The Florida Chamber of Commerce has become the latest business booster from the Sunshine State with a message for New York City denizens who have tired of the city’s high cost of living and doing business.

In the center of Times Square, at Broadway and West 43rd Street, a newly erected digital billboard proclaims the leftist Mayor Zohran Mamdani as Florida’s “Economic Developer of the Year.”

The “savage” troll, as one local metropolitan newspaper called the billboard, is part of a new chamber campaign designed at extending the COVID-era migration of New Yorkers to Florida amid rising taxes, living costs and economic policies that are said to be chasing firms, millionaires and countless jobs south to Florida.

“Florida now has more people than New York, yet New York’s budget is more than twice the size of Florida’s. New York’s budget, with its push for higher taxes and much more government control, no wonder people are leaving,” Mark Wilson, president and CEO of the chamber, said in a news release distributed Tuesday morning. “To be clear, New York has incredible people and companies who want a chance to grow, and I believe they deserve that chance. Government doesn’t create innovation or jobs — the private sector does.”

Private sector titans with business and residential interests in New York have not hesitated to mix it up with the mayor since his election last November. A feud has arisen between Citadel’s Ken Griffin and Mamdani, who has sought to impose a pied-a-terre tax on the part-time New York residences of the wealthy. Although Griffin has a penthouse in Manhattan, he moved Citadel’s headquarters from Chicago to Miami in 2022.

The Florida chamber did not immediately respond to an interview request with Wilson, its CEO. But he did speak with Fox News and the New York Post, which seemed to be the campaign’s media launching pads for a chamber-driven “Free Enterprise Florida” competitiveness drive with Times Square as the starting point.

“We wanted to thank [the mayor] for the jobs, the companies, the people that they’re pushing out of New York — and a lot of them are coming to Florida,”  Wilson told Fox News Digital on Monday.

The Post published a photograph of the huge billboard bearing the mayor’s smiling face and gave him this shout-out: “Thanks for the jobs!”

Active pipeline

John Boyd, whose The Boyd Company Inc. in Boca Raton counsels firms about changing venues, said there is still a steady north-south flow of relocation-minded businesses. Inquiries about South Florida are brisk, he told the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Tuesday.

“There is a solid pipeline of companies looking to expand and relocate into Florida, particularly South Florida,” he said. “There are significant business climate advantages for key industries including banking and financial services.”

Besides the financial sector, he mentioned “next-generation industries” such as electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, and activities related to the development of space exploration.

As for New York’s mayor, Boyd said city business leaders are concerned about policies that penalize the monied class.

We are several months into the Mamdani administration, and the Mamdani effect is real,” he said. “You look at the public doxing of Ken Griffin. Business leaders in the city are concerned the second home tax is front page news.”

Boyd was referring to the mayor pointing out the location of Griffin’s high-rise Manhattan residence in a video. In late July, the mayor also came under criticism after his administration published addresses of homes that could be subjected to the new tax.

he goal of the chamber campaign, according to the chamber news release, is to highlight “Florida’s economic success story development and diversification approach to the heart of America’s push for socialism and government overreach.”

The chamber also served up these economic comparisons between New York and Florida, the latter of which long ago surpassed New York State in population. Florida is now third in the nation behind Texas and California, but ahead of New York, which is fourth.

According to the chamber, the following selected “economic indicators” illustrate a Florida advantage over New York:

  • Florida’s net migration of 551 people per day, compared to New York’s loss of 115.
  • Florida’s debt per capita is the lowest in America at under $1,000, while New York’s exceeds $6,500.
  • New York’s state budget is more than double Florida’s, and New York City’s budget alone is over $8 billion higher than Florida’s.
  • New York’s median rent is 34% higher than Florida’s, and the median price of a home is 63% higher than in Florida.
  • Florida ranks No. 1 in new business start-ups, and New York ranks No. 4.
  • Per the latest IRS data, every hour, $2.4 million in net income moved into Florida, and $1.1 million left New York.

Times Square: Familiar Florida venue

It’s not the first time that a Florida-based business or economic development group has promoted the state or one of its metropolitan areas in Times Square.

The Business Development Board of Palm Beach County bought billboard space last November promoting its “Wall Street South” campaign designed to woo financial firms from Manhattan to the county. Its so-called “breakup ads” proclaimed, “Dear NYC, it’s not you. It’s me.” The ads were timed with the New York City mayoral elections and the tax hikes proposed by the then-candidate Mamdani. It urged New York area businesses to relocate to Palm Beach County.

Visit Lauderdale, the tourism marketing agency of Broward County, sought attention with digital billboards in Times Square to usher in 2026 as part of its campaign called “Never Lose Your Splash.” The campaign included a CNN New Year’s Eve broadcast to encourage New Yorkers to visit Fort Lauderdale.

And Boca Raton in the summer of 2025 took aim at businesses that would relocate south with an 82-day Times Square ad touting lower taxes and superior weather.