After much speculation, NYC Mayor Eric Adams said he will not seek the Democratic nomination for New York City mayor in June and will run instead as an independent. Adams made the call on April 3 in a video announcement, one day after a federal judge threw out the case for corruption against him.
The mayor also admitted on a separate podcast that the "Deep State" is real and is responsible for the prosecutorial attacks on him and President Donald Trump.
Former president Joe Biden's Justice Department charged Adams in September 2024 with taking illegal bribes from the Turkish government, which included luxury flights and hotel stays in Turkey. The scandal and the investigation took down much of the mayor's inner circle, gravely hurting his chances for reelection in 2025.
“More than 25,000 New Yorkers signed my Democratic primary petition, but the dismissal of the bogus case against me dragged on too long, making it impossible to mount a primary campaign while these false accusations were held over me,” Adams announced at a press conference, adding, “I’m not a quitter. I’m a New Yorker."
“And that is why today, although I am still a Democrat, I am announcing that I will forgo the Democratic primary for mayor and appeal directly to all New Yorkers as an independent candidate in the general election," Adams declared and added that he would always put New Yorkers “before politics and party.”
“I firmly believe that this city is better served by truly independent leadership, not leaders pulled at by the extremists on the far left or the far right, but instead those rooted in the common middle, the place where the vast majority of New Yorkers are firmly planted,” said the mayor.
Adams has always maintained that he was innocent of the allegations but admitted that the investigation had “shaken” the trust of New Yorkers and that he put his trust in the wrong people.
“I know that the accusations leveled against me may have shaken your confidence in me, and that you may rightly have questions about my conduct. And let me be clear, although the charges against me were false, I trusted people I should not have, and I regret that,” he continued.
The New York Post reported last week that Adams has a threadbare campaign in contrast to the other candidates gunning for his position and that he has few staffers and little infrastructure.
The mayor is facing several major Democrat opponents in November, including his main rival, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. He is also facing a rematch from the leader of the Guardian Angels and WABC radio host Curtis Silwa, who ran against him as a Republican in 2021.
The mayor's campaign has been suffering from funding after the New York City Campaign Finance Board denied him access to millions of dollars in public matching funds, due to questions regarding gaps in recordkeeping from his last campaign. The New York Post further noted at the time of his announcement that the embattled mayor's campaign website still called him “Democrat Eric Adams."
The last mayoral candidate to win an election in NYC as an independent was the late former mayor John Lindsay in 1969, when he left the Republican Party. Former mayor Michael Bloomberg ran as an independent in 2009, after running as a Republican.
Adams, a former police officer, has governed as a moderate Democrat and was a previously registered Republican in the 1990s before running as a New York state senator and Brooklyn Borough President as a Democrat. There is speculation that Adams will be running on a public safety line for the November general election.
The decision came after rumors that Adams would drop out of the Democratic primary, after briefly flirting with the idea to run as a Republican with support from President Trump. It is thought that this drastic move will allow Adams to avoid a costly primary and focus on the general election, by giving him time to rebuild his campaign. However, he risks alienating New York's heavily Democratic voter base and party apparatus, thus weakening his chances of winning a second term.
Meanwhile, Adams told podcaster Andrew Schultz that he now believes in the Deep State and said that a 2023 book by FBI Director Kash Patel swayed him of its existence. The Deep State is allegedly a group of unelected officials and their underlings who control key Federal agencies in Washington and run the government, instead of the President and Congress.
"Kash was in the [Department of Defense]. He was in the FBI. He prosecuted terrorists," said Adams.
"So he comes with this wealth of knowledge, and the way he breaks it down, it's just unbelievable what this deep state is about and and why it's so important for Americans that we cannot have a weaponizing of our prosecutorial powers," he continued.
The mayor has argued that the charges against him were politically motivated and retaliation from the Biden White House, particularly after he reversed his stance on immigration policy in February 2024 and publicly declared that New York should no longer be a sanctuary city.
"With Mayor Adams departure from the Democrat Party comes the realization for New Yorker voters, that their ideal moderate candidate from four years ago is a match for the leftist hardliners," New York-based Republican consultant and lobbyist Nathaniel Gavronsky told PJ Media.
"For Democrats doing what is best for the city, is equal to an unspeakable sin if it goes against the party line. Adams, who is now seen equally as a friend and foe, must now play a game of numbers for his long-term legacy, maybe in how he upsets the balance between Cuomo and Silwa," Gavronsky noted.
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