Shortly after Zohran Mamdani captured the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, he did something unexpected, given his freeze-the-rent mantra and democratic socialist roots.
Mr. Mamdani cold-called one of the city’s most powerful power brokers and asked for a meeting. It was a bold move after the business community had spent more than $20 million trying to defeat him, funding the largest super PAC in New York City history.
It also seemed antithetical to his man-of-the-people ethos.
And yet, Mr. Mamdani picked up the phone, and that power broker, James Whelan, the president of the Real Estate Board of New York, which represents the city’s mightiest landlords, set up an intimate gathering.
In early August at the dog-friendly, sunny penthouse offices of Jed Walentas, the board’s chairman and arguably the borough’s most prominent developer, Mr. Mamdani was polite, earnest-seeming and quick on his feet, two people familiar with the meeting said. By the end, he had seeded a relationship with some of his most skeptical critics.
Few candidates have touched off fear and opposition among New York’s captains of industry the way that Mr. Mamdani, 33,has. Some have talked of moving out of state. Others are backing efforts to block his election.
But a surprising thing has been happening when Mr. Mamdani gets behind closed doors with New York’s elite. They are finding themselves, unexpectedly, charmed.
It’s partly because of what Mr. Mamdani, the well-educated and well-mannered son of Manhattan intellectuals, does: He listens, asks questions and is amiable.
But it’s also what he doesn’t do: He doesn’t lecture the business leaders, instead absorbing their points of view and, at times, promising to think about their arguments.
He has indicated strongly that he would keep the police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, those who have met with him say, without making a commitment to do so.
The effect has been oddly reassuring. Moderate Democrats like Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has endorsed him, and some business leaders wary of Mr. Mamdani’s youth, inexperience and anti-Israel views have been at least temporarily assuaged.
The real estate board meeting presaged what would become a Mamdani reassurance campaign, which continues to barrel forward as the election grows nearer. That so many business leaders are receptive to a meeting is a measure of Mr. Mamdani’s political strength: Pragmatically, it may be better to develop a relationship with the probable next mayor than to antagonize him. Wall Street likes a winner and understands the benefits of proximity to power.
“I don’t want him to fail,” said Jeffrey Gural, a landlord who met with Mr. Mamdani recently and found him to be “personable” and “smart.” “So, it gave me a one-on-one opportunity to give him my opinion.”
That said, Mr. Gural still expressed deep skepticism and said he was planning to vote for Andrew M. Cuomo, the former governor running on an independent ballot line.
As for Mr. Mamdani, “The reality is he’s 33 years old with no experience running anything, and he’s going to run the biggest city in America, and that’s very chancy,” he said. “If he doesn’t hire top people, it could be a disaster.”
Days after Mr. Walentas’s first meeting with Mr. Mamdani, a company affiliated with his Two Trees real estate firm put $100,000 into a super PAC backing Mayor Eric Adams’s now-defunct re-election campaign. Nevertheless, Mr. Walentas and Mr. Mamdani met again weeks later.
The stakes for the business community are high. Mr. Mamdani proposes to raise about $10 billion, largely through taxes on corporations and wealthy New Yorkers, to finance his expansive plans, which include universal day care and free buses. Despite earlier defund-the-police rhetoric, he now says he wants to keep the city’s budgeted police head count stable as polls continue to show that city residents are worried about public safety.
Business leaders warn that such tax increases could cause those targeted to flee, undermining the city’s tax base, even as Texas’s finance sector threatens to outpace New York’s. Real estate leaders argue that Mr. Mamdani’s proposal to freeze rents for the city’s one million rent-regulated apartments would cripple landlords’ ability to maintain their buildings.
Still, in these meetings and phone calls, Mr. Mamdani charms his interlocutors by appearing to listen closely and engage substantively, even if he never quite backs down. Those who have participated routinely describe him as eager to find common ground. He is, in other words, a talented politician.
That was how it went in September, when Mr. Mamdani met with former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a businessman who made his billions selling data to Wall Street and who spent $8 million trying to defeat him in the Democratic primary.
Howard Wolfson, a longtime adviser to Mr. Bloomberg, was there, and impressed, but said he would not vote for Mr. Mamdani.
The candidate is, Mr. Wolfson said, “intelligent and engaged and engaging, he asks good questions, he avoids unnecessary argument.” Mr. Bloomberg was impressed too, Mr. Wolfson said.
“He’s very talented,” Mr. Wolfson said. “Whether that means he’ll be a good mayor is another question.”
Mr. Mamdani’s interpersonal aptitude has developed over the course of his life, from his early days in New York, when he created a high school cricket team from scratch, to his time at Bowdoin College, where he led boycott campaigns related to Israel’s actions in the Middle East, and his early political career helping others’ campaigns.
When he was elected to the Assembly, he and his colleagues in the Democratic Socialists of America caucus learned not to use their voices at the expense of good politics.
At first, they felt pressure to assert themselves, Emily Gallagher, a fellow D.S.A. member and assemblywoman elected the same year as Mr. Mamdani, said in an interview.
“As time went on, we realized that, actually, if you speak all the time, it’s annoying,” she added.
Some executives worry that Mr. Mamdani’s charm distracts voters from his stances, and have cautioned that he benefits from the distance between the picture of him as a hard-core socialist and the reality of his personality.
“Some people who are against him paint this caricature of him which isn’t true, and then, when you meet him, you’re sort of disarmed,” said Jason Haber, a founder of the American Real Estate Association. Mr. Haber said he had not attended a meeting with Mr. Mamdani but had spoken to many who had.
“You have to hope to be able to hold two thoughts at the same time,” he said. “That Zohran Mamdani is a very nice person, but he’s also a person with very bad policies that will take the city in the wrong direction.”
Initially, members of New York’s business community exhibited little interest in talking with Mr. Mamdani.
At a gathering this past spring hosted by the Partnership for New York City, a corporate consortium, only a handful of people showed up to meet him, according to two people familiar with the meeting.
Weeks later, after he had won the primary decisively, about 150 executives poured into the offices of the real estate firm Tishman Speyer to see what Mr. Mamdani was about. The next day, the group hosted another meeting for tech executives that was also well attended.
Some people who were at the second partnership meeting recalled an intellectually adept and gifted political orator who eased their concerns. Others reacted to Mr. Mamdani’s verbal dexterity with alarm, worried that he was pivoting from, rather than disavowing, positions they found problematic. While he gained attention in that meeting by saying he would “discourage” use of the phrase “globalize the intifada,” he did not condemn the expression, two people who were there said.
In these meetings, and in public, Mr. Mamdani has moderated his rhetoric in other ways, too. Where he once called the Police Department racist, he now says he esteems police officers and owes them an apology. (He has yet to deliver a public one, though he said on “The View” that he had begun privately apologizing to some of the department’s roughly 30,000 officers.)
Where he once opposed the test required to attend the city’s specialized high schools, he now says he would keep it. He also says he now recognizes the “important role” the private sector plays in addressing the city’s housing crisis. He makes a point of publicly embracing Dan Doctoroff, a deputy mayor for economic development in Mr. Bloomberg’s administration, and of expressing concern about real estate insurance costs.
In a sparse conference room with rickety chairs at his Manhattan headquarters, Mr. Mamdani has addressed anxiety about his inexperience by saying he hopes to surround himself with a Lincolnesque team of rivals not afraid to express differing opinions. He has said he would emulate parts of Mr. Bloomberg’s managerial style.
“When I met him the first time, I shared with him a quote by Aristotle,” Sally Susman, a senior Pfizer executive, said. Ms. Susman, who emphasized that she was not speaking on Pfizer’s behalf, later helped organize two sessions with business executives and Mr. Mamdani. In the first session, he repeated the Aristotle quote back to her, she said. “He is a good listener, he is smart and he picks up on things.”
Some businesspeople have refused to meet with Mr. Mamdani for fear it will leak out and be seen as an endorsement. Even so, Mr. Mamdani has spoken briefly with Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, and met with Kenny Burgos, who runs an association that represents landlords of rent-stabilized buildings. Mr. Mamdani has discussed economic policy with Robert Wolf, former chairman of the Americas for the Swiss bank UBS and a former adviser to President Barack Obama, a person familiar with the conversation said.
In early September, Mr. Mamdani cold-called Alex Lasry, who is managing preparations for next year’s World Cup. He wanted Mr. Lasry to know that he was about to demand publicly that FIFA forgo dynamic pricing for the event, because it threatened to drive ticket prices far out of reach for regular New Yorkers. Mr. Lasry told an associate he was impressed with Mr. Mamdani’s political savvy, despite any headaches the announcement might have caused.
“Zohran has made clear that he’s willing to meet with anyone — including those who disagree with him — to advance his affordability agenda,” Dora Pekec, a spokeswoman for Mr. Mamdani, said.
Those who have met with him say they will be able to truly assess that agenda only if Mr. Mamdani takes office. And some express skepticism that this charm offensive will persist beyond Inauguration Day, or amount to anything substantive.
“At the end of the day, process is not substance and words are not action,” Mr. Wolfson said.
“So is there a value in conversation across difference?” he continued. “One hundred percent. Is that more important than what a mayor does in office? No, it is not.”
Lauren Hirsch is a Times reporter who covers deals and dealmakers in Wall Street and Washington.
Dana Rubinstein covers New York City politics and government for The Times.
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