Mayor Eric Adams forcefully said Friday he will continue his uphill re-election campaign all the way to the end, rebuffing reports of an impending dropout in favor of a lucrative job offer from the Trump administration.
“I am staying in this race, I am the only one who can beat [Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran] Mamdani,” Hizzoner said during a brief, hastily-called Gracie Mansion press briefing on Sept. 5.
However, Adams appeared to acknowledge that he is entertaining job offers in a statement earlier Friday, where he said: “I will always listen if called to serve our country.” He had reportedly been offered a post at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and is being considered for ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
Following the press conference, Adams campaign spokesperson Todd Shapiro confirmed to reporters that Adams met with Trump advisor Steve Witkoff when he was in Florida earlier this week, confirming press reports.
Adams further denied that he will be in Washington D.C. to meet with Trump administration officials to discuss his political future on Monday, following a Friday report from NY1 that he would have a meeting with them next week. Both Adams and Shapiro, however, would not answer if the reported confab would take place on another day.
Adams goes on the attack
The mayor is mounting a longshot independent bid for a second term in office after sitting out the Democratic primary. The four-way general election contest currently has Mamdani ahead, but without majority support, with Adams, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa seemingly splitting the moderate and centrist vote.
On Friday, Adams came out firing against Cuomo, running his own independent campaign after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani by nearly 13%, calling him “a snake and a liar,” and suggesting that reports of Adams’ impending withdrawal from the mayor’s race were part of a history of the former governor derailing other Black politicians.
The mayor, however, did not cite any evidence to support his claim that Cuomo is behind the reports about him seeking a job in Trump’s administration.
Mamdani has also accused Cuomo of colluding with Trump to clear Adams out of the race and improve his own standing in the race.
A Cuomo spokesperson declined to comment on Adams’ remarks.
Cuomo on Thursday denied having any knowledge of Trump’s machinations and said that he had not spoken to the president in at least over a year. He also asserted that he does not want Trump involved with his own candidacy, but declined to say the same for Adams or Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, whom Trump’s aides are reportedly also considering offering a job to.
Adams further seethed that Cuomo and Mamdani were “two spoiled brats running for mayor” who “were born with silver spoons in their mouths,” suggesting that he alone represented the will of working-class New Yorkers. Mamdani is the son of an acclaimed independent filmmaker and a Columbia University professor, and Cuomo’s father, Mario Cuomo, was a three-term governor of New York.
“They are not like us. They never had to fight. They never had to struggle. They never had to go through difficult times like you and I,” he said.
In response, Mamdani blamed both Adams and Andrew Cuomo for the city’s affordability crisis, which has been the central focus of his campaign.
“Through the collusion and corruption of the past few months, our relentless focus on the affordability crisis — created by Andrew Cuomo and inflamed by Eric Adams — has not wavered,” Mamdani said in a statement. “In November, we’re going to deliver a city working New Yorkers can afford and turn the page on the broken, billionaire-backed politics of the past.”
Adams insisted he would remain in the race and believes he can win despite polls regularly showing him running third or fourth in the field, far behind Mamdani. He leaned into progress made since he took office in 2022 to reduce crime, guide the city’s post-pandemic recovery, and eliminate street homelessness.
“This is a city that I inherited where crime was out of control, COVID, no one wanted to be on our subway system,” he said. “We can’t go backwards.”
