Socialist Zohran Mamdani and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York City mayoral candidates, said they would collaborate with the Trump administration if elected, risking their resistance credentials.

President Donald Trump has loomed over the mayoral election in the United States’s largest city, with many in the blue bastion eager to know how the candidates will deal with the president. Mamdani and Cuomo, the two frontrunners, have attempted to balance necessary cooperation and resistance. However, both notably stressed the extent to which they would be willing to cooperate with Trump, likely cognizant of retaliation if they wouldn’t.

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“Zohran has made it crystal clear that while he will work with the federal government when it’s to the benefit of New Yorkers, he will never bow down to Trump’s authoritarian attacks,” Mamdani spokeswoman Dora Pekec said in a statement to Politico.

Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi voiced a similar sentiment in his own statement to the outlet.

“During the first Trump administration, the governor worked with the federal government when it wanted to help New York and stood up to defend New York when the Trump administration sought to hurt it,” he said. “No one has a longer or stronger record of that than the governor.”

The statements were given in response to comments from embattled incumbent New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, who defended his strategy of cooperating with Trump.

“You can’t let your emotions get in the way of those collaborations,” he told the outlet.

“I don’t know how they’re going to be able to ensure that we deal with some of the international terrorism, the international issues,” Adams added, referring to Mamdani and Cuomo. “How do we do that to keep the city safe — which we are a target — if we’re not collaborating with the White House and with our partners?”

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Mamdani specifically has banked much of his campaign on resistance to Trump, even going on an anti-Trump tour to rally Democrats. He’s also repeatedly sought to connect Cuomo with Trump. On Tuesday, Mamdani quipped that “while housing experts are ringing the alarm, Andrew Cuomo is ringing Donald Trump’s cell,” referring to reports that Trump and Cuomo spoke on the phone about the race. Cuomo has denied those reports.

The four-man race is currently Mamdani’s to lose. A Sienna College poll released Tuesday had Mamdani leading with 44% of the vote, followed by Cuomo with a distant 25%. Even further down were Curtis Sliwa at 12% and Adams at 7%.