Ron DeSantis brands NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani realtor of the year for driving taxpayers to Florida

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.– Florida Gov.

Ron DeSantis mockingly branded Zohran Mamdani one of his “realtors of the year” – predicting that New York City’s socialist mayor will continue to drive taxpayers out of New York City and down to the Sunshine State.DeSantis unleashed the scathing quips in a fireside chat on Monday at the 2026 Milken Institute Global Conference here.In a wide-ranging interview, the former 2024 GOP presidential candidate blasted soaring taxes and runaway spending in big cities like New York, Chicago and California.“I don’t think it’s good that, like, one guy gets elected mayor and then people feel like they have to flee the city,” DeSantis told me, referring to Mamdani.

“We’d have people come down to Florida all the time, and they responded to all those problems, not by correcting the problems, but electing somebody who was exacerbating the problems.”DeSantis took aim at Mamdani over his now-infamous social media post last month in which he stood outside billionaire Ken Griffin’s penthouse on 220 Central Park South to promote Gov.Kathy Hochul’s controversial pied-a-terre tax on houses owned by non-residents worth more than $5 million.“We know the policies that that mayor ran on are not going to be successful,” DeSantis told me, citing the fact that Griffin’s giant hedge fund Citadel relocated to Miami from Chicago in 2022 – and has significantly boosted the local economy since.“(Griffin) has brought jobs, business, all that tax base” to Florida, DeSantis said.

“He has given probably hundreds of millions of dollars philanthropically to organizations in Florida, which, if he wasn’t a Florida resident, would probably give them somewhere else.”DeSantis added Mamdani’s anti-Griffin video “takes it to another level – when you show up in front of somebody’s house and target them personally, that’s taking it to a point where, you know, is it reasonable to then think maybe they don’t want me around...