Mayoral Candidate Says He Has Lent His Private Jet to the Clintons

The Gulfstream IV, an airborne lap of plush-leather luxury, hopscotched around the country over the past few days, breezing into Chicago; Orlando, Fla.; and Little Rock, Ark.

Its owner, John A. Catsimatidis, the billionaire grocery store owner and Republican candidate for mayor, was not aboard.

So who was?

Several clues to this aeronautical mystery have emerged. Each stop of the blue-and-white jet, outfitted with eight flat-panel TVs, corresponded to a location where former President Bill Clinton; his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; or both appeared from Thursday to Saturday, flight records show.

Aides to both Clintons are staying mum, but Mr. Catsimatidis and his team have taken no such vow of silence.

“They were using it,” Rob Ryan, a Catsimatidis adviser, said of the Clintons, before he quickly retreated into looser, less definitive language. “It’s a pretty good educated guess.”

He passed the telephone over to Mr. Catsimatidis, a Clinton donor and longtime plane buff, who created and sold a sizable aviation business and now owns a smaller fleet of planes.

Asked about Mr. Clinton and the Gulfstream IV on Monday night, the supermarket magnate could barely suppress his pride at shuttling around the one-time leader of the free world:

“He uses it a lot.”

So much so, he said, that “I can confirm he is on it today.”

But what about between Thursday and Saturday?

Mr. Catsimatidis grew uncharacteristically reticent.

“We are not allowed to give out the itinerary for security purposes,” he explained.

(Mr. Ryan later allowed that “if he was using it today, there are good odds he was using it over the weekend.”)

During that three-day span, a Gulfstream jet with a tail number traced to Mr. Catsimatidis’s company traveled to the Orlando area, where Mr. Clinton delivered a college commencement speech; to Little Rock, where Mr. Clinton and Mrs. Clinton observed the dedication of an airport in their names; to Chicago, where the couple attended an award dinner held in Mr. Clinton’s honor; and finally to Westchester, N.Y., where the Clintons have a home.

Spokesmen for both Clintons declined to comment on their travel or how it was paid for.

Mr. Catsimatidis said he regularly donated time on his plane, which can command around $6,000 an hour, to Mr. Clinton’s foundation. A longtime campaign contributor, he joined the illustrious, and later infamous, list of donors who spent the night in the Lincoln Bedroom during the Clinton administration.

An endorsement from either Clinton in this year’s mayoral race is considered the political holy grail, elusive and unexpected, but courted and coveted.

The conventional wisdom that they are unlikely to weigh in on the race has not stopped candidates and would-be candidates from invoking their names.

As he contemplates a mayoral run, former Representative Anthony D. Weiner recently said in a television interview that Mr. Clinton had been “a great source of support” for him.

Mr. Catsimatidis rarely misses a chance to pay tribute to the erstwhile president, describing himself, counterintuitively, as a “Clinton Democrat.”

On Monday, as Mr. Clinton apparently floated above the ground on his plane, Mr. Catsimatidis wanted to make it clear that there was more to the relationship than air travel.

“I have been friends with the Clintons,” he said, “for 20 years.”