No one would ever have called this year’s race for mayor of New York City a foregone conclusion — not with a disgraced former governor, a surging democratic socialist and an incumbent battling corruption charges all in the running.
But on Thursday, it tipped into entirely uncharted territory.
The primary cause was Mayor Eric Adams, who, newly liberated from his criminal case, made a surprise 6 a.m. announcement that he would forgo the Democratic primary and run as a political independent this fall.
The decision was a pragmatic next step for a politician who has flamboyantly courted President Trump and his MAGA base, infuriating his own party as he sought a way out of his legal jeopardy. And it came just hours before candidates were required to deliver thousands of petitions to qualify for the June primary ballot.
But Mr. Adams’s opponents wasted little time trying to capitalize. A group whose catchy D.R.E.A.M. campaign — “Don’t Rank Eric or Andrew for Mayor” — had sought to persuade voters to leave Mr. Adams and former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo off ranked-choice ballots quickly changed its name to reflect its now-singular mission: “Don’t Rank Evil Andrew for Mayor.”
One Democratic primary candidate, State Senator Zellnor Myrie, cut a video offering himself as an antidote to the perceived political chaos. And a centrist lawyer who is running as an independent, Jim Walden, quickly challenged the mayor to debate.
New York City has a long history of candidates switching parties or running on a third-party ballot lines — sometimes successfully. Rarely, though, has a candidate done it seemingly so haphazardly as Mr. Adams, a onetime Republican who as recently as Wednesday insisted he still planned to run as a Democrat.
Some seasoned political analysts confidently predicted his switch would have little effect on the final result in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans six to one, and where Mr. Adams’s job approval ratings have fallen to record lows.
“He wasn’t going to be re-elected yesterday, and he isn’t going to be today,” said Howard Wolfson, a Democratic strategist and former deputy mayor who helped Michael R. Bloomberg win re-election in 2009, when he ran on the Independence and Republican Party lines. “His campaign is irrelevant.”
But Mr. Adams’s decision raises at least the possibility that the city could be headed toward a freewheeling, multicandidate general election unlike any it has seen since 1977. After losing the Democratic primary to Edward I. Koch that year, Mario M. Cuomo — Andrew Cuomo’s father — ran in general election on the Liberal Party line, only to fall short again.
In this case, it is becoming easier to imagine a scenario in which as many as a half dozen candidates are still be competing in November. They could include Mr. Adams; Andrew Cuomo, who leads the Democratic primary field; Curtis Sliwa, the leading Republican candidate; and Mr. Walden.
The left-leaning Working Families Party, a noted enemy of Mr. Cuomo, could also choose to give its general election ballot line to one of the race’s liberals and Mr. Cuomo’s rivals.
The group has already endorsed four candidates, including Zohran Mamdani, an assemblyman from Queens who is backed by the Democratic Socialists of America; Brad Lander, the city comptroller; Adrienne Adams, the speaker of the City Council; and Mr. Myrie, a state senator from Brooklyn.
Ana María Archila, co-director of the New York Working Families Party, said the party had already taken steps to run a place-holder candidate to preserve its ballot line in the general election as it awaits the Democratic primary results.
The party could later replace that person with a different candidate, a choice that would perhaps depend on who wins the Democratic primary.
“If one of our people comes really close in the Democratic primary, then that probably becomes the natural path,” Ms. Archila said.
If Mr. Cuomo ultimately wins the primary, she said, “that will be a huge factor for us” in deciding to run an opposing candidate in November.
Amid the tumult, Mr. Adams was expected to face questions for the first time as a candidate at a forum hosted on Tuesday afternoon by the Rev. Al Sharpton. The event posed an early test of how the mayor plans to win back the support of New Yorkers who widely disapprove of his job performance, and how his rivals will seek to portray his decision to drop out of the Democratic primary race.
Keith L.T. Wright, chair of the Manhattan Democratic Party, said that he would be supporting the Democratic nominee in the general election but that it was still too early to write Mr. Adams off.
“There is still a base of folks who are loyal to him and, in a general election, who the hell knows,” he said. “Unusual circumstances deserve unusual strategies. It’s been done before under different circumstances.”
Mr. Sliwa, who won nearly 30 percent of the vote citywide against Mr. Adams in 2021, was clearly rooting for the mayor to run as an independent. In an interview, he said that Democrats were “at each other’s throats” and predicted they could split their share of the vote.
“Then it’s like the Final Four in basketball,” he said. “It’s a jump ball.”
In the near term, the impact on the June Democratic primary appeared more straightforward. Even before his decision on Thursday, Mr. Adams had been badly trailing in the polls and was not expected to win.
Allies of Mr. Cuomo insist that he is best positioned to consolidate what remains of Mr. Adams’s working-class Black and Latino base. But the mayor’s exit from the primary contest could also clear the lane for solitary attacks on Mr. Cuomo and offer fellow Democrats a fresh opening to get the attention of voters.
Mr. Adams, for his part, expressed newfound optimism about his own candidacy on Thursday, after he won a long-sought reprieve in his legal case. He told Politico that he would remain a Democrat by party affiliation and seek to unite the base that drove him to victory in 2021.
“I have been this racehorse that has been held back,” he said. “This is so unnatural for me.”
Mr. Adams could further scramble the race, though, if he continues to veer rightward. That might alienate his traditional supporters, but could theoretically allow him to compete for independent and Republican voters, particularly if Mr. Trump lent his support.
The two men have courted one another for months. After the judge’s ruling dismissing the case against Mr. Adams on Wednesday, the mayor held up a copy of a book attacking the federal “deep state” written by Kash Patel, Mr. Trump’s F.B.I. director, and urged New Yorkers to read it.
Mr. Adams has several more weeks to collect the petitions needed to qualify for the ballot as an independent.
But his rebooted campaign, which is strapped for staff and money, got off to a rocky start. Mr. Adams was a no-show for a live on-air TV interview Thursday morning, after his team confirmed the appearance.
Nicholas Fandos is a Times reporter covering New York politics and government. More about Nicholas Fandos
Emma G. Fitzsimmons is the City Hall bureau chief for The Times, covering Mayor Eric Adams and his administration. More about Emma G. Fitzsimmons
Jeffery C. Mays is a Times reporter covering politics with a focus on New York City Hall. More about Jeffery C. Mays
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