Democratic insiders and those who have second homes in Manhattan were rolling their eyes this week when an invite went out for a New York fundraiser for Gov. Kathy Hochul… at the Dakota.
Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani are behind the city’s controversial pied-à-terre tax, that taxes luxury second homes — or co-ops worth more than $1 million and houses over $5 million.
Scoffed a liberal insider: “Gov Hochul is the architect of [NYC’s] pied-a-terre tax, and she’s having a fundraiser, of all places, at the Dakota. The irony! Only Democrats would have the pied-à-terre tax and then have a fundraiser at a building where everybody has second or third homes.”
The fundraiser is at the $10.8 million spread of corrugated cardboard mogul and Democratic donor Dennis Mehiel and his wife, Karen.
They bought the apartment in 2022 after the Dakota board had previously rejected them decades ago.
(They sold a 10,350-square-foot duplex for $23.9 million when they moved into the historic Central Park West address that’s been home to John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Leonard Bernstein, Lauren Bacall, Judy Garland and many more.)
Hochul and Mandani claimed the pied-a-terre tax would generate $500 million-plus in revenue. But thousands of NYC homeowners have already appealed and won their cases to get out of paying, while exemption applications hit 10,000 earlier this month, with a whopping 5,700 approved, The Post reported.
Either way, Hochul’s deep-pocketed backers have included real estate moguls like Jed Walentas, Douglas Durst, members of the LeFrak Organization, Larry Silverstein and many more.