The coming months will test the limits of the New York governor’s ability to work alongside a fickle president who is detested by fellow Democrats, with her 2026 reelection potentially at stake. Mamdani’s base will press Hochul to give him left-leaning victories, like a tax increase on rich New Yorkers that the governor opposes. If that’s not enough pressure, Trump has made clear he’ll exert his power over the city if Mamdani wins.

Hochul is walking a very delicate line. She needs Trump’s ear to ensure that funding for crucial infrastructure projects and anti-terrorism efforts will continue to flow. Yet the governor, who is being challenged in a primary by her lieutenant governor Antonio Delgado, can’t be seen as too chummy with a president who is loathed by her own party. Waiting in the wings is Trump ally Rep. Elise Stefanik, who is weighing a bid against the governor.

The situation creates an uncomfortable bind for Hochul, who has cobbled together a surprising rapport with the mercurial president, as evidenced by several White House meetings with him this year. She speaks to Trump frequently on the phone, often calling him directly. In public, Hochul has been eager to castigate the president when she believes his policies will harm New York. But a Mamdani win stands to upend this carefully constructed dynamic.

“I’m not going to send a lot of money to New York. I don’t have to. You know, the money comes all through the White House,” Trump said recently. “And if they’re going to be sending us stupid policies, I mean, communist policies… we’re not going to ruin one of our great cities.”

Hochul has pledged to “fight like hell” to oppose any cuts to the deep blue city, whose voters she will need to win reelection next year and where the president is deeply unpopular. The governor, too, believes Trump doesn’t want to do anything that would hurt his hometown, where he still retains significant business interests.