New York Mayor Eric Adams dropped his reelection bid Sunday, adding a potentially dramatic dimension to the race to lead the nation’s biggest city. Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old State Assembly member who convincingly won the Democratic primary in June, remains the front-runner. But Adams’s departure opens the door for former New York governor Andrew M. Cuomo to consolidate opposition to Mamdani, a democratic socialist who has drawn the wrath of President Donald Trump, as well as some establishment Democrats who are wary of his leftward stances on Israel and economic issues.
“Despite all we’ve achieved, I cannot continue my reelection campaign,” Adams, a Democrat who had been running as an independent, said in a video message.
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Trump, whose allies had been pressuring Adams to drop out, told Reuters that he welcomed the decision and believed it would benefit Cuomo.
Cuomo is running as an independent candidate after losing in the Democratic primary to Mamdani. Curtis Sliwa is running as a Republican in the overwhelmingly Democratic city. Adams’s name will remain on the ballot because the deadline to remove it has passed.
Adams, in his Sunday message, did not endorse another candidate in the race, and took veiled swipes at both of his erstwhile rivals, Mamdani and Cuomo.
“New Yorkers should be suspicious of any politician or political movement that claims we must wholesale destroy the systems we created together over generations to usher in a new, untested order led by self-styled saviors,” he said in an apparent reference to Mamdani.
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Mamdani has sought to use such criticism to bolster his outsider status. Polls show him leading by double digits, even when voters were asked how they would vote without Adams in the race. His campaign recently reached New York City’s $8 million spending cap, with an average contribution of $25 per person. In an interview on MSNBC Sunday evening, Mamdani said Trump and his donors would “not dictate the results of this election.”
“I’m excited and just as confident as I was yesterday at … winning this race on November 4th,” he said.
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In a statement Sunday aimed at winning over Adams’s supporters, Cuomo praised the incumbent mayor for “putting the well-being of New York City ahead of his personal ambition.”
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“We face destructive extremist forces that would devastate our city through incompetence or ignorance, but it is not too late to stop them,” Cuomo added.
Mamdani has been a vocal proponent of Palestinian rights and has said that as mayor he would arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he came to New York. Some of his fiscal policies, such as calling for freezing the rent in rent-controlled housing and piloting low-cost city-run grocery stores, have alarmed critics in the country’s financial capital.
But his message focusing on affordability has appealed to New Yorkers — especially those of younger generations — struggling with the city’s high cost of living. He won the primary with a record number of votes in any Democratic primary in the city’s history.
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Mamdani has been working to shore up endorsements to strengthen his position against Cuomo. But some top Democrats have yet to endorse him, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (New York). Jeffries praised Adams on Sunday in a statement saying he had served “courageously and authentically” as a public servant and indicated that he would “publicly weigh in with respect to the remaining candidates” in the mayor’s race before early voting begins.
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Trump has denied encouraging Adams to drop out of the race — or offering him a role in the administration — but he has said he would prefer a two-man race and has inaccurately called Mamdani a “communist.”
Behind the scenes, members of his administration have dangled jobs to both Adams and Sliwa in an attempt to clear the rest of the field. But negotiations for an Adams ambassadorship fell apart, according to two people familiar with those conversations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations.
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While sitting presidents sometimes use their political muscle in big-city mayoral races, they rarely intervene to the extent that Trump’s administration appears to have done.
Frank Carone, a top Adams adviser, said no role in the Trump administration had been determined.
“We’ll figure all that out later,” he said.
Adams was charged with federal corruption last fall, with prosecutors alleging that he had accepted illegal campaign contributions and luxury travel benefits from Turkish business executives and at least one unnamed government official. Adams has long denied wrongdoing and refused to leave office as he fought the case.
The indictment was dismissed in April following a controversial push by the Justice Department to terminate the case while denying a request by federal officials for the option of reinstating the charges because it could appear that Adams was beholden to government demands.
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In his Sunday video, Adams referenced his corruption case as having dented his standing with voters: “Some remain unsure of me after the unfortunate events surrounding my federal case,” Adams said. “I was wrongfully charged because I fought for this city, and if I had to do it again, I would fight for New York again.”
The same week that his case dismissal was requested, Adams met Trump border czar Tom Homan in New York, where he made a handful of immigration-related announcements aligned with the president’s agenda. That episode further corroded the mayor’s standing among some New Yorkers and elected officials, who renewed calls for him to resign.
Adams had lost a key fundraising mechanism when the New York City Campaign Finance Board withheld matching funds for his campaign.
“The constant media speculation about my future and the campaign finance board’s decision to withhold millions of dollars have undermined my ability to raise the funds needed for a serious campaign,” he said Sunday. “Over time, I hope you will see that despite the headlines and innuendo, I always put you before me, always.”
[SRC] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/09/28/eric-adamsnew-york-mayor-campaign/