NEW YORK CITY—On this night, Donald Trump wore a tuxedo and he did not talk about building a wall. Being a New Yorker was enough.

Just 15 blocks from Trump Tower, the GOP frontrunner took the stage and spent his entire 20 minutes on stage at the New York GOP gala entertaining members of his party’s establishment with stories of his early days trying to get a foothold in the Manhattan real estate market—slowly drawing out a story of unexpected success in business that served as an obvious allegory for his unlikely campaign.


“When I did the building, everyone said, ‘Don’t do it, it can’t be done…bad area, bad location, the city was dying,’” Trump said, describing his purchase and rebranding of what is now the Trump International Hotel in Columbus Circle. “It turned out to be a great, great success as a hotel.

“We can do the same thing with our country.”

As he launched into another story about Central Park’s Wollman ice rink, he stopped himself. “Who the hell wants to talk about politics,” he quipped. “Politics is boring.”

But Trump soon turned to written notes about “New York values,” the description by Ted Cruz meant to imply the Manhattan billionaire is, at his core, a liberal. For months, Trump has responded by wrapping himself in the heroism of his city’s response to 9-11—but never as emphatically as he did in this ballroom on East 42nd Street.

“When we talk about values, what do we see in NY values?” Trump said. “Honesty and straight talk. It’s a work ethic: hard working people. New York—believe it—is about family. It’s about the energy to get things done. If Jeb Bush came here, I’m telling you, he would have much more energy to get things done.”

John Kasich, who followed Trump on stage, spoke passingly about his own love for the city and its food. But when he turned to the subject of why he’d make a good president, dinner was being served and the audience grew distracted. His message, at the end, boiled down to electability.

“I am the only one who beats Hillary Clinton every single time,” said Kasich, telling the audience that Republicans run the risk of losing not just Congress and control of the Supreme Court but even statehouse majorities like the GOP has in Albany “if [Republicans] nominate someone with high negatives.”

The spectacle of the GOP’s presidential candidates attending the state party’s annual fundraising dinner for the first time was—not unlike the Republican nomination battle on the whole—a fiasco.

Thirty minutes before the event was scheduled to start, servers and bussers were still setting tablecloths, plates, silverware and breadbaskets atop the tables inside the ballroom. On a far too small riser in the back of the room, photographers and reporters with their tripods and chairs were jammed together atop a tangle of colored wires, fighting for space and electrical outlets. A floor below, a long line of attendees in tuxedos and evening gowns waited patiently for Secret Service agents to usher them, one at a time, through a single magnetometer. Outside the Grand Hyatt, a few hundred protesters, most of them angry with Donald Trump, shouted in the street.

“The greatest political show on earth is now showing in New York state,” said Ed Cox, the New York GOP chairman, a card carrying anti-Trump member of the establishment who acknowledged the historic nature and utter craziness of this year’s primary.

Introducing Trump, he did credit his “genius” in alighting on and delivering “the precise right message” that has resonated in this political moment.

The 5th Avenue billionaire, speaking just 15 blocks south of his gilded Trump Tower, did his best Jay Gatsby, delighting in playing host on a home-town stage before his long-time friends and associates as the clear Republican presidential frontrunner.

But his uncertain position in the race at this late stage, with the electoral map narrowing and the chances of a contested convention on the rise, is the real reason he’s fighting so hard here, where polls show him with more than 50 percent support among likely GOP primary voters.

Having been outfoxed in Louisiana, South Carolina and Colorado where Ted Cruz has secured dozens of delegates that Trump believes should have been his, he can’t afford to simply win New York outright next Tuesday night. Desperate to amass the 1,237 delegates required to clinch the nomination, Trump is working his home state—and its GOP officials—hard in an effort to win all or nearly all of New York’s 95 delegates.

Three delegates are at stake in each of the state’s 27 congressional districts and a candidate can take home all three if he wins 50 percent of the vote. If no one wins an outright majority, the leading candidate takes two delegates and the runner-up, provided he wins more than 20 percent of the vote, takes one. This explains Trump’s heavy focus this week on western, central and upstate New York, areas where polls show his rivals above or close to the 20 percent mark and his own support in the mid-50s (as opposed to Long Island, New York City and the surrounding suburbs where it’s in the 60s and 70s).

Another 14 at-large delegates that will be selected by the full state committee and are likely to include Ed Cox, the party chairman, as well as Jennifer Saul Rich and Charles Joyce, New York’s representatives on the Republican National Committee. This explains why Trump was cozying up to the party establishment at Cox’s dinner Thursday night.

“This, right now, is the center of the universe and it’s important,” said Rob Astorino, the Republican Westchester County executive and the party’s 2014 gubernatorial nominee. “He’s got to start reaching out. He’s got to get to 1,237—he’s not there yet. All the county chairs are here, and you’ve got potential delegates if not designated delegates already. I think people are still curious to see how he’s going to act and behave and when he’s going to start pivoting toward being presidential. That’s what we hear all the time.”

Trump’s campaign made a point last week of announcing the support of more than half of the GOP county chairmen in the state, who as a whole represent roughly 75 percent of the weighted vote across the state. Behind the scenes, that’s what Trump’s team is pointing to as it ratchets up the pressure on Cox to appoint a majority of at-large delegates who support Trump.

“Trump having 75 percent of the weighted vote puts [Cox’s] job in jeopardy,” said one operative working on Trump’s New York campaign. “This is not a carrot, it’s a stick, having all these county chairs on our side. Do all the chairs for Trump want to screw Cox and vote him out? Who knows, but they definitely want to make sure Trump gets these delegates.”

Cox, whose distaste for Trump is well known, attempted to paint a rosier picture on Thursday night. “I love all our candidates,” he said. “Especially the frontrunner.”

Another establishment figure, former New York governor and 2016 presidential also-ran George Pataki, took the opportunity of Thursday’s dinner to endorse Kasich, who remains in the race despite running fourth in the delegate race in a three-candidate field.

Pataki, the last Republican to capture a statewide office in New York, had previously endorsed Marco Rubio after ending his own quixotic presidential bid. Kasich, despite having been mathematically eliminated weeks ago from being able to win the nomination outright, is the only remaining nominee who can win a general election, Pataki told reporters before the official program began.

Hillary Clinton, Pataki said, is “not going to win by having people vote for her, she’s going to try to win by having people vote against our nominee. They can’t do that with Governor Kasich.”

Evidence of Trump’s toxicity in a general election was on display in the streets outside the east side hotel where the gala was held. Hundreds of anti-Trump and pro-$15-minimum-wage protesters lined 42nd street, intermingled with legal observers, gawking tourists, frustrated commuters and a smattering of pro-Trump counter-protesters as police worked to keep rush hour traffic moving.

Protesters held signs that read “Lucha por 15,” “Buenos Empleos, NO McEmpleos” and “Stop Fascism.” One popular sign portrayed Trump as a pile of beige feces. Another sign called attention to the Republican front-runner's remark that American wages are “too high” at a Fox Business debate in November.

But back inside, Trump’s rivals were the candidates getting a cool reception.

“I will admit to you, I haven't built any buildings in New York City, but I have spent my life fighting for conservative principles," said Cruz.

The audience, however, was uninterested, applauding so indifferently at the end that Cox urged them to try again with another ovation--to little effect.

Jimmy Vielkind and Ben Schreckinger contributed to this report.