Not even four years after swaggering onto the national stage as the self-proclaimed “Biden of Brooklyn” and the future of the Democratic Party, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who’d been running a long-shot independent bid for a second term under the slogan “Delivers, Never Quits,” announced he was quitting after all.
Adams released a nine-minute video Sunday announcing his exit, which seemed both inevitable and almost inconsequential given that he’s been polling in the single digits for months. He whined about how the press and prosecutors had supposedly let him and the public down by focusing on the endless corruption claims about him and his administration.
Adams released a nine-minute video Sunday announcing his exit, which seemed both inevitable and almost inconsequential.
He didn’t take any questions and didn’t endorse or even name any of the remaining candidates, though he did take a clear shot at 33-year-old Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani and the “insidious forces” pushing “divisive agendas … to destroy the very system we built together over generations.”
Notably, there was another hard shot in the transcript sent to reporters minutes earlier that was missing from his video, this one clearly aimed at Andrew Cuomo, the 67-year-old disgraced formed governor now running as an independent after getting crushed in the primary by Mamdani, the young democratic socialist, as Adams ripped politicians who shift with the prevailing winds while pushing others out of their way, saying they “cannot be trusted.“
However, nothing screams politician-who-puts-his-own-interests-first like a candidate who drops out of a race but keeps his options open about who he’ll support.
It made a fitting coda to a wasted term of mostly self-inflicted wounds that left New Yorkers even more dour about the state of the city than when they elected Adams to fix the post-Covid problems they felt.
Adams did so much damage to the sensible center he claimed to represent that the same city whose voters backed the ex-cop and former Republican is now poised to replace him with an avowed socialist.
That’s Mamdani, who remains the clear favorite even as the alternatives to him are now down to Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels vigilante group and long-time shock-radio-style media personality running on the Republican line.
It’s nearly impossible to see either of them winning with the other still there to split the anti-Mamdani vote, and it’s very hard to see Sliwa, who’s a distant third in the polls but has consistently resisted pressure from local leaders and even President Donald Trump to exit the race, giving way. But the pressure will be intense, and five weeks is a lifetime in an election.
Mamdani is young, charming and still running hard with open ground ahead.
Even if Sliwa somehow stopped running, his name and Adams would still be on the ballots, which are already printed, and Cuomo, whose family has been a household name in New York for a half century, would still have a hugely uphill race.
Mamdani is young, charming and still running hard with open ground ahead to convince voters new to him and New Yorkers new to voting to take a chance on a broadly optimistic vision of free things and a more livable city.
Cuomo is running a gritted-teeth warning that it’s him or hell on earth here. And good luck finding a New Yorker who doesn’t already have a strong opinion about him, and about as likely as not a strongly negative one. So he knows his only shot is to clear the field and drive Mamdani’s negatives up.
(On Monday, Trump seemed to all but acknowledged Mamdani’s electoral inevitability, calling him a “Communist” online, predicting he’ll be “one of the best things to ever happen to our great Republican Party” and threatening that “He is going to have problems with Washington like no Mayor in the history of our once great City” in getting money or support.) Back in February, Mamdani told The New York Editorial Board (of which I’m a member) that “I think at its core, a mayor is a messenger, a delegate, a liaison.” That’s a good pitch for the job, especially as New Yorkers are looking for direction in these disorienting times and with Trump constantly thundering and intermittently sending bolts of lightning down into blue states and cities. But while jawboning can get you elected mayor, that’s not the job of mayor, where you have to deliver on the big things you’ve promised in what John Lindsay famously called “the second toughest job in America.” Not even four years ago, the messenger who met the moment was Adams. Now, his last act looks to be ushering in a four-year trial of the socialist future in the job he’d won in large part by bashing the left. The skills that get you to the head of the table aren’t really the ones that matter once you’re seated there. It turns out that the skills that get you to the head of the table of success aren’t really the same ones that matter once you’re seated there. Something to remember for a candidate whose biggest accomplishment by far to this point is the race he’s running right now, and who’s promising the moon. An untested young man is about to be on the hook to deliver on his promises as the boss of a quarter-million city workers, including nearly 35,000 cops and the person signing budgets that nearly a half-trillion dollars will flow through over the next four years. Amid the intoxication of imminent victory and all the national chatter about what it will mean for the city, the party and the country, here’s hoping that Zohran Mamdani doesn’t rest on his laurels but is preparing for the far greater challenge ahead.
Harry Siegel
Harry Siegel is a senior editor at the newsroom The City, a columnist for the New York Daily News and the producer and a co-host of the "FAQ NYC" podcast. 
