‘I’m over the moon’: New York’s small business owners rejoice as Mamdani cuts red tape | Zohran Mamdani

Red Scare? New York City’s democratic socialist mayor spent this week talking about bureaucracy.

On Tuesday, Zohran Mamdani, the politician at the center of a resurgent right-wing panic about socialists and so-called communists winning elections across America – sent A video of X putting a piece of paper with the word “RED TAPE” written on it into the shredder. Other pieces of paper were also shredded, with statements such as “heavy fees and fines” and “the permit you only need to serve ice cream.” The video, set to Wu Tang Clan’s song If Time Is Money, shows Mamdani, along with a handful of city officials and small business owners, throwing the resulting pieces of paper into the air like confetti.

“New York’s small business owners have said it over and over again: endless paperwork and the uncertainty of dealing with the City government have made it very difficult to get their stores up and running,” Mamdani wrote of X, announcing a package of 50 policy changes aimed at easing the financial burden of fines, fees and regulations on mom-and-pop stores across the five boroughs.

Mamdani at a press conference in the Bronx listed some onerous policies are getting the axe. Bodega owners will no longer need a separate license to sell the same products, such as fruit and flowers, inside and outside the store. Restaurants will no longer need a “redundant” frozen dessert permit to sell ice cream, in addition to the permit already required to sell food. Barber shops will no longer have to renew their licenses every year, but instead every three years. Street fair vendor permit fees will be reduced, restaurant inspections will be accelerated, and equipment registration fees will be eliminated for one year.

The related executive order signed by Mamdani on Monday would also expand the NYC Best program, assigning each of the city’s 180,000 small businesses — which employ an estimated 1 million people — a case worker to help their owners navigate the Big Apple’s sometimes byzantine bureaucracy.

“I’m very excited,” Dawn Kelly, owner of Nourish Cafe in Jamaica, Queens, told the Guardian about the new reforms. He started his business in 2016 with the help of Best. She said the caseworker “held my hand from idea to ribbon cutting,” and she’s excited that more businesses will now have the opportunity to use the program.

Kelly says his business has faced challenges over the past decade. For example, his staff would have to travel from remote parts of Queens to the Upper West Side to attend a three-day course to obtain the required food handling certification because the course was offered at only one location in the entire city. Kelly, a member of the city’s Small Business Advisory Commission, referred the issue to the mayor’s office. He says he got “emotional” watching Mamdani’s press conference this week. Julie Su, the deputy mayor for economic justice, called out Kelly by name when announcing that the city would now offer food processing courses at multiple locations.

“These people are serious. They really care about small businesses,” Kelly said, adding: “They get things done.”

Such reforms by the mayor, who took office in January, come at a challenging time for small businesses that often survive on razor-thin margins. recently to work According to a study conducted by the city, 3,540 businesses opened in the second quarter of 2025, while another 8,400 businesses of similar size closed; This represents the lowest decline in new job creation in five years.

The reforms also contrast with the hysterical caricature of Mamdani produced by Donald Trump, the Republican party and right-wing media. The right has repeatedly portrayed the mayor and a select group of his fellow Democratic Socialists of America as angry anti-business radicals. Bruce Blakeman, Republican candidate for governor of New York, appeared on Fox News in May. alleged If “you have a small business, a grocery store, a kiosk, Zohran Mamdani wants to buy your property.”

Fox News’ article under Blakeman read, “THE LEFT’S PLAN: CONTROL AND HANDLING.”

But the small business initiatives Mamdani announced this week amount to a sweeping program of deregulation, a term mostly associated with free-market conservatives. Some of Mamdani’s opponents could not help but praise him.

Libertarian magazine Reason writes, “Mamdani is clearly not a libertarian icon.” noted. “His recommended Pressure to open state-run grocery stores freeze He asked for the rent and called higher taxes among the city’s top contributors. Mamdani’s free market critics are quite right to oppose these policies. But if Mamdani’s critics are principled, they will welcome these pro-small business reforms.”

But Mamdani’s reforms are “entirely consistent with the democratic socialist approach to governance,” according to J. W. Mason, a professor of economics at John Jay College of the City University of New York.

“I think the truth is that when we talk about ‘pro-business government,’ historically we almost always mean government that caters to large, politically connected businesses,” Mason said. “Governments that call themselves pro-business are not serving the interests of these small businesses, especially those that New York depends on… In a way, what it means to be a socialist mayor, a socialist in office, is to make government work better.”

Vicki Forshee, co-owner of High Beam Coffee Roastery in Red Hook, Brooklyn, said she feels big businesses like Amazon, which operates multiple warehouses in the neighborhood, often operate with more tax breaks and less oversight or regulation than small businesses like hers that “have to climb a crazy mountain to survive.”

Selina Ullrich, the cafe’s other co-owner and a veteran of the city’s food industry, noted that health department inspections always feel like a toss-up, prioritizing punishing restaurants over simply ensuring food safety and violating vague regulations. “There are rules where no one can explain why the rule exists,” he said. “This is an impossible rule to follow, but we all agree we have to deal with it.”

He’s excited that the mayor is starting a process to change that: “It seems like he wants to accomplish things instead of just talking about accomplishing things.”

Economist Mason believes such an approach could bring political benefits to Mamdani and overcome efforts to paint him as some kind of extremist.

“I think the reality is that political professionals, people in the media, have a very strong view that politics is on some sort of left-right axis, and if you’re a socialist, you’re on the left… I don’t think most people see it that way. I think most people have a much more dispersed view of politics, and they like some things, they don’t like other things, and they don’t rearrange things into left-right the way we do in the elite. I think most people see Zohran as a person who comes in, makes promises, and keeps those promises to make people’s lives better.” They perceive him as someone who can point to concrete things he has done.

Kelly, owner of the Nourish Cafe in Jamaica, Queens, was a longtime admirer of the scandal-plagued former mayor Eric Adams, a centrist Democrat who left office. He now considers himself a fan of Mamdani.

When asked about Mamdani being a socialist, Kelly said, “I don’t really care about those labels these days.” “I like that he advocates for making sure no one feels marginalized, like we’re all in this together, we all win together.

“If that’s socialism,” he added, “I’m all for it!”