Titans of Real Estate in ‘Shock’ Over New York Rent Law Deal

The industry also commissioned an expensive advertising campaign featuring construction workers who were depicted warning that they could lose their jobs under the new proposals.

After the announcement on Tuesday night, industry officials scrambled to figure out what had gone wrong, blaming a combination of strategic miscalculations, resurgent activism by the progressive left and a new mood of antipathy — in New York and nationally — toward landlords and the wealthy.

And industry leaders seem to have been slow to adapt to the new environment.

From 2010 until last month, a prominent landlord group, the Rent Stabilization Association, donated more than $800,000 to the campaign committee for State Senate Republicans. In the same time period, the group spent just $25,000 on State Senate Democrats.

The Real Estate Board of New York similarly favored Republicans. Last year, it spent more than $1 million on independent campaign expenditures, mostly to back two Republican politicians running for the State Senate — one on Long Island and one in the suburbs north of New York City. Both candidates lost.

This year, as the tenant activists’ platform gained traction, landlords did not publicize their own counterproposals, fearful of losing leverage by offering compromises. Instead, industry members relied on their traditional method of private negotiations, trying to talk key lawmakers out of the more dramatic changes in one-on-one meetings.

“The industry held their cards close to the vest, thinking that the consequences of these proposals would be obvious to everyone,” Kathryn S. Wylde, the president of the Partnership for New York City, an influential business group, said.

In the hours since the deal was announced, industry officials have blitzed lawmakers with phone calls in an attempt to contain the damage. They have pored over the bill to single out the most far-reaching provisions, then relayed them to senators from moderate districts, hoping to convince them to vote against the bill.