A new ad stoking fears around Zohran Mamdani that asks New Yorkers if they’re “ready to flee” for Ohio is part of a long history of incentivizing the wealthy to relocate.
A month after mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani swept the city’s Democratic Primary, some New Yorkers noticed a different type of political ad making the rounds. A digital billboard in Times Square featured two images across a split screen: on the left, a photo of Mamdani reads “Ready to Flee NYC?” On the opposite, a photo of biotech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, who is running for governor of Ohio, is headlined with “Move to Ohio!” The ad pins Mamdani as a “radical socialist,” as he’s promised to make the city affordable using an additional two-percent tax to the wealthiest New Yorkers. News outlets like CNBC have speculated that those millionaires may flee the city, and now, Ramaswamy wants them to know that Ohio might be the place to go.
Beyond the bewilderment and ire the billboard has caused, it also highlights how city and state governments have, historically, gone to the mat to attract specific demographics as part of an economic development strategy. The appeal to the wealthy, says Daniel Wortel-London, a professor of history at Bard College, is part of a much longer trajectory of how cities incentivize individuals to relocate; such a strategy has been part of a “trickle-down” economics theory that promises civic transformation like improved social and infrastructure services, and has existed since the Gilded Age. But increasingly cities and states are turning toward a different demographic—highly mobile middle and working classes—to draw new residents (and tax revenue) to regions that have seen stagnant growth.
Though the billboard might be more of a scare tactic, targeting the economic elite represents a turn from how we might typically imagine economic development schemes like providing tax breaks and other financial incentives that drive corporations to relocate—a strategy that Wortel-London says didn’t begin until the 20th century. His forthcoming book, The Menace of Prosperity: New York City and the Struggle for Economic Development, 1865–1981, questions the assumption made by policymakers that attracting ultrawealthy individuals and corporations is inherently good for a city’s overall well-being.
“From the 19th century to the 1930s, New York’s basic economic development strategy was promoting real estate growth through things like new transit lines and low taxes on land, and there was not a lot of fine grain attention to the kinds of industries or individuals the city should be attracting. And by the Great Depression, it was seen that real estate alone was not going to save the city,” he explains. The postwar period brought large-scale urban renewal as cities began using “revitalization” as a tool to attract large corporate enterprises. Some states took to marketing their low union membership rates to poach industries in the northeast where unions were stronger. “Attracting an office and billionaires…they’re basically often done together,” Wortel-London says.
The obsession with cultivating an elite class came to a head under Mayor Bloomberg, whom Wortel-London says employed “a whole suite” of practices meant to “[make] the city desirable for people in the finance, insurance, and real estate sector…basically by promoting those kind of jobs and by making the city more desirable in terms of amenities for the people who work there.”
“When Bloomberg talk[ed] about New York as a luxury product, that is definitely sending a certain message on who the city is for,” he says.
It’s unsurprising that politicians might be frothing at the mouth as rumors of a “wealth exodus” may be coming to New York City, but Ramaswamy’s $50 million Time Square ad doesn’t necessarily reflect how some states and cities have begun to approach recruiting new residents—Ohio included. Last year, Jobs Ohio, the state’s private economic development engine, launched a $20 million campaign targeted at cities like Chicago, Seattle, Austin, and Washington, D.C. Unaffiliated with Ramaswamy, the streaming ads called “Top Ten Reasons” to move to Ohio, market job prospects, romance, and recreation, with nods to owning a home with its own backyard. There are ads specifically for engineers, scientists, and technicians. “Have it all in the heart of it all!” says a cheery voice.
They’re cheesy in that Midwest-earnest type of way, but part of Ohio’s plan to attract new skilled workers to central Ohio. A representative from Jobs Ohio told NBC4 Columbus that the state will require “somewhere in the vicinity of” half a million STEM workers over the next decade. In the grander history of economic development, marketing affordability to workers is novel. Other programs that target those who still benefit from the pandemic’s remote work policies have also sprouted; interestingly, they aren’t relying purely on advertising, but instead are providing cash incentives to move.
The site makemymove.com features dozens of programs launched by cities like Bloomington, Indiana, Holland, Michigan, and Paducah, Kentucky, that reimburse for moving costs, payroll tax waivers, and more, many on an application basis. Because these programs often target remote workers, they also provide access to coworking spaces or comped costs for internet access. As the site’s COO and cofounder Evan Hock told CNBC in June, applicants are, “moving from places like California, New York, Texas, and Florida to places that maybe have a better quality of life” and “looking for affordability and community connection.”
The Tulsa Remote program in Oklahoma provides $10,000 incentives for remote workers to relocate. Funded primarily by the George Kaiser Family Foundation, the stipend can help pay rent for an entire a year (rent in Tulsa hovers around $1,300, per Zillow) or act as a reimbursement for buying (the average home costs $215,000). But importantly, the program also provides participants with volunteer opportunities, connections to civic organizations, and networking. A 2022 Brookings study of Tulsa Remote found the program to be highly effective: those who were relocated as part of the program have “a higher chance of staying in their new communities in the mid-to-long-term; have higher prosocial engagement in the community, and have higher real income growth without a (perceived) drop in productivity.”
“It’s beneficial in that they are focusing their attraction and retainment around not just the upper one percent, but around a broader swath of people, and they’re basically doing for skilled or middle class workers what a lot of cities were normally reserving for basically the top one percent where they’re trying to subsidize them or reward them by coming to a city,” says Wortel-London. “I think it’s also useful because it’s saying that the way of growing a city is by building out its middle class and not just hoping that attracting a small elite will benefit the rest of the city.”
Top left photo by Jon Cherry and right by Michael M. Santiago, both via Getty Images.
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