Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, called Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani on Wednesday morning, the latest example of a New York City business leader’s seeking to build a bridge with the next mayor.
Mr. Dimon told CNN in an interview that aired Wednesday evening that the two had not yet connected since the election on Tuesday. He said he was willing to keep the lines of communication open.
“If I find it productive, I’ll continue to do it,” he said.
Mr. Dimon, like many of the city’s business leaders, railed against Mr. Mamdani after his surprise win in the Democratic primary in June. In July, he took aim at Mr. Mamdani policies, which include free buses and a rent freeze on rent-stabilized apartments, calling them “the same ideological mush that means nothing in the real world.”
But as Mr. Mamdani continued to gain traction in polls, Mr. Dimon and other New York City business leaders saw the benefit of opening a line to him. The two later spoke on the phone as part of Mr. Mamdani’s efforts to court the city’s elite, many of whom were raising millions of dollars to try to defeat him.
A day after the election, Mr. Mamdani indicated that despite his willingness to build bridges with the city’s business leaders, those conversations had not yet modified his stances.
“My supporters and our movement are hungry for a politics of consistency — a politics that actually focuses on the needs of working people,” Mr. Mamdani told The New York Times on Wednesday in an interview in which he reiterated his call to raise taxes on the wealthy.
“I think that our tax system is an example of the many ways in which working people have been betrayed,” he said.
On CNN, Mr. Dimon indicated concerns about Mr. Mamdani’s inexperience and said he hoped the mayor-elect would grow into the job.
“I see a lot of people in big jobs — including political jobs — they grow into it. They’re learning,” Mr. Dimon said. “I’ve seen a lot of people, they kind of swell into the job. They get worse. It all becomes about them.”
Mr. Dimon said he hoped Mr. Mamdani was “the good one.”
Asked whether he and Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, could disagree over something as fundamental as capitalism, Mr. Dimon said many of the issues that Mr. Mamdani sought to address, like income inequality, were not a function of capitalism.
“Those things, in my opinion, are not Democrat, they’re not Republican, they’re not flaws of capitalism, not flaws of socialism,” Mr. Dimon said. “They are bad policy, badly executed. So anyone who wants to fix those things, I’m all in.”
Lauren Hirsch is a Times reporter who covers deals and dealmakers in Wall Street and Washington.
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