Adams Vows To Stay In Nyc Mayoral Fight, In Potential Boost For Mamdani

NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Eric Adams plans to stick with his fraught reelection bid to the very end, telling POLITICO in the strongest terms yet he will not drop out of the race to stop frontrunner Zohran Mamdani.

Adams is polling at 7 percent, trailing not only Mamdani but fellow independent Andrew Cuomo and GOP nominee Curtis Sliwa. His approval ratings show a deeply unpopular incumbent who has lost vast swaths of his multiethnic base — the same voters who propelled him to victory in 2021. And he is being haunted by a city election board accusing him of wrongdoing and prosecutors pursuing criminal convictions against some of his former aides.

In a wide-ranging interview, Adams touched on why he intends to remain in the race until the end, his own fears of a Mamdani or Cuomo mayoralty and the now-dismissed federal indictment against him.

“If there were people running for mayor that I believe would continue the progress of our city, that’s an easy call,” Adams said during a sitdown at Gracie Mansion. “The people who are running — they are harmful to our city and the progress we’ve made. And I owe it to New Yorkers to get my story out to them and to run a campaign.”

When asked which candidate — Mamdani or Cuomo — he thought would be worse for the city, the mayor could not choose.

“Both of them are extremely problematic,” he said.

At the moment, the mayor does not have a clear path to victory. If he remains in play, though, he could very well impact the outcome of the race, drawing votes away from Cuomo and easing the way for Mamdani, a democratic socialist who has inspired fear among the city’s moneyed elites.

Mamdani bested Cuomo by 16 points in a July poll. And the incumbent has proven to be an energetic and dynamic campaigner who stands to make things increasingly difficult for the former governor. Three months out from Election Day, the mayor’s determination to clear his name with New Yorkers — and cement his legacy in the process — is proving to be a boon for Mamdani, the candidate whose politics are furthest from Adams’ conservative Democratic values.

While Mamdani has energized the left and younger voters, he’s also inspired something akin to existential dread among the city’s business class, conservatives and moderate Democrats, who respectively fear he’ll tank the city’s financial outlook, oversee a spike in crime and give Republicans a ready foil during next year’s midterm elections.

“History is going to be kind to me when I'm out of the political spotlight 10, 15 years from now and they look over and say: You know what? We got to give this guy his due,” Adams said. “That's what I'm fighting for.”

So far, the fight has been lopsided.

The mayor’s competitors — to the extent they focus on Adams instead of each other — paint him as an executive beholden to President Donald Trump, whose Department of Justice successfully moved to dismiss the incumbent’s five-count bribery case this spring.

The mayor maintains he did nothing wrong — though the case’s dismissal prompted a mass upheaval at DOJ — and turned the tables on his competitors: Mamdani in particular has been outspoken in his opposition to the policies being carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — a position Adams said will make it harder to cooperate with federal authorities on a wider range of public safety investigations.

“You can’t let your emotions get in the way of those collaborations,” Adams said. “We’ve made it clear to ICE: We’re not going to collaborate with anything that’s dealing with civil enforcement, but if you guys want to take dangerous people off the streets, particularly dangerous gangs, we want to coordinate.”

Adams said his administration set up a daily 10 a.m meeting between the NYPD, district attorneys and a host of federal authorities including the FBI — a confab he cited as key to a recent arrest of 27 alleged members of Tren de Aragua, an international gang that has attracted national headlines.

“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,” he 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.”

Mamdani’s team pushed back against the mayor’s characterization.

“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 spokesperson Dora Pekec said in a statement.

Cuomo — who reportedly had a personal phone call with the president about the race, though he has denied the exchange took place — has said he would similarly balance collaboration and resistance.

“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,” Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi said in a statement. “No one has a longer or stronger record of that than the governor. The mayor, I believe, was spending a lot of time in Turkey back then and may have missed it.”

Adams’ criminal case was dismissed on April 2. A federal judge did not make any determination about the mayor’s innocence or guilt, but said the ordeal smacked of a bargain between Adams and Trump’s DOJ. Regardless, elements of the accusations have continued to dog the mayor’s campaign. The New York City Campaign Finance Board has previously cited the indictment and its allegations of a straw donation scheme involving Turkish interests as among the reasons it has repeatedly blocked Adams from receiving around $3.5 million in public matching funds. Adams has denied those accusations.

As POLITICO reported Tuesday, Adams said he is working to obviate the CFB’s determination by raising additional private funds and suggested his campaign would sue over the issue for a second time.

“If the courts decide we have a right to get the matching funds, we’ll get them,” Adams said. “If they don't, I have to raise the money based on that. And that's what I'm going to do.”

In addition, state and federal prosecutors are pursuing cases against ousted Adams aides — one of whom has pleaded not guilty in a conspiracy, bribery and money laundering case and another who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud Tuesday. Those cases harken back to the mayor’s own legal troubles

“When you read about it over and over again, it has an impact on voters,” he said. “And that's why I have to get out and tell the story. I couldn't tell it for 15 months … the number one thing that is in my defense, I tell people: read the indictment.”

Federal prosecutors accused the mayor of accepting travel perks and straw donations in exchange for inquiring after the status of a fire safety inspection at a Midtown skyscraper owned by the Turkish government. Adams argued the complaint contains no evidence linking him to wrongdoing.

After the dismissal, Adams characterized the case as a political hit job carried out by “deep state” actors in the federal government as punishment for speaking out against former President Joe Biden’s immigration policies during an election year. That accusation is undercut by several elements of the case, though. The mayor has also talked about a permanent government on the local level that has undermined pieces of his agenda.

“Now imagine [a city employee working for 35 years], how many mayors have you seen? You’ve gone through mayors and you already know that mayors are going to come and go, so if they are irritated that you are asking me to do something that I don't like, or you are asking me to do something that's going to hurt someone that I have a relationship in politics, there are ways to tie you up,” Adams said. “And I was surprised at the depth of it.”

Moving or firing city employees who he found problematic, Adams said, was more difficult than it seemed.

“If you were to tell a person your services are no longer needed, some of them are long-term civil service union employees. There's a whole process,” Adams said. “If you want to reassign, you open yourself up to lawsuits. It's unfortunate that a lot of these actions get in the way of producing for our city. And that is probably one of the biggest barriers to move the cities forward.”