For months now, Mamdani has been meeting privately with former leaders in city government, business executives, heads of New York arts and cultural institutions and skeptical local Democrats.
He has sought common ground. He has heard out his critics, including wealthy New Yorkers in business and finance and some pro-Israel activists who are turned off by his lifelong advocacy for Palestinians or offended by his reluctance to immediately condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” the use of which he later discouraged.
Robert Wolf, another Partnership for New York City member and a major fund-raiser for the Democratic Party, told me that he has begun texting with the candidate, becoming an informal pulse check for the city’s finance and business community.
“Zohran, to me, is more of a progressive capitalist,” Wolf told me, adding that he was convinced by their private interactions that Mamdani understood the importance of the private sector thriving in his New York.
The conversations have allowed Mamdani to reframe his previous positions, tweaking the us-versus-them language of his democratic-socialist values to be a tad less punitive. He has made it clear that he wants to support renters, not punish landlords. He wants to support public education, not take a hammer to specialized schools with elite admissions. He supports Palestinian rights; he’s not anti-Zionist. He made key concessions when it comes to policing. Importantly, he made clear that he was open to compromise when it came to his proposed millionaires’ tax. Call it Mamdani 2.0.