Zohran Mamdani, New York City's democratic socialist mayor, spent this week destroying bureaucratic paperwork. On Tuesday, he posted a video of himself shredding documents labeled "RED TAPE," "cumbersome fees and fines," and "a permit you need just to serve ice-cream." The confetti-style celebration, backed by Wu Tang Clan's "If Time Is Money," announced a sweeping 50-policy deregulation package aimed at easing the regulatory burden on the city's small businesses.
The changes target some of the most absurd requirements facing mom-and-pop shops across New York's five boroughs. Bodega owners will no longer need separate licenses to sell outside what they sell inside. Restaurants will shed the redundant frozen dessert permit. Barber shops can renew licenses every three years instead of annually. Street fair vendor fees drop. Inspections accelerate. Equipment registration fees disappear for a year.
The mayor also expanded the NYC Best program, assigning a case worker to each of the city's 180,000 small businesses, which together employ roughly 1 million people. The expansion targets the maze of city bureaucracy that can trap even experienced operators.
"I'm over the moon," said Dawn Kelly, owner of Nourish Cafe in Jamaica, Queens. She launched her business in 2016 with Best's help and credits her case worker with guiding her from concept to opening day. This week, when Julie Su, the city's deputy mayor for economic justice, called Kelly by name while announcing that food-handling courses would now be offered at multiple locations across the city, Kelly got emotional. Before the change, her staff had to travel from outer Queens all the way to the Upper West Side for a mandatory three-day certification because the course was taught at only one location citywide.
"These people are serious," Kelly said of the new administration. "They really care about small businesses. They get shit done."
The timing matters. New York's small business sector is collapsing. A recent city study found that while 3,540 businesses opened in the second quarter of 2025, another 8,400 closed, marking the lowest rate of new business formation in five years.
The irony cuts deep. Conservative opponents have spent months painting Mamdani and other Democratic Socialists of America members as anti-business radicals. When Mamdani took office in January, Republican gubernatorial nominee Bruce Blakeman appeared on Fox News claiming the mayor "wants to take your property" from small business owners. The chyron read "THE LEFT'S PLAN: CONTROL AND CONFISCATE."
Instead, Mamdani has delivered textbook deregulation, a philosophy usually championed by free-market conservatives. Even the libertarian magazine Reason grudgingly acknowledged the contradiction, noting that while Mamdani has proposed government-run grocery stores, rent freezes, and higher taxes on the wealthy, his small business reforms align with pro-market principles and deserve credit from principled critics.
At High Beam Coffee Roastery in Red Hook, Brooklyn, co-owner Vicki Forshee watched the announcement with relief. She and her partner, Selina Ullrich, operate in a city where Amazon operates multiple tax-advantaged warehouses blocks away while small cafes "have to climb a crazy mountain just to survive." Ullrich, a veteran of the city's food industry, pointed to health inspections that feel like shakedowns rather than safety checks, enforcing arbitrary rules no one can explain but everyone must follow.
"There's rules where nobody can explain why the rule exists," Ullrich said. "It's a rule that is impossible to comply with, but we all just agree that we just have to deal with it."
She's watching to see if Mamdani actually follows through. "It seems like he wants to accomplish things versus just talking about accomplishing things."
John Jay College economist JW Mason argues the approach is entirely consistent with democratic socialism. "When we talk about 'pro-business government,' we almost always mean government that caters to large, politically connected businesses," Mason said. "Governments that call themselves pro-business don't particularly serve the interests of smaller businesses that New York depends on. In some sense, a lot of what being a socialist mayor means is making government simply work better."
Mason believes such tangible results could short-circuit the political caricature that conservatives are building. Most voters don't think in neat ideological categories, he suggested. They observe whether politicians deliver concrete improvements to daily life.
Kelly, the Nourish Cafe owner, was a longtime fan of Eric Adams, the centrist Democrat who left office plagued by scandal. She's now a Mamdani supporter. When asked if she'd embrace the socialist label, she didn't hesitate. "I don't really care about those labels nowadays," she said. "I like that he stands for making sure nobody seems to feel marginalized, like we're all in this together, we all win together. If that's what socialism is, I'm all for it."
Author James Rodriguez: "A mayor cutting red tape is good governance, whatever his ideology, but the real test comes next: whether the bureaucracy actually changes or just shuffles the paperwork around."
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