New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced Sunday that he is dropping his third-party bid for re-election, narrowing the field for November’s election.
“Despite all we’ve achieved, I cannot continue my re-election campaign,” Adams said in a video posted to X. “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.”
In a nearly nine-minute video, Adams — who enjoyed strong ratings from New Yorkers early in his term but saw his standing plummet after being indicted on federal corruption charges and then seeing those charges dropped by the Trump administration — said he hoped New Yorkers “will see that despite the headlines and the innuendo, I always put you before me.”
A source close to the mayor said that Adams’ dropping out was “unfortunate,” noting that “his policies were best for this city.”
The question now is how Adams’ move shapes the mayoral race going forward in the nation’s biggest city.
Adams’ announcement comes after weeks of speculation that he could exit the race and help consolidate support behind former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is also running a third-party bid for mayor against Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, a state legislator. Mamdani defeated Cuomo in the June Democratic primary.
However, Adams’ name will still be on ballots this fall, since he exited the race after a deadline to print them. And the limited public polling on the possibility of Adams dropping out showed Cuomo benefitting but a critical mass of voters also still siding with Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa. Those polls suggest that Cuomo’s best shot at defeating Mamdani comes in a one-on-one race.
Adams has not been a major factor in the race for some time. The public polls have shown him running in a distant fourth place, with Mamdani staked to a double-digit lead ahead of Cuomo and then Sliwa, with Adams further behind.
Adams urged his successor to “continue the work we started, lowering the cost of living, investing in quality of life and staying laser-focused on reducing crime and disorder through investments in policing, mental health, substance abuse care, homelessness services and community-based initiatives.”
The mayor did not make an endorsement in the video, but Adams did appear to take a swipe at Mamdani, arguing that “extremism is growing in our politics.”
“Too often, insidious forces use local government to advance divisive agendas with little regard for how it hurts everyday New Yorkers,” he said. “Major change is welcome and necessary, but beware of those who claim the answer [is] to destroy the very system we built together over generations. That is not change, that is chaos.”
Adams’ decision is a full reversal from his position just days ago, when he declared in a social media post on X that he was “not going anywhere.”
“All of the noise, all of the rumors — none of that matters,” he said in the same post.
But Adams laid out a rationale for dropping out in a Saturday MSNBC interview, in which he accused the media of sandbagging his campaign and lamented what he called “bogus” corruption charges against him. During a Sunday morning local radio appearance hours before dropping out, Adams focused exclusively on touting his administration’s achievements on issues like sanitation.
In an interview on “The Breakfast Club” that aired on Thursday, he suggested that reports of him considering dropping out or being offered other positions hurt his fundraising efforts.
“I answered that 101 times,” Adams said when asked whether he would drop out of the race.
“Our goal is to finish this race,” he added later, noting that he believed he had to win a court battle over campaign funds.
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump told reporters he would like to see two candidates in the crowded election leave the race to boost the chances of defeating Mamdani, a progressive who trounced Cuomo in New York’s Democratic primary in June.
“I would like to see two people drop out and have it be one on one,” Trump said at a White House dinner in early September. “I think that’s a race that could be won.”
“I don’t think you can win unless you have one on one, because somehow he’s gotten a little bit of a lead,” Trump added. “I don’t like to see a communist become mayor, I will tell you that.”
Adams was elected as a Democrat in 2021. But he decided earlier this year to seek re-election as an independent, amid cratering poll numbers in his party in the aftermath of his federal indictment and then the move by Trump’s Department of Justice to drop those charges, arguing that it needed Adams’ cooperation on the president’s immigration and deportation agenda.
Adams was indicted in September 2024 on federal charges, including bribery and campaign finance violations. The Department of Justice alleged that he “used his prominent positions in New York City government to obtain illegal campaign contributions and luxury travel.”
Adams’ announcement was first reported by the New York Post.
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