The New York City mayor’s race “didn’t stop on June 24, it started on June 24.”
That was the message a defiant Mayor Eric Adams conveyed at a chaotic kick-off event for his independent general election bid on the steps of City Hall on Thursday, just two days after the June 24 Democratic primary won by socialist Zohran Mamdani.
“We’ve got people from all across the city and different ethnicities and groups, not people who read about me, but people I have touched individually,” Adams said of those gathered for his announcement. “Look at the display that’s here of different languages and different cultures, all of wanting the same thing. I’m so proud to be here to say to the people of the City of New York: I am seeking reelection.”
The event featured a speaker lineup of ex-elected officials, including former City Council Members Inez Dickens and Fernando Cabrera, as well as faith leaders like Bishop Chantel Wright and Sheikh Musa Drammeh. Also present were Adams’ mentor Rev. Herbert Daughtry, his campaign staffer Brianna Suggs — whose home was raided by federal agents in 2023, and Winnie Greco, a former top Adams aide who resigned amid a federal probe last year.
The moderate incumbent mayor, who sat out the primary amid his now-dismissed corruption case, launched his campaign alongside a couple of hundred supporters on the heels of Mamdani likely securing the Democratic nomination.
Mamdani won on an affordability-centered agenda that includes proposals like freezing rent increases for the city’s roughly 1 million stabilized tenants, opening city-run grocery stores, and making buses free and faster. He wants to fund those proposals by raising taxes on wealthy New Yorkers and corporations.
Adams, a historically unpopular mayor, faces a steep uphill reelection battle against a progressive candidate who appears to have won by a wide margin over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose campaign bore many similarities to Adams’ winning 2021 bid. It remains unclear if Cuomo will participate in the general election on his own independent line or what the city’s business and real estate leaders, uneasy with a possible Mamdani mayoralty, will do to thwart his campaign.
Also running in November are Guardian Angels Founder Curtis Sliwa on the Republican line and independent attorney Jim Walden.
Adams met with business honchos, including hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, in Manhattan on Wednesday night, according to a report from the New York Times. They reportedly discussed how to stop Mamdani and bolster Adams’ reelection efforts.
‘Four more years’ vs. no more years
The event featured chants from Adams’ supporters of “four more years,” as protesters just outside the gates in City Hall Park countered with “shut it down.”
A couple of protesters broke through the throng of reporters surrounding Adams and interrupted his remarks. One yelled, “Eric Adams sold us out to Trump” and another called him a “f**king criminal” — referring to the mayor’s alleged deal with Trump have his federal case dismissed and the case itself.
The mayor took aim at Mamdani, casting himself as the true champion of working-class New Yorkers based on his own working-class upbringing and Mamdani as a charlatan who was born with a “silver spoon”—presumably referring to the lawmaker’s mother’s being an independent filmmaker.
“This election is a choice between a candidate with a blue collar and one with a suit and a silver spoon,” Adams said. “A choice between dirty fingernails and manicured hands. A choice between someone who delivered lower crime, the most jobs in history, the most new housing built in decades, and an Assembly member who did not pass a bill. This election is a choice between real progress and empty promises. A future for working people and not a fantasy state.”
Some of the other speakers also sought to paint Mamdani’s self-identification as a socialist as dangerous for the city.
Mijal Bitton, a spiritual leader and co-founder of the Downtown Minyan, contended that socialism ravaged her home country of Argentina and that she does not want to see the same happen to the Big Apple.
“I’ve seen what happens when politicians weaponize envy, when they use frustration to divide instead of lifting up,” Bitton said. “My family has lived what happens when socialist promises collapse economies.”
In response, Mamdani argued Adams’ poor stewardship of the city has caused the very affordability crisis that his campaign is focused on tackling. He charged that Adams has “taken almost every opportunity to exacerbate it, all while partnering with Donald Trump to tear our city apart.”
“Since Oct. 23, I have run on a promise to end this era of corruption, incompetence, and the betrayal of working-class New Yorkers,” Mamdani said in a statement. “Today is no different. Just as voters made clear on Tuesday, they will do so again in November – choosing a city they can afford and bringing an end to the politics and politicians of the past.”
