New York City and State offered up nearly $3 billion in incentives to lure Amazon and its 25,000 high-paying jobs to Queens only to see the tech company cancel their plans after local opposition materialized. Was their retreat too hasty?
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[Was] it really local and state politicians, as Amazon and the governor claim, and perhaps even Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), "an outspoken opponent of the new headquarters," who were responsible?
"An examination of the deal’s collapse showed that Amazon badly misjudged how it would be received in New York, apparently because the company has rarely ventured into such a raucous political arena as it has pursued a breakneck expansion in recent years," report Goodwin and Karen Weise, a technology correspondent based in Seattle, for the Times (source article) on Friday in a post-mortem on Amazon's sudden decision..
Amazon can deliver toothpaste in traffic-snarled Manhattan on the same day an order is placed. But when it came to navigating the politics of New York, the company appeared out of step, a giant stumbling onto a political stage that — despite its data-driven success — it never fully understood.
“Amazon underestimated the power of a vocal minority and miscalculated how much it needed to engage with those audiences to make HQ2 a success,” Joseph Parilla, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, said, referring to the second headquarters search.
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Reminiscent of Seattle City Council conflict
Amazon's hasty retreat from Long Island City is reminiscent of how the company threatened to halt the expansion of HQ1 last May after the Seattle City Council considered a controversial "head tax" to fund affordable housing construction and homeless services.
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