Mayor Eric Adams endorsed former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in the New York City mayor’s race on Thursday, casting aside months of bitterness to try to stop the momentum of Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee.
Mr. Adams, a Democrat, ended his re-election campaign last month after it became clear that he did not have a path to victory in the November election. He lashed out at Mr. Cuomo for pressuring him to leave the race, calling him “a snake and a liar.”
But Mr. Cuomo and Mr. Adams clearly appeared to have mended fences by Wednesday night, when they sat together courtside at the New York Knicks’ season opener. Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat running as a third-party candidate, rushed to Madison Square Garden from Queens immediately after the final debate of the race ended.
On Thursday afternoon, Mr. Adams made it official, appearing at a news conference with Mr. Cuomo on a sidewalk in East Harlem. “Brothers fight,” Mr. Adams said. “But when families are attacked, brothers come together.”
Mr. Adams said in an interview earlier Thursday that he would campaign with Mr. Cuomo in neighborhoods where the mayor is most popular in hopes of convincing people to vote for the former governor.
“I think that it is imperative to really wake up the Black and brown communities that have suffered from gentrification on how important this race is,” Mr. Adams said.
“They have watched their rents increase in terms of gentrification and they have been disregarded in those neighborhoods, and I’m going to go to those neighborhoods and speak one on one with organizers and groups and I’m going to walk with the governor in those neighborhoods and get them engaged.”
It is far from certain if the mayor’s endorsement might meaningfully boost Mr. Cuomo’s campaign or if it could actually backfire. Mr. Adams has record-low approval ratings after facing federal corruption charges that were later dismissed by the Trump administration.
Mr. Cuomo rose in the polls by 10 points after Mr. Adams left the race, suggesting that he has already won the backing of most of the mayor’s supporters. But Mr. Cuomo still trails Mr. Mamdani, a state assemblyman and democratic socialist, by double digits.
Mr. Mamdani dismissed the news of the endorsement in a statement.
“Today confirms what we’ve long known: Andrew Cuomo is running for Eric Adams’s second term,” he said. “It’s no surprise to see two men who share an affinity for corruption and Trump capitulation align themselves at the behest of the billionaire class and the president himself. We are going to turn the page on the politics of big money and small ideas that these two disgraced executives embody and build a city every New Yorker can afford.”
Speaking later at a news conference, he noted that the president had first pushed Mr. Adams to drop out and then spoken of his desire for the field to consolidate further in opposition to Mr. Mamdani. “We know that in a moment when New Yorkers are looking for an answer to the authoritarianism that we’re seeing from Washington, D.C., they don’t want the continuation of making City Hall into an embassy of that same administration,” Mr. Mamdani said.
Mr. Adams said in the interview that he was worried that Mr. Mamdani’s ideas were too extreme, pointing to his plan to disband the Police Department’s “strategic response group,” which is often used to respond to protests, as an example.
“I ran on a promise of making our city safe,” Mr. Adams said. “And any mayoral candidate that wants to disband units like S.R.G., that wants to decriminalize prostitution, that wants to empty out 3,000 dangerous inmates from Rikers to return back to the communities that they preyed on, a mayor that wants to divide the city on taxes based on ethnicity and run out high-income earners, that mayor that won’t denounce globalize the intifada — all of those indicators tell us that all the work I’ve done to bring our city together to make us safer, to ensure that our economy is stabilized.”
Mr. Mamdani has shifted his position on the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which some view as a call for violence against Jews. On a podcast earlier this year, Mamdani declined to condemn the phrase, which he does not use; he later said it was not his job to police other people’s language. He now says he would discourage people from using it.
Mr. Adams and Mr. Cuomo are both moderate Democrats who share similar pro-business stances and have called for hiring more police officers. They also have similar voting bases that have included Black voters and ultra Orthodox Jewish voters.
The two men were friends and political allies until Mr. Cuomo entered the Democratic primary for mayor in March, seizing on the mayor’s sudden vulnerability. Mr. Adams has often criticized Mr. Cuomo’s record as governor, including his efforts to reform bail laws. Mr. Adams has also warred with the left wing of his party and views Mr. Mamdani as a threat to his legacy.
Mr. Cuomo, who is trying to win over moderate and conservative voters in the final weeks of the race, has praised Mr. Adams in recent months and said that he hoped that the mayor was “at peace with his decision” to exit the race.
“Both the mayor and myself are Democrats, and we do see Mamdani as an existential threat,” Mr. Cuomo said in an interview with NY1. “A person who’s dangerously inexperienced who could hurt this city.”
With early voting starting on Saturday, Mr. Cuomo has limited time to alter the trajectory of the race. Mr. Cuomo and his allies have ratcheted up the pressure on Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee, to drop out, but he has repeatedly refused.
Mr. Cuomo said during the debate that he would welcome an endorsement from Mr. Adams; Mr. Mamdani and Mr. Sliwa said they would decline one. Mr. Adams and Mr. Cuomo were soon seen shaking hands, smiling and giving thumbs-ups from the Knicks game.
Two key allies of the mayor have also recently endorsed Mr. Cuomo: Frank Carone, a top adviser to Mr. Adams, and Randy Mastro, the first deputy mayor.
Speaking Thursday at a news conference outside a subway station, Mr. Sliwa, who is polling at about 15 percent, scoffed at the news of the endorsement, telling reporters that the two men were “corrupt birds of a feather flocking together.”
And alluding to Mr. Adams’s past criticism of the former governor, Mr. Sliwa said, “The guy who called Andrew Cuomo a snake is now the snake charmer. Are you surprised by that?”
Jeffery C. Mays and Michael Gold contributed reporting.
Debra Kamin is an investigative reporter for The Times who covers wealth and power in New York.
Emma G. Fitzsimmons is the City Hall bureau chief for The Times, covering Mayor Eric Adams and his administration.
The post Eric Adams Endorses Andrew Cuomo for Mayor appeared first on New York Times.
