New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani‘s long-reiterated anti-billionaire and ‘Tax the Rich’ stance has often landed him in conflict with the ultra-rich, including US President Donald Trump and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. While the Big Apple leader has regularly earned a spot in headlines capturing his clash with billionaires, his own earnings have also come to the forefront quite a few times.
Mamdani rejects 18% pay raise
The Indian-origin mayor of NYC stood on business when he recently turned down a significant pay raise. His characteristic move came after the New York City Council passed legislation in an overwhelming 42-6 vote that approved pay increases for some of the US city’s politicians, including Mamdani.
Although the newly approved bill boosted councilmembers’ annual income from $164,500 to $175,500, the mayor’s salary scored a staggering 18% raise. Such official pay hikes are quite rare, with the last raise for NYC officials announced in 2016. Nonetheless, the 34-year-old mayor firmly confirmed at a news conference on Thursday, “I will not accept a pay raise.”
“I haven’t knocked on anyone’s door in New York City, and they’ve said that their concern is that the mayor makes too little,” he added.
Zohran Mamdani’s mayor salary revealed
As the mayor of New York City, he makes a salary of about $258,750 a year. Had he accepted the hike, his paycheck would’ve soared to around $305,800.
Official data compiled by Business Insider affirmed that Mamdani’s more than $258,000 earnings as a mayor still rank above what all 50 US governors make. For reference, the highest-paid governor in the United States is Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, whose salary surged from $245,760 in 2025 to $253,870 this year owing to a 3.3% cost-of-living increase, according to the Pennsylvania Office of the Budget.
In addition to out-earning governors’ salaries, leading a city as major as New York City has also earned Mamdani a rank among the 20 highest-paid US mayors. Although California state records show that San Francisco’s mayor Daniel Lurie’s annual pay of $393,097 (as of 2024) formally puts him at the top of that table, he has forgone the compensation and decided to take a $1 salary from the city, as per local outlet KQED in 2024.
In other news, Mamdani raised the possibility of a clash with Trump after he said last week that he was reviewing whether New York City could arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he is expected to visit the Big Apple in September for the UN General Assembly.
On Tuesday, Mamdani admitted that he didn’t have the authority to arrest Netanyahu as the NYC mayor. However, he still urged the US federal government to follow through with the request.
“Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal, the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people,” he said in a video posted on social media.
“My administration has reviewed every avenue available under applicable law to determine whether New York City could execute the international criminal court’s arrest warrant if Benjamin Netanyahu came here,” Mamdani continued. “It is clear that we do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this warrant.
A day before Mamdani’s admission, Trump said that the Israeli leader would not be arrested during his US visit. Without name-dropping the NYC mayor, he wrote on Truth Social, “Benjamin Netanyahu will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form, while in the United States of America.”
