politics

Zohran’s massive success in connecting with NYers is especially melting the brains of the worst kinds of capitalists.

Hellgate:

I was expecting a crowd outside of the Gristedes on 40th Street and Second Avenue, because I had gotten an email telling me that John Catsimatidis, the tycoon who owns the chain, would be leading 100 supermarket and bodega employees in a "dramatic, worker-led press conference and protest rally" late Monday morning. Instead, I found a few news cameras pointed at Catsimatidis himself, who was checking his watch and promising that he'd be joined by United Bodegas of America spokesperson Fernando Mateo "any minute!" Catsimatidis held the conference in protest of Democratic candidate for mayor Zohran Mamdani's proposed pilot program for five City-run grocery stores. Behind him, five uniformed workers from the Midtown Gristedes lined up dutifully, but didn't say much.

"I've been in the supermarket business for 54 years," Catsimatidis said when he took the podium. He went on a real tear, on topics that ranged from helping run Bill Clinton's campaign in New York City to casting doubt on the validity of Mamdani's election. "It's not the same Democratic Party we know," he said. "The socialists have taken over the Democratic Party." Catsimatidis opined that, because the common-sense Democrats had too much common sense to come out and vote in the 102-degree heat last week, he's "not sure how much of an accurate vote it is." (More New Yorkers voted in the 2025 Democratic mayoral primary than in 2021.)