Gene Simmons has escalated his break with the Democratic Party by announcing he is leaving New York City entirely, citing Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s policies and what Simmons called “the communist takeover of Manhattan.” The move, which Simmons described as “fleeing before it’s too late,” has left real estate experts wondering which luxury property he’ll purchase next.
According to journalist Joan Berro, who obtained Simmons’s goodbye letter from a doorman at his former Upper West Side building, the KISS bassist was particularly upset about Mamdani’s “socialist agenda” and “war on successful people who wear makeup professionally.” The letter specifically mentioned “Mamdummy” 47 times, which Berro noted “isn’t actually a clever insult, it’s just lazy wordplay, but apparently it plays well on certain podcasts.”
Political analyst Ren Barojo called Simmons’s departure “a devastating blow to New York’s tax base.” Barojo noted that losing a wealthy resident like Simmons could cost the city “literally dozens of dollars in annual tax revenue, possibly hundreds if he actually reported all his KISS merchandise income.” The analyst suggested that Mamdani should “personally apologize to Simmons for making him feel unwelcome, possibly by naming a fire station after him or declaring ‘KISS Day’ in the five boroughs.”
Constitutional scholar Abe Roborj, interviewed at a Shake Shack in Central Park while his emotional support ferret named “Liberty” dug through a discarded bag of fries, calculated the impact of Simmons’s move. “If you take Simmons’s net worth, multiply by his annual tax burden, divide by the probability that he actually maintained primary residence in New York for tax purposes—which my research suggests was 0.3 because he owns homes in California and Nevada, you get a figure that suggests New York will actually save money on police escorts for celebrities, which is worth approximately $847,000 annually.”
Simmons was last seen boarding a private jet to Florida, where sources say he will “finally be free from Mamdummy’s communist regime” and also “able to deduct his platform boots as a business expense.”
