By: Jared Evan
Business leaders, after 8 years of Mayor de Blasio are getting heavily involved with NYC politics, according to a recent NY Times article.
In January, some 100,000 employees at major corporations across New York City got a message from their bosses: If they wanted a say in who runs the city after Mayor Bill de Blasio leaves office, they had best hop to it, the NY Times reported.
Partnership for New York City, a business-backed civic group that is urging its 320 members to send similar emails to all 700,000 of their employees based in New York City in the next couple of weeks.
According to their mission statement:
The Partnership for New York City is a nonprofit organization whose members are the city’s pre-eminent business leaders and employers of more than 1.5 million New Yorkers. We build bridges between the leaders of global industries and government, drawing on the resources and expertise of business to help solve public challenges, create jobs and strengthen neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs.
The Times reported: Kathryn Wylde, who runs the partnership, said that since rules prohibit many bankers and private equity managers from making local campaign contributions, “getting out the vote is the only way that the private sector can have a voice in public policy decisions.”
“This is all about broadening the primary voter base — remember 80 percent of Queens residents supported Amazon HQ, but the handful of zealots drove them out of town,” she said, referring to a poll commissioned by Amazon. “If more New Yorkers get to the polls, we will have a far more balanced political scene.”
All of this according to the NY Times is a reaction to 7 years of de Blasio’s poor handling of NYC. Far left radicals are not thrilled with the business world trying to influence the political scene.
“The partnership has never been shy about their political advocacy on behalf of the wealthiest New Yorkers — so any attempt to say this is innocent voter education is laughable,” said Monica Klein, a progressive political consultant.
David Solomon, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs wrote to his company’s 5200 employees : “This is a crucial time for the city: New Yorkers all want to see the vibrant community they call home thrive once again, and I know that many of our people feel passionately, as you did last November, about ensuring that your voice is heard as part of the democratic process”
