Eric Adams Is Wobbling. Could Kathy Hochul Deal the Finishing Blow?

New York governor Kathy Hochul is not a regular viewer of Fox & Friends. So she didn’t see Mayor Eric Adams grinning and laughing on the show last Friday morning as Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s border czar, promised to be “up his butt” if the mayor didn’t deliver on his end of a deal to give federal immigration agents access to Rikers Island.

But Hochul was informed about her latest Adams-induced headache quickly enough, and she’s been scrambling to deal with the mess ever since. The Fox & Friends embarrassment was apparently the last straw for a group of Adams’s top deputy mayors, who reportedly met with him later that day and submitted their resignations, fed up with a boss who had allegedly traded the dropping of federal corruption charges against him in exchange for fealty to President Donald Trump’s assault on sanctuary city laws. (Adams has denied the allegations.) The crisis set off calls from New York elected officials and civic leaders for Hochul to boot Adams from City Hall by invoking an arcane mechanism in state law and the New York City charter.

As of Wednesday, Hochul is…thinking about it. She’s issuing statements about how seriously she is taking the matter, meeting with a range of New York power players to sound out their views, watching the calendar, and hoping time is on her side.

All of which makes for an unsatisfying emotional response, while the top of city government continues adrift. But there are multiple practical reasons for Hochul to play it safe and leave Adams standing, however badly he’s wobbling. For one thing, she can’t simply wave a wand and make Adams disappear. The process in the city charter for a New York governor to remove a mayor involves the lodging of charges and the opportunity to mount a defense. It’s a move that’s only been attempted once, in 1932, when then governor Franklin Roosevelt investigated Mayor Jimmy Walker—who short-circuited the proceedings by resigning and fleeing to England. (A somewhat parallel, only half-joking prediction about how the current drama ends: Trump eventually appoints Adams as ambassador to Turkey.) If Hochul were to go down that road now, it would likely be a long, public, and messy one, with an even weaker Adams remaining in City Hall while he fights removal.

Hochul is also wary of launching an essentially extrajudicial process while at the same time decrying Trump’s trampling of the rule of law, or of appearing to be swept along in the stampede of anti-Adams sentiment. That sounds admirably idealistic—though the governor has done plenty of things that have felt like a reaction to public opinion and media firestorms, such as sending the National Guard into the subways.

Then there’s the fact that attempting to eject Adams would risk inflaming Trump. But what was already a small factor in Hochul’s calculus is shrinking by the day, because the president is going to torment the governor no matter what she does about the mayor. Last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced a lawsuit against New York over the issuance of driver’s licenses to noncitizens. And on Wednesday Trump moved to follow through on his threats to “kill” congestion pricing in Manhattan, one of Hochul’s biggest policy successes.

The governor believes she can save congestion pricing in court. Yet Hochul is loath to make herself a full-throated leader of the Trump resistance. True, she is a cautious upstate centrist, but the reluctance is somewhat puzzling because dumping Adams and fighting Trump might be Hochul’s best play—both on principle and out of political self-interest. The governor’s public approval poll numbers have been in the 40s, and her 2026 reelection bid is likely to face fierce opposition from Republican congressman Mike Lawler, who will look to capitalize on Trump’s surprisingly strong New York showing last November. Which is one reason Hochul is leery of toppling Adams, New York’s second Black mayor, and potentially alienating his base, and why she’s been conspicuously consulting with prominent Black political figures, including the Reverend Al Sharpton.

Yet a Hochul adviser insists that reelection considerations are too far off in an unpredictable future, and that the governor’s highest priority when dealing with Adams is reducing the turmoil in city government, or at least not escalating it. Forcing Adams out of office anytime soon could, in one long-short scenario, result in the city being governed by four different mayors in less than one year. “She certainly understands the political ramifications of what she does,” the Hochul advisor says. “But she is genuinely focused on figuring out what most stabilizes city government. Because a functional city, particularly when it comes to crime and immigration, is good for everyone.”

Not to mention that several of those scenarios will likely involve Hochul’s former boss and current antagonist, Andrew Cuomo, who is plotting a comeback via City Hall. Hochul spent six years serving as Cuomo’s lieutenant governor, surviving a furious effort by Cuomo and his top aides, including Melissa DeRosa, to push Hochul off the 2018 ticket. Three years later, she stepped into the top job when Cuomo quit under a barrage of sexual harassment allegations (which he has denied).

The tension remains fresh on both sides, and now Cuomo is on the verge of a bid for mayor. If Adams were to leave office before March 26, his departure would trigger a special election, a circumstance that should favor the high-name-recognition Cuomo against a field of lower-profile Democrats. “If I were Kathy,” a veteran gubernatorial operative says, “I would announce this week that I plan to take action to remove the mayor and set the hearing for mid-to-late March. Orchestrate it so the conclusion of the removal is after the period for triggering a special.” And force Cuomo to run in a conventional June primary, where he’d still be the favorite, but it would be a fairer contest.

Perhaps the strangest outcome of all, though, would be if Mayor Cuomo turns out to be a good thing for Governor Hochul—at first, anyway. “He’s a menace, but he’s a competent administrator at some level. So he might settle things down in the city,” a high-ranking state Democrat says. “But he’d inevitably use the power to make her life harder.”