President Donald Trump has told a wealthy New York businessman that he wants the New York City mayoral candidates who are long shots to drop out of the race by next week, the New York Post reported Thursday.
Trump spoke with fellow billionaire John Catsimatidis, who has ties to both current New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa, on Sunday and lamented what might happen to the city if the Democrat candidate wins.
Adams, who is running as an independent, insisted Wednesday that he isn’t dropping his reelection campaign after reports he had been approached about potentially taking a job with the federal government.
Trump administration intermediaries recently reached out to people close to Adams, a Democrat, to discuss whether he would be open to abandoning his reelection campaign to take a federal job, according to a person familiar with those conversations.
The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the private nature of those conversations.
It was unclear how far those talks progressed, but as media reports about them multiplied, Adams insisted in interviews and through a spokesperson that he had no intention of dropping out of the contest against Democrat nominee Zohran Mamdani; former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent; and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa.
Mamdani, a 33-year-old Muslim born in Uganda and a self-labeled “democratic socialist,” claimed victory over the establishment candidate, Cuomo, in the Democrat primary.
Catsimatidis told the Post that Trump “is concerned about the New York City race. He does not want a socialist mayor, and he said, ‘It’s not going to happen’ under his watch and wants a person under his watch. At the end of the next 10 days, he wants the most qualified candidate to beat Mamdani. He’s going to do whatever he has to do.”
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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