It had barely been two months since Adrienne Adams became the last Democrat to join the New York City mayoral primary race when she got a call from a number she did not recognize.
It was Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old state assemblyman who had stormed to second place in the polls. He broached the idea of the two cross-endorsing each other.
Ms. Adams, 64, the first Black person to lead the City Council, needed the help. She was working furiously to raise enough money to meet the threshold for public matching funds. She, in turn, had something Mr. Mamdani needed: support from the city’s critical older Black electorate.
It may have seemed like a perfect fit, but Ms. Adams did not see it that way.
She and her advisers felt that Mr. Mamdani — a democratic socialist who has made campaign vows to make buses free, open city-owned grocery stores and freeze the rent for some apartment dwellers — was too far to the left and would alienate her base of moderate Democratic voters in southeast Queens.
On Friday, Ms. Adams made it official. She said she would not cross-endorse Mr. Mamdani or any other candidate, instead urging her supporters to rank her No. 1, followed by the remaining slate of contenders endorsed by the Working Families Party.
Those candidates include Mr. Mamdani, Brad Lander, the city comptroller, and Zellnor Myrie, a state senator, though Ms. Adams did not name them in her statement. She maintained that “Andrew Cuomo should not be mayor.”
“Black, working-class communities like mine have long been the backbone of the Democratic Party. We show up, we organize, we vote. But too often, we’re seen only for our political value, not for our leadership,” Ms. Adams said in a statement. “After much deliberation, I decided not to cross-endorse in this race. I won’t reinforce a pattern that has pushed my community to the sidelines for generations.”
Her decision amplified a familiar dispute playing out between the left and the city’s crucial Black electorate as the Democratic primary for mayor enters its final days.
The left is accusing Ms. Adams of jeopardizing its chances to defeat the current front-runner, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. But some establishment Black leaders have highlighted how the Black electorate is often taken for granted until deemed necessary.
“Good campaigns, and more importantly, effective governance, require a sustained and credible relationship with Black voters, rooted in their needs, lived experiences and priorities,” said Missayr Boker, a senior adviser to Ms. Adams. “That needs to happen well before it is time to ask for the support of Black voters. That is Adrienne’s record and how she has run her race. Every candidate in this race has had an equal opportunity to do the same.”
The Working Families Party, facing pressure to organize the left-leaning faction of the Democratic Party more cohesively than it did in 2021, when none of its chosen mayoral candidates made it to the final round of ranked-choice voting, praised Ms. Adams on Friday for “being a part of a coalition of candidates running to fight for working families, not billionaires.”
The conflict between the left flank of the Democratic Party and some Black leaders has seemed to worsen in recent years, as progressives — including some Black candidates — began to win seats in the State Legislature and the Council.
Progressive forces began pushing Democratic leadership toward more leftward stances on issues such as housing, policing and criminal justice reform. But some Black Democratic leaders questioned if those stances aligned with the desires of the Black and Latino communities they represented. Freezing the rent, for example, might not be popular with Black homeowners who rent out their property as a primary source of support and wealth.
“It’s not just a divide on the ideological spectrum, it’s also a generational divide. I think a lot of older Black leaders have viewed the party as a path to political and economic empowerment,” said Basil Smikle, a professor at the School of Professional Studies at Columbia and a Democratic political strategist. “Younger, more progressive voters don’t see the party as a vehicle for that at all and are a lot more candidate and issue driven.”
Mr. Mamdani’s campaign is doing well with voters under 45 and those who self-identify as more liberal. He has not seen the same level of success with Black voters.
A Marist poll released Wednesday found that Mr. Cuomo was running away with the Black vote at 48 percent. Ms. Adams was a distant second at 12 percent and Mr. Mamdani was at 11 percent.
In the closing weeks of the campaign, Mr. Mamdani has tried to make inroads with Black voters. He began visiting Black churches on Sundays two months ago, but campaign officials acknowledged that it had been hard for Mr. Mamdani to find an audience at some of them. Mr. Cuomo has spent nearly every Sunday visiting multiple Black churches since he entered the race.
Some also point to the lack of diversity in Mr. Mamdani’s massive corps of volunteers, which might be a hindrance in trying to persuade voters in crucial Black neighborhoods that he represents their interests.
While other candidates such as Mr. Myrie, a Black state senator from Brooklyn, have issued specific Black agendas, Mr. Mamdani has not. The assemblyman has centered his campaign on a broad promise of a more affordable city without focusing on specific groups.
Mr. Mamdani’s campaign acknowledged some of these shortfalls, pointing out that his district does not have a large Black population and that he has spent time introducing himself to voters at several forums geared toward Black voters and smaller meet-and-greets.
Karen Jarrett, a senior adviser for Black and Latino outreach for the Mamdani campaign, was hired in February. She said Mr. Mamdani had begun to win over more Black voters and had won endorsements from Black-dominated unions and elected officials.
Earlier this week, Mr. Mamdani and Michael Blake, a former assemblyman from the Bronx who is Black, agreed to cross-endorse each other. Mr. Mamdani has also received general support from other Black elected officials like Jumaane Williams, the public advocate, and Letitia James, the state attorney general who is Ms. Adams’s most powerful backer.
“I think there’s more work to do, but we have been able to get to 11 percent,” said Ms. Jarrett. “Every inch of that 11 percent, he’s organized and earned and found a way to connect with Black voters in New York.”
To Mr. Mamdani’s campaign, getting Ms. Adams’s cross-endorsement seemed essential but also logical. The two were among the four contenders currently endorsed by the Working Families Party, which has explicitly asked its chosen candidates to work together to try to keep Mr. Cuomo from winning the primary.
But Ms. Adams was not interested. She used social media to chastise Mr. Mamdani for calling for the abolishment of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. The post was deleted; Ms. Adams said it didn’t send the message she was trying to convey.
Then, during the second and final debate, Ms. Adams asked Mr. Mamdani whether he was more qualified than her to be mayor, seemingly questioning his experience much as Mr. Cuomo frequently had. Mr. Mamdani responded diplomatically, saying he respected Ms. Adams’s track record but believed his focus on affordability was best for the city.
Mr. Smikle said he understood the concern about Ms. Adams moving too far to the left, because a cross-endorsement was “asking Adrienne, who’s staked out a very specific path, to take on somebody else’s benefits and drawbacks with the coalition that they’ve put together.”
Jamaal Bowman, a former congressman from the Bronx who has endorsed Mr. Mamdani and is vigorously recruiting Black and Latino voters in his former district to rank Mr. Mamdani on their ballots, said he respected Ms. Adams but was “disappointed” that she was unwilling to cross-endorse Mr. Mamdani.
Her refusal to do so seemed unfair, he said, given that Mr. Mamdani had made a rare fund-raising appeal on her behalf, helping her qualify for matching funds.
“The Democratic establishment, which I would argue Adrienne represents, I see them take a lot from progressives but they don’t give a lot back,” said Mr. Bowman. “That’s why we have Donald Trump in the White House and that’s how we keep recycling people like Andrew Cuomo.”
Jeffery C. Mays is a Times reporter covering politics with a focus on New York City Hall.
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