Mayor Eric Adams won’t be on the debate stage Thursday night because he abandoned his campaign for re-election last month. That hasn’t stopped him from voicing his opinion about who should replace him — and trying to shore up his legacy now that he is certain to be a one-term mayor.
“Don’t let anyone fool you to believe this race is over,” Mr. Adams said during an interview on “The Reset Talk Show” on Wednesday. “Trust me, there’s a lot of time to determine who’s going to be the next mayor of the City of New York.”
The mayor said he had been in discussions with former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who is trailing the Democratic nominee, Zohran Mamdani, by double digits in polls, about an endorsement.
In the interview, Mr. Adams said that endorsing Mr. Mamdani was a “nonstarter” because of his membership in the Democratic Socialists of America and his embrace of policies such as decriminalizing prostitution and closing the Rikers Island jail complex.
While Mr. Cuomo has said he would “welcome” an endorsement from the mayor, Dora Pekec, a spokeswoman for Mr. Mamdani, said the campaign had no interest in Mr. Adams’s support.
“Zohran isn’t seeking the endorsement of a mayor who riddled City Hall with corruption, raised the rent on New Yorkers four years in a row and happily capitulated to Trump,” Ms. Pekec said. “But of course Andrew Cuomo is, because he’s not offering New Yorkers anything new: no vision, no solutions, just a rerun of Adams’s failed leadership.”
At a news conference at City Hall on Thursday, Mr. Adams said that he would not be watching the debate live but would “catch it on the review.” The mayor is scheduled to attend the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner at 7 p.m., just as the debate is beginning.
Mr. Adams’s re-election prospects suffered a devastating blow last September, when he became the first sitting mayor in modern New York City history to be indicted. Federal prosecutors charged him with five counts of corruption, including bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations.
Several people in his administration were separately indicted or subject to criminal investigation, including his chief adviser and longtime political strategist, Ingrid Lewis-Martin.
Mr. Adams embarked on a public campaign to curry favor with President Trump before the U.S. Department of Justice dropped the charges against him. The judge in the case called the decision a “quid pro quo to extract policy concessions” from Mr. Adams, and the mayor’s approval ratings, already dismal, sank further. Advisers to the president discussed offering the mayor a job if he dropped out of the election.
Mr. Adams sees his path differently. He calls the corruption charges “lawfare” intended to hurt his reputation. Over the last few weeks he has blamed the news media for not covering his accomplishments and for undermining his support among his base of moderate Black voters.
In recent appearances, Mr. Adams has trumpeted what he sees as his administration’s accomplishments in reducing crime and building affordable housing, which will be important issues in Thursday night’s debate.
The mayor has also mused about his future. He said earlier Thursday that he wanted to get a doctorate and work on a book and a documentary about his time in office.
A day earlier, he said he had received three offers for positions that would be his “dream job” — other than mayor.
“Listen, there’s a sunrise and a sunset to everything,” Mr. Adams said. “It’s not the quantity, it’s the quality.”
Jeffery C. Mays is a Times reporter covering politics with a focus on New York City Hall.
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