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New York Times
07-08-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Cuomo Tells Business Leaders He Doesn't ‘Personally' Want to Fight Trump
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. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
03-08-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Curtis Sliwa Wants to Be Mayor. He's Taking Off His Beret to Prove It.
Curtis Sliwa, the Guardian Angels founder, flamboyant radio host and Republican nominee for mayor, has been an inescapable fixture of life in New York City for decades. But when he strolled into the Lower Manhattan offices of an important business group recently, its chief executive literally did a double take. Mr. Sliwa had swapped out his familiar sateen Guardian Angels jacket for a dark suit. And on his head, where a swooping red beret has sat almost every day of his adult life, there was only a cap-shaped tan line and balding pate. 'He stuck out his hand, and I looked at him and said, 'Oh my god!'' said Kathryn S. Wylde, the longtime leader of the group, the Partnership for New York City. ''I didn't recognize you.'' In a city rich with sartorial symbols, few have been more memorable than Mr. Sliwa's ruby red headpiece. It helped the Guardian Angels, his subway patrol group, gain notoriety in the 1970s; was his uniform for a career in television and radio and provided an unofficial motif for his unsuccessful first run for mayor in 2021. Yet as he takes a second, seemingly more viable run at City Hall, Mr. Sliwa, 71, is beginning to show up without it. Certainly not always, but especially for meetings with business leaders, union officials and others he has deemed to be serious people. He has pledged to keep it off permanently if he is elected in November. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Times
01-08-2025
- Business
- Times
Meet the billionaire whisperer fighting New York's corner
The maître d' of Pershing Square, a restaurant opposite Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, knows exactly who I am meeting when I call to confirm a reservation under Kathryn Wylde. 'Oh, Kathy? We love Kathy!' Wylde, 79, is a regular at the classic American bistro, where she is spotted by other customers who visit our table. It is one of her favourite lunch spots for when she is not being summoned to the more exclusive haunts frequented by Manhattan chief executives around Park Avenue. 'I always know somebody here,' she says, surveying the busy floor. Wylde is a renowned power broker in the city, who has spent more than four decades bridging divides between the billionaires running New York's biggest corporations and the political elites through her work at the Partnership for New York City, a consortium of 350 big companies, including banks, law firms, private equity firms and real estate developers. She first joined the partnership in the 1980s to run the housing development arm that secured private financing to build tens of thousands of homes in deprived neighbourhoods. In the 1990s she worked with Henry Kravis, co-founder of private equity firm KKR, and Jerry Speyer, co-founder of real estate developer Tishman Speyer, to start an investment fund that helped kickstart the digital economy in New York. • Forget the power lunch — Wall Street wolves want 'the power nibble' As chief executive of the partnership in 2001, when the 9/11 terror attacks tore through the city, Wylde quickly developed a blueprint in eight weeks for how to ensure New York could continue as a financial capital that was hailed as 'the Bible' by the Bush administration. Before ordering, we discuss the previous night's harrowing mass shooting at an office building on Park Avenue. Four people were killed by a gunman at the New York headquarters of Blackstone, KPMG, the National Football League and building landlord Rudin Management. Wylde was passing the building as office workers were coming out with their hands up at around 6.30pm, saying 'go back, go back, there's an active shooter'. She walked to the next subway station and got on a train. 'New Yorkers are used to dealing with the unexpected, and unfortunately, we're used to dealing with the tragic,' she says. It is only seven months since Brian Thompson, chief executive of United Healthcare, was shot dead outside a hotel in midtown. Does she feel like the city is becoming more dangerous? 'I would point out that both of these events were non-New Yorkers carrying guns from other places, from other states. 'New York has relatively strict gun control laws. And it's just a shame that the country doesn't have the same and other states don't have the same.' • Dr Elisabeth Potter: I criticised United Health — now I'm facing ruin She says she has recently been surveying security chiefs at New York corporations and landlords in the city, and most said they felt comfortable with security provisions in place. 'This happened in spite of having those very high protocols,' she says. 'I don't see what else they could have done. It's one of those things where, you know, you can take all the precautions in the world, but you can't stop premeditated murder.' We both eschew alcohol in favour of tap water, and I follow her recommendation of the Waldorf salad with poached chicken, in an attempt to progress my New York culinary education. I discover that Wylde is an unlikely billionaire whisperer. Originally from Wisconsin, she had been the first female editor of her college paper and wanted to become a journalist, but when she entered the workforce in 1968, the Chicago Sun-Times told her she could start as a typist and work her way up to the society page. 'I wasn't interested.' She moved to Brooklyn to work in community relations for a hospital, and met her husband, Wilfredo Lugo, a Puerto Rican agitator who was then protesting for more support for the low-income and Puerto Rican community. • The increasing peril of being an American billionaire A turning point came in 1981 when David Rockefeller, the head of Chase Manhattan Bank, appointed her to create a programme to build home ownership opportunities for the middle classes who had been leaving the city in droves with the decline of the manufacturing economy. 'He was the premier business, civic and philanthropic leader of the city,' Wylde says. 'And I was able to build a relationship with him.' She described him as a very humble, curious man, who wanted blue collar workers to be able to stay in the city and have security. 'I was able, through him, to see the bridge between great wealth and power, and empathy for the needs of the broader community.' She believes he inspired the next generation of philanthropic business leaders, including Speyer, Kravis, Michael Bloomberg and Jamie Dimon. 'These were all people that knew him, respected his style of leadership and philanthropy, and embraced it.' Wylde says she has never wanted to live in Manhattan. She enjoys the anonymity of Brooklyn, she says. To do her job, she also thinks you need to understand that New York is a 'bottom-up, not a top-down city'. 'The city is full of very strong opinions, and to be an effective advocate and communicator on issues affecting the city, you need to have experienced what life is like for most New Yorkers,' she says. Living in the Bay Ridge neighbourhood in Brooklyn helped her perceive that Zohran Mamadani, the Democratic socialist mayoral candidate, was a serious contender before any of Manhattan's business leaders, she says. • Why New Yorkers need Zohran Mamdani 'In the neighbourhoods, it was just obvious where the excitement was. He brought out 170,000 first-time voters in a primary. The polls didn't reflect this, because the polls surveyed people who vote regularly. So they missed the whole movement to new, young voters.' When asked by partnership members how they missed the rise of Mamdani, she tells them 'they were underestimating the extent to which financial insecurity is the main theme in most people's lives'. She adds: 'The majority of New Yorkers, when polled, say they have the fear they'll have to leave the city because they can't afford to live here. And he spoke to that fear … that's what people responded to. And people who don't feel financially insecure didn't get it.' Does she think he will win? 'I do,' Wylde says. 'It is highly likely. He's the democratic nominee and he captures the imagination … like Obama did.' Does she want him to win? 'I don't take sides', she says, diplomatically. 'We have to work with whoever wins.' • Sadiq Khan tells Zohran Mamdani how to win New York mayor election She disagrees with Mamdani's view that we should not have billionaires. 'I would say that they [billionaires] are undervalued in terms of their contributions to the city in particular,' she says. 'I think we shouldn't be focusing on people who have done well … but we should be focusing on how more people can do well.' However, she believes many of his policies are flawed, including promises to freeze the rent on affordable housing, which she believes would just mean developers stop building; or higher corporate taxes that she believes would only exacerbate the affordability problem, 'because those tax increases will be passed along to consumers in many cases'. Wylde has been preoccupied in recent weeks chairing private meetings between Mamdani and New York's business community. Real estate leaders are the 'most concerned' because of the power the mayor has over land use and zoning. The New York Jewish community is also particularly worried about the potential to have an anti-Israel mayor at a time of rising antisemitism, when they feel 'more dependent than ever on having a Jewish homeland', Wylde says. Other chief executives were 'relieved that he's smart and seemed willing to listen'. However, she says she doesn't think they will vote for him and 'the biggest concern is his lack of experience in management'. Wylde says the highlights of her career have all been crises, from the financial crisis and responding to September 11 to the pandemic, when she has been able to help provide the communication link between business and government. • Wall Street can't make sense of the rise of Zohran Mamdani She says her own ambition has always been around what she can accomplish over what her next step or job title will be, which is why she has been at the partnership for 43 years. 'It's probably the best platform one could have over the long term to accomplish the most,' she says. Wylde has announced that she will retire from the partnership next June, when she hopes to spend more time with her husband, who lives in Puerto Rico with seven rescue dogs and 19 cats. Her husband 'certainly didn't love my life in New York,' she says. 'He's Puerto Rican. And he was happy to go back to Puerto Rico'. However, she says she will never leave New York entirely. 'It's the most productive economy, where everyone is basically outcomes-oriented,' she says. 'It's real people trying to do real stuff — or have real outcomes, not just talk about them.' As we wait for the check, Bruce Crystal, the maître d' of the restaurant, slides into the booth next to Wylde for an intense discussion about the likely strategies of competing candidates in the mayoral race. 'He has all the gossip,' Wylde says. One suspects that she does too.
New York Times
23-07-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Mamdani Victory Could Represent Expansion of the Left's Influence
When Zohran Mamdani catapulted to a stunning victory in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary, the triumph seemed a coming-of-age moment for the Democratic Socialists of America. The group formed the backbone of Mr. Mamdani's canvassing operation and played an essential role in pushing the nation's largest city to embrace an unwavering progressive campaign agenda. But for Mr. Mamdani to get elected in November, he may need to win over segments of the city's business class, or at least persuade them that he intends no harm. Some of that effort has already been on display, creating some discomfort among his core supporters on the left. Last week, Mr. Mamdani, a state assemblyman and a democratic socialist, met separately with skeptical members of the Partnership for New York City and with Black business executives, who grilled him over his socialist economic agenda and challenged him over some of his stances opposing the wealthy and supporting Palestinian causes. Billionaires shouldn't exist? Mr. Mamdani walked that back. A rent freeze for stabilized units? Yes, but it was a policy he might revisit after four years. His refusal to repudiate the term 'globalize the intifada?' That, too, came under some revision. For now, D.S.A. leaders and others on the left say that Mr. Mamdani has earned their trust and deserves a fair amount of latitude. They recognize that the best way to push their agenda is to have a powerful emissary like Mr. Mamdani leading the nation's largest city. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Bloomberg
11-07-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Odd Lots: What NYC's Most Powerful CEOs Think About Zohran Mamdani
When socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic party's nomination for NYC mayor, top business leaders experienced a bout of hysteria. That's according to Kathy Wylde, the president and CEO of the non-profit organization the Partnership for New York City. Founded in 1979, the organization assembles the CEOs of some of the biggest employers in New York City in order to work on city issues. Wylde herself is often characterized as one of the ultimate NYC power brokers. In fact, she's been actively facilitating phone calls and meetings between Mamdani and the CEOs (most of whom backed Cuomo in the primary) who are anxious about what a socialist mayor would mean for the city. We talked to her about what they're most concerned about, what they want to see from Mamdani (if he wins), what could push businesses and people to move out of the city, and what they think about him after they talk.
