New York City business leaders met with a mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, on Tuesday to question the 33-year-old Democratic Socialist on issues ranging from his lack of managerial experience to his ongoing reluctance to condemn the use of the term “globalize the intifada.”

Tuesday’s meeting, hosted by the Partnership for New York City, brought together Mr. Mamdani and 100 high-level executives and CEOs that included the Pfizer chief executive, Alfred Bourla, and the Loews Corporation chief executive, James Tisch, in what was arguably the young candidate’s toughest audience yet. Mr. Mamdani requested the meeting as he moves closer to the center and reaches out to the city’s plutocracy, who are highly agitated by the prospect of so far-left a mayor, according to published reports.

Indeed, the meeting was his first proper encounter with some of the high-net-worth New Yorkers whom Mr. Mamdani has used as foils throughout his campaign leading up to his upset victory over Governor Cuomo. Throughout his campaign, Mr. Mamdani said he would hit those making more than $1 million a year with a new 2 percent “millionaire tax” and raise the corporate tax rate to 11.5 percent to pay for his ambitious plans, such as launching a new $1.1 billion public safety agency, funding city-run groceries, ending bus fares, and freezing rents on rent-stabilized apartments. 

New York’s powerful business community has been caught largely flatfooted, so far unable to stop Mr. Mamdani despite the enormous financial resources at its disposal.

His policy proposal to shift the city’s tax burden to “richer and whiter neighborhoods” was called by the assistant attorney general for civil rights, Harmeet Dhillon, an “illegal discriminatory scheme” that could prompt a civil rights investigation by the Department of Justice. 

While some found Mr. Mamdani, an amateur hip-hop artist and son of an A-list Hollywood director turned state assemblyman, to be “impressive,” there were serious concerns about his relative lack of experience to run New York and its more than 300,000 city government employees.

“He’s sourcing from sources that they don’t believe in, in terms of a fiscal, reality, tax impact,” the Partnership for New York City chief executive, Kathy Wylde, said during an appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday morning.  “He’s clearly totally inexperienced,” she added.

Business leaders raised the issue of the job being a “very complicated management experience,” one for which the incumbent mayor, Eric Adams, and Mr. Cuomo have considerable backgrounds. Mr. Mamdani was asked how he was prepared to assume the new role should he win the race.

“He said, ‘Well, I’d surround myself with good people and follow the Mike Bloomberg principle of letting them do their job.’ That was a good answer, but I don’t think it made up for the lack of experience and on policy issues,” Ms. Wylde said.

Mr. Mamdani did say that while he was not flexible on his “basic values,” he was open to finding other ways of solving New York’s affordability issues that don’t rely on increasing income, property, and corporate tax rates.

The meeting was co-hosted by Mr. Bourla, the son of Holocaust survivors who in 2020 partnered with Prime Minister Netanyahu to roll out Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine in Israel.

Mr. Mamdani, who in the past has said that as mayor he would order Mr. Netanyahu’s arrest, was confronted about his past use of “globalize the intifada” and his continued refusal to denounce the term. One attendee told the Financial Times that about “a fifth” of the questions were focused on Mr. Mamdani’s past statements on Israel and his views on New York’s Jewish population.

“He described how he had learned what that meant and how striking that was to a young Jewish woman, and that he said he was not going to … use that phrase again and discourage others from using it,” Ms. Wylde said. 

When asked by CNBC if “discourage” meant the same as “condemn,” Ms. Wylde replied, “No, I don’t think that is the same.”

“He realized the problem had become enormous,” Ms. Wylde said.

Mr. Mamdani was asked about his ambitious public safety plan, which includes establishing a Department of Community Safety, whose social workers would replace the police in several functions, and whether he was planning to keep the New York Police Department commissioner, Jessica Tisch, in her role. Ms. Tisch is the daughter of James Tisch, a scion of the Tisch dynasty that controls the Loews Corporation. Mr. Tisch was sitting in the front row during the meeting, according to Ms. Wylde.

“I think his position is, he’s open, but with no commitment,” Ms. Wylde said.

Ms. Wylde said she found Mr. Mamdani to be “a very compelling, charming, smart young man.”

“I think everyone walked away thinking that he was the most impressive candidate they have seen in generations,” Ms. Wylde said. “I would say that I doubt it changed many minds, but I think it lowered the temperature in terms of fear.”