Just five weeks before election day, controversial New York City Mayor Eric Adams has upended the contentious race for his seat, announcing in a nearly nine-minute-long video that he would not seek a second term. The announcement comes after months of speculation, as the incumbent seemingly bickered with fellow independent candidate Andrew Cuomo over who should sacrifice their candidacy to best defeat Democrat Zohran Mamdani, who has been leading at the polls.
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“Despite all we’ve achieved, I cannot continue my re-election campaign,” Eric Adams said in the post. “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.”
Much of that speculation was fueled by Adams’s distinction as the first sitting New York City mayor to be indicted on criminal charges including bribery, wire fraud, and illegal foreign campaign donations. Adams has denied wrongdoing throughout, saying when the indictment was unsealed that the claims were “entirely false, based on lies.” (Adams’s representatives did not immediately respond to Vanity Fair.)
Following Donald Trump‘s election in 2024, Adams—who was elected as a Democrat in 2021—flew to Florida for lunch with the real estate magnate and attended his inauguration, moves seen by many as an effort to end the federal investigation against him. For many, it was the last straw in a mayoralty marked by crisis and controversy.
This isn’t the last voters will see of Adams, however, as his announcement comes after the deadline to print the ballots for the November 4 election has already passed. Recent polling showed him in fourth place, trailing Mamdani, Cuomo, and even Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, the cat-loving Guardian Angels founder who is currently in the midst of his second consecutive mayoral campaign.
Adams didn’t endorse any of his competitors on his way out the door, but he may have been alluding to Mamdani in his parting remarks, referring to “divisive agendas” and saying “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.”
According to The New York Times, Adams had also prepared some remarks aimed at Cuomo in an early draft of the speech, saying “politicians who waffled on key issues and sought to push others aside in their quest for power ‘cannot be trusted.’” Those sentiments did not appear in the version of Adam’s speech released today.
It remains unclear how deeply Adams’s departure will impact the race—or if it will at all. Polling from earlier this month suggests that Mamdani’s double-digit lead in the race will drop with Adams’s departure, with Cuomo benefitting. But with Sliwa insisting that he will remain in the race, that same polling predicts that Mamdani will retain the lead, a situation that has even Donald Trump seemingly rooting against the Republican candidate, and for Cuomo, a long-time ally.
“I would like to see two people drop out and have it be one-on-one,” Trump said of the race earlier this month. “And I think that’s a race that could be won.”
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