordable for everyone else would be more affordable childcare, for example, which Mamdani says is his number one. Is that a disconnect on no tax hikes as the main key to affordability?

Steve Fulop: No, no, I'm not tracking why you think only wealthy people pay property taxes. I think actually property taxes has a disproportionate impact on more economically challenged people. Keeping taxes stable is actually very, very important to the affordability conversation. When you talk about the rent freeze here in New York. let's just put that into the context of New York City, I think that the position that we have conveyed would be if you are going to confront the affordability crisis with a rent freeze, you need to also confront the cost side, because New York City is amongst the most expensive places from the cost side, and property tax reform is at the core of that.

De Blasio and Adams, none of them wanted to engage in that. We've been saying, "Hey, the freeze conversation can happen, clearly, but we also need to have a conversation around property tax reform." Hopefully, Mayor Mamdani has the courage to do it. He said he has, but I guess we'll see how it goes over the next couple of months.

Brian Lehrer: Right, but that's a different question than just holding the line on taxes, because I think there is a lot of agreement that the property tax system is unfair to certain kinds of property owners and even renters, and too fair to others, but that's a different question than just saying no tax hikes leads to affordability, right? Why isn't this the same old?

Steve Fulop: No, no, no, no.

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead, you go.

Steve Fulop: No. Sorry, Brian. I believe that tax stability is very, very important to affordability. You got to also create more supply of housing so that rents don't increase. I think Jersey City did that better than anybody else in New Jersey. Data points to that. We had more job creation.

Brian Lehrer: Which, by the way, I'll tell our listeners. We will get to that, where you and the Mayor seem to be quite aligned, and he even used your record in Jersey City as mayor as a model for some of what he wants to do with housing in New York. Props on that from the Mayor, but go ahead, you can finish that answer.

Steve Fulop: Yes, what I was saying, Brian, is that it's all of it together, okay? The property tax conversation that we were having with Michael Hill was in a different context, obviously. It was about budgets and whatnot, but from my standpoint, yes, stability on taxes is important for people. It impacts renters, and it impacts homeowners. In a city like Jersey City, it's not fair to say it's only the wealthiest people. It's actually one of the most economically and socioeconomically diverse places in the entire country. We have everybody there, and that certainly impacts everybody. I'm actually proud of the fact that we kept them stable, because I think it's really important.

Brian Lehrer: On what I think is your main argument for not raising the taxes on corporations or highest earning individuals for New York City, that is that there would be an exodus. Corporate leaders have always predicted that, over all kinds of things from minimum wage laws to paid family leave, certainly to tax rate, and it hasn't happened. In fact, in the tech industry, and I know you say, I'm going to anticipate part of your answer, I think, which is that it's not so much about the companies that are here are going to pick up and walk out, but it's going to be hard to create new jobs because companies will look at New Jersey and other places and say, "Well, it's going to be better for us to locate there."

In fact, the tech industry, arguably the most important major business sector now in recent years, has surged jobs to New York City, as I know, making New York the number two tech jobs hub, second only to Silicon Valley itself, in the context of all these warnings about taxes in New York that already existed. Why should people believe all of a sudden jobs won't come here?

Steve Fulop: Okay, so two things on that, on the job creation front, and this is one of the things that I pointed out with regards to the proposals on the tax increases. From New York City's standpoint, last year, the job creation data was terrible. It replicated what you saw in 2009 and 2020, so two recession times. You had 4 months out of the 12 where you had net losses, and from the previous year to 2025, you were down 73% on private sector job creation.

There's a warning sign that's flashing already with regards to competitiveness. Now, you could say that could be AI, it could be tariffs, it could be change in administration, nobody knows, but there is a warning sign that's flashing on new job creation. That's number one. Number two is I don't think anybody realistically thinks that you raise taxes, and the next day everybody picks up and leaves, but there is a gradual hemorrhaging of jobs, which long-term impacts you.

Now, everybody has a different tripwire. Is it 10% more than your neighbor? Is it 20% more than your neighbor? I feel pretty comfortable that if you raise taxes to 100% more than your neighbor, according to the CBC, and that's nonpartisan, that people will make a decision to leave. Now, on the wealthiest people, Brian, I would say the following. If you take your 1,000, or 2,000, or 3,000 wealthiest people in New York City, what you classified as oligarchs, and you could say, "We don't care if those people leave," those people have a disproportionate impact on the budget.

They pay a massive amount. Now, you look at 3,000 people. They're all different race, religion, backgrounds. The one consistent thing is, they generally have multiple homes and options on where to go. You need 5 or 10 of them to leave. You don't need a thousand of them to leave to have a huge impact on the budget. There is a tripwire at some point. You don't know where that is, and I don't know where that is. My point is that when you get to what we're talking about there, more than likely you will hit it with a huge number of them.

Brian Lehrer: You also said to Michael Hill in the interview-- wait, I'm looking for this quote. What did I do with it? Well, I'll come back to that, and I'm going to take a listener question for you instead. Listener rights in a text, "Does the Partnership consider income inequality an issue beyond the well-paid employees they represent?"

Steve Fulop: Yes. Affordability, income inequality, direction that you're seeing both across the country and in the region all are major concerns for us, and I think they're concerns for anybody in New York. I think that's part of the reason why Mayor Mamdani got elected. I think he speaks to the fact that it's hard to find housing, and affordability is a real crisis. The short answer is yes, and we do our best to engage in issues around that as well.

Brian Lehrer: What would you do about that? Because you argue for economic growth, but the stats show that the growth for a long time, locally and nationally, has concentrated in the incomes of the top 20% or so, and everyone else is stagnating or declining. Wouldn't that suggest that you need to address distribution at least as aggressively as growth, which is not the talk that I think I hear you talking.

Steve Fulop: No, no. I think that job creation is a part of it. The biggest way to confront the affordability conversation is better jobs, which lead to better paychecks, okay? You're not talking about the top 1%; you're talking across the board. When places like-- Use what you said earlier, let's say the oligarchs, and we classify them, but if you took about their companies, let's say JP Morgan has more jobs for the first time in Texas than New York. Think about that.

Goldman Sachs hasn't created a net job in New York for whatever seven, eight years they say, right? Those things are indicators that you're not going to confront the affordability conversation if you're not creating more jobs for more people. I think you do need to grow this job sector. You also need to confront the housing crisis, which we touched on earlier. You need to confront the childcare conversation, which I think we're in alignment on, that that's a real problem.

I think that it's multifaceted, and I think that we want to be part of it. The conversation, when you did the intro, you referenced The New York Post or New York Magazine, saying that we're gearing up for war. I wouldn't classify that [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Pretty different New York Post and New York Magazine. It was New York Magazine.

Steve Fulop: Well, I think it was an editorial today in The Post. That's why I was saying that The Post also had something on the--

Brian Lehrer: I didn't see it.

Steve Fulop: Yes, they had something on that today, kind of a similar tone, and they referenced New York Magazine, but my take on it is that we're looking for overlap in opportunities and where to work together. I'm familiar with the challenges Mayor Mamdani has. I was a mayor at 36, 37 years old, in an equally complicated city or similarly complicated. I think we're not looking for a war; we're looking for opportunities to work together.

Brian Lehrer: How do you get to universal childcare without the tax increase?

Steve Fulop: Look, I think that the governor has said we're going to have a pilot program for this year. I think we're supportive of that. I think that there's a whole host of legislative changes to make it more permissible and easier for companies to open childcare centers, which you'll probably see the Partnership coming out with shortly. You should know that the overwhelming majority of partnership companies representing, again, hundreds of thousands of employees, do offer childcare to their term employees because it's something that we think is important. We want to be part of the conversation there. I think we have a lot to offer, and I think you'll see something coming out from us in the next week or so.

Brian Lehrer: On becoming more aggressive on your pushback to the progressive mayor and to progressives in general in New York City, as is the premise of The New York Magazine article, here's an example of the push. The political consultant Bradley Tusk, who worked for Mayor Bloomberg and others, wants you to get the Partnership involved in running candidates to the right of Mayor Mamdani for City Council and state legislature. Running candidates, are you interested in that?

Let me read for our listeners what Tusk wrote on a Substack. "The CEOs who comprise the Partnership board might hate the idea of engaging directly in lowly City Council or state senate primaries, but they're also not stupid. If you make the case to them that this has to happen for their views to become policy and law, most of them will get it." He writes, "There is currently no centrist organization in New York City that serves as a counterpart to the DSA or the Working Families Party. No organization to recruit or train candidates, build grassroots operations, build a bench." That's the quote. Is there any of that you disagree with?

Steve Fulop: I do. There's been zero conversations or zero appetite from anybody that I've spoken to, involved in the Partnership or the Partnership board, to support candidates or engage directly in electoral politics in that way. I think what they want to be more engaged in is better communication and activation for 800,000 employees. I think there's an opportunity there.

I think for most of the time, we speak a practical solution to any sort of problem, and we should be better communicating with those employees why we see certain things a certain way, and what the impact can be, and we don't do that right now. It's been a lot of more subtle diplomacy before between people that we know. I think part of my task is to organize that. I think over the next couple of years, you will see this base that we start with as being a significant advocacy arm, but I don't foresee it ever supporting candidates and saying, "We endorse Brian, and we don't like Steve."

Brian Lehrer: I'm not running, but do you accept the premise that your membership more or less wants you to be more aggressive when it comes to their agenda for city politics than your predecessor, Kathy Wylde, was?

Steve Fulop: Yes, for sure. There's no question about that, and I'll answer that directly. There's no question that they want to be more engaged, more aggressive, more vocal. I think that we have a lot of experience with a lot of these issues, and I think that we bring something to the table. When you talk about an issue of homeless encampments, we have a presence in Seattle and Portland, in LA and New York, and in Europe.

We have perspective on these things from experience that I think can be helpful. Childcare, the majority of our companies offer childcare. Taxes, we make decisions around this stuff. Yes, they want to be more engaged. I think that the starting point shouldn't be, "Just don't hurt us too bad." The conversation should be, "We are part of this ecosystem, and we want to see New York succeed, and we want to make sure that New York is competitive."

Brian Lehrer: Matt, in Jersey City, you're on WNYC with your former mayor, who has now become president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, which represents 300 major corporations to the city government of New York. Matt, hello.

Matt: Hey, Brian. Thanks for taking my call, and hey, Steve. I wanted to call to lift Steve up a little, but also express some disappointment. I think he's an incredible political operator. I think this is a great job for him. I was, by and large, super happy with his work in the city. I think he's always had ambitions. I think, unlike a lot of politicians, we saw with de Blasio, he was running for other offices while running the city, or not running it, some might argue.

I always felt like Steve, while he may have been looking to build for the future, was doing it by building a solid legacy. With all that said, we just got a report that there's a massive budget deficit that could account for about 30% of the budget. I will say I'm disappointed and not entirely surprised because of this ambition that maybe Steve left Jersey City holding the bag a little. I was wondering how he might reflect on that and how it hurts his legacy, and also how that might relate to how much we can trust him, within the interests of New York City.

Brian Lehrer: In the role. Matt, thank you very much. Full disclosure, Mayor Solomon might be a guest on tomorrow's show, so whatever you say might be starting a conversation, but go ahead.

Steve Fulop: It's totally fine. Okay. Let me start by saying, Matt, it's not true. Every new mayor blames their predecessor anywhere in the country. I think most listeners would acknowledge that's par for the course. I'm going to point out that the City Council, by law, in New Jersey has one responsibility and only one single responsibility. It's not constituent services; it's the budget.

James Solomon sat on the City Council for eight years himself. Now, I will also point out to you that he voted for nearly every single contract along the way and then would grandstand at the final budget, so that undermines the argument. I'll also point out to you that he has kept on his staff my business administrator, my head of economic development, my head of HR.

His City Council president ran with me for eight years. I think it undermines the credibility on that from a starting point. Also, I would tell you that the credit rating agencies, all of them, still rate us as highly, highly investable credit rating. I think when you think about it from a practical fact standpoint, it's all politics that he's [unintelligible 00:26:05]

Brian Lehrer: Jersey City is facing a deficit. New York City is facing a deficit, but back to that quote that you gave Michael Hill, "We had eight years of no tax increases. We prioritized making the city affordable by not having tax increases," but if there's a big budget deficit, and this might apply to New York, too, does that mean you undertaxed for Jersey City's needs?

Steve Fulop: No. No. First of all, I said that there isn't that big budget gap that Mayor Solomon says, okay? That's all politics. I just gave you some basic common-sense reasons on why that is. The reason we were able to keep taxes stable was because we had a revenue growth that eclipsed any expectation. The way that the municipality or a city has revenue growth in New Jersey, like Jersey City, is ratable growth from growing with new housing.

I think anybody can see what has happened in Jersey City because we've been unapologetically pro-growth YIMBY and maybe the standard bearer for that in the country. From my standpoint, that is what contributed to the tax stability. Again, look at the credit rating agencies, how they evaluate us today. Look at Mayor Solomon, his track record over eight years, and look at the fact who he's kept on his staff and leadership. If I was doing such a bad job, why would he keep all the leadership there in his leadership?

Brian Lehrer: On what you said earlier about how to get to universal childcare and including businesses providing childcare for their employees as a main building block, a listener writes, "The problem with relying on employer-based childcare is you lose it when you lose your job, and not all employers provide it. It also does not support the perspective that childcare is public infrastructure." Your response?

Steve Fulop: I think there is some validity to that conversation. My point on what we do is not saying that it's the absolute answer because across the 350 companies, a lot of them that offer childcare offer it in different ways. Some of it's a subsidy to lower income. Some of it's to all employees. Some of them have it on site. My point in sharing that was that we have knowledge and experience in this space that few others have, from a practical standpoint, from an experience standpoint, and we just want to be part of the conversation.

I think it's fair to say that the childcare issue is one that definitely impacts affordability for everybody, and we're happy that Governor Hochul is leaning into it, and Mayor Mamdani has brought that to the forefront. I think they deserve a lot of credit, and we want to be part of the solution.

Brian Lehrer: One more call, and this one's going to set up where I think you and the Mayor are actually very much aligned. Santiago in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with Steve Fulop. Hello, Santiago.

Santiago: Hi. In his campaign, Mayor Mamdani mentioned Jersey City as an example of building more housing and how he would want to follow that. Is there anything the Partnership or yourself are advocating for specifically that the Mayor could do on that, which could help add housing? Also, as an addition to that, would you advocate for some more look at regional housing growth, not just in the city specifically, but Westchester, Nassau, I know Jersey City, Newark, Hudson County, stuff of that sort? Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Steve?

Steve Fulop: I think that first of all, I was appreciative that he held up Jersey City and Tokyo as examples of housing growth that we can replicate here. One thing that we did exceptionally well in Jersey City was create certainty around what the environment would look like in each area of the city. We tried to eliminate the politics, and that certainty led to more investment. I think that the Mayor has done a very good job of articulating how he wants this to work and creating guardrails, at least on the onset.

Capital could make a decision whether they want to go or don't want to go. I think you need to continue to upzone a lot of the areas, particularly around transit, and you need to be willing to push out the NIMBYs from that conversation, even if at parts of that are for your political base. I think when we were growing the city in Jersey City, a lot of my initial political base that I got elected with left me because of some of the decisions I made, whether it was around abatements and incentives or rezoning.

I understood that to be a reality with regards to governing. Sometimes, the people that get you elected, the activist base is very, very good at getting you elected, but they're not very good at governing, and I think that that's a balance that he's going to have to experience over some time and learn where he feels comfortable, but in order for housing to grow, certainty is important, and you're never going to be able to placate everybody.

One other thing I would tell you is that in a perfect world, every housing project would be mixed-income and 20% to 30% of affordable housing, and would have different thresholds. Low-income and moderate-income would be 100% union, and they negotiate with the community, some community give-backs, and when you actually will put pencil to paper, or you have outside people come in and look at the finances of these projects, they are tremendously tight.

Without proper incentives, the math speaks to the fact that at some point, something has to give. You're never going to be able to accomplish all of those things. In Jersey City, we prioritized housing growth. That was the most important thing to me. People could criticize it, but I felt that more supply would level off rent. It's actually proven to be true, but I think he's going to have to make some choices because today he's looking for 100% affordable. He's looking for 100% union labor. He's looking for significant parts of affordable housing within those projects, community give-backs, and it's going to be hard to make those things pencil out without willingness to compromise.

Brian Lehrer: Steve Fulop, he was the Mayor of Jersey City. Now he's the president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City. Thanks for this. We look forward to continuing the conversation as the Mamdani years progress. Thanks a lot, Steve.

Steve Fulop: Thank you.

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