Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has positioned himself as the only candidate in the New York City mayor’s race who can forcefully go toe-to-toe with President Trump. But in a closed-door meeting on Wednesday with some of the city’s biggest business leaders, Mr. Cuomo suggested he might adopt a more conciliatory strategy.
As he made a case for his candidacy, Mr. Cuomo said he was not “personally” looking for a fight with the president and compared their yearslong relationship to a “dysfunctional marriage.”
“I think he wants to be accepted by New York City, and I think there’s an opportunity there,” Mr. Cuomo said, according to four people who shared accounts of the private meeting with 50 corporate executives gathered at Rockefeller Center.
He added: “I know, personally, he doesn’t want to fight with me. Personally, I don’t want to fight with him, right? So I don’t think he’s going to be eager to create a conflict with us.”
Mr. Cuomo also made the case that Mr. Trump cared about his hometown and wanted to “find a way to be a hero in New York City.” Mr. Trump knew, he said, that confronting Mr. Cuomo would lead to a “nasty, ugly, drawn-out fight.”
Just hours after the Wednesday meeting, which was organized by the Partnership for New York City, The New York Times reported that Mr. Cuomo had in recent weeks spoken privately to the president about the race. Like many of the city’s business leaders, the president has expressed alarm about Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee who has proposed raising taxes on the wealthy and freezing rents for some tenants.
The remarks to the Partnership speak to the sometimes divergent stances Mr. Cuomo is adopting around Mr. Trump publicly and privately as he seeks to revive his campaign after losing the Democratic primary to Mr. Mamdani, a 33-year-old state assemblyman and democratic socialist. Mr. Cuomo has previously said the White House is working to “undermine our democracy” and has criticized Mr. Trump’s immigration policies.
Mr. Cuomo needs to court business leaders, voters and potential donors who are friendlier with Mr. Trump or fear his influence. But inching too close to him could alienate Democrats in a city where the president is overwhelmingly unpopular.
Mr. Mamdani and his allies quickly seized on The Times’s report. At a news conference on Thursday morning, Mr. Mamdani called the conversation between the two men “a betrayal” of the city by Mr. Cuomo. He held the event outside 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan, the hub for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the city.
“The job of mayor is not to audition to be the jester for a want-to-be king,” Mr. Mamdani said. “It is to be the person who stands up for the values of this city, the fabric of this city and the people of this city.”
Mr. Mamdani said he had not spoken to Mr. Trump and played down concerns that his election could put a bigger target on New York City’s back, given the president’s virulent criticism of him. He said he would fight Mr. Trump at all costs if he sought to harm New Yorkers, but was open to collaboration to help the city.
“If the president and the administration is looking to work for the benefit of New Yorkers, which is what he spent so much of his campaign speaking about, that is a different conversation,” Mr. Mamdani said.
Mr. Cuomo was scheduled to hold an event Thursday afternoon.
His meeting with business leaders was intended to make a case for why he, rather than Mayor Eric Adams or the Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, was the best positioned to defeat Mr. Mamdani and guide the city through a tumultuous era. The former governor is leading Mr. Adams in the polls, but has said candidly that Mr. Mamdani, the race’s front-runner, will prevail if opposition to him remains splintered.
Among the attendees were the head of Pfizer and Tishman Speyer, the real estate giant.
In a statement on Wednesday, Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, did not deny that the former governor and the president had spoken, but sought to put distance between them.
He said the two men had not spoken “in some time” and that “as far as I know,” they had not discussed the race. Mr. Azzopardi suggested Mr. Trump would be more likely to prefer that Mr. Mamdani or Mr. Adams win.
“He believes Mamdani would serve as a political boon to Republicans nationwide in the midterms, symbolizing what he sees as the Democratic Party’s extremism,” he said.
He called Mr. Adams, who worked with the Trump administration to get federal corruption charges dismissed against him, as a “wholly owned subsidiary of the president.”
Mr. Cuomo said in a recent interview on WNYC that the best way to handle Mr. Trump was with a confrontational approach.
“I don’t know there is a strategy besides being very aggressive because he’s a very aggressive personality,” Mr. Cuomo said. “He comes in very strong. His tactic is just to overpower you, and you have to meet force with force.”
Nicholas Fandos is a Times reporter covering New York politics and government.
Emma G. Fitzsimmons is the City Hall bureau chief for The Times, covering Mayor Eric Adams and his administration.
Lauren Hirsch is a Times reporter who covers deals and dealmakers in Wall Street and Washington.
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