Can NYC Mayor Adams survive a foreign bribery scandal?

City Hall in Manhattan, Sept. 6, 2024. Even before his indictment, Mayor Eric Adams was facing mounting calls for his resignation. (Juan Arredondo/The New York Times)

By Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Jeffery C. Mays

As the first sitting mayor in New York City history to be charged with a crime, Mayor Eric Adams found himself stranded in a bit of uncharted territory.

Calls for his resignation were piling up. Several of his most powerful appointees had fled the administration. Reliable allies were more circumspect in offering support.

And even a routine news conference outside Gracie Mansion, if anything could be considered routine given the circumstances, was turned upside down Thursday when Adams’ words of defense were sometimes drowned out by shouts of “you are a disgrace.”

A more significant warning sign soon followed, when the Rev. Al Sharpton, one of the mayor’s closest supporters, expressed concern Thursday that Adams’ aggressive self-defense could hurt Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats electorally, and said that he would be convening a meeting with Black leaders to chart a path forward.

Adams has vowed to continue on as mayor, fighting to keep a job he loves and one that he has said was ordained by God.

Adams acknowledged that it was a “painful day” and called for a speedy trial.

“I ask New Yorkers to wait to hear our defense,” he said.

The next few days could determine whether Adams can stay put and whether his administration will continue to descend into chaos. Another test may arrive quickly: Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Adams, asked that the mayor’s first appearance in court take place Friday or Monday, according to a court filing. Spiro told the federal judge in the case that prosecutors do not object.

The stunning 57-page indictment accusing the mayor of bribery and of accepting $100,000 in travel benefits led to a wave of new calls for Adams to resign or to be ousted.

Two elected officials could be critical: Gov. Kathy Hochul, a political ally who has the power to remove him, and Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader. Both are deeply focused on the November election, and both declined, for now, to pressure Adams to step aside.

Jeffries called the indictment a “serious and sober moment for New York City” and said that Adams was entitled to the presumption of innocence.

“A jury of the mayor’s peers will now evaluate the charges in the indictment and ultimately render a determination,” he said. “In the meantime, I pray for the well-being of our great city.”

Addressing reporters Thursday, Hochul kept her thinking on the matter to herself, saying only that she would be thoughtful and deliberative about her next step. Even so, she appeared to recognize the responsibility — and opportunity — in the choice before her.

“I have a unique responsibility here to make sure I do right by all people in this great state,” she said, taking note of the city’s residents: “I also represent 8.3 million New Yorkers.”

There is another way to force Adams out, relying on a five-member “committee on mayoral inability” that has never been deployed.

But a growing number of the mayor’s rivals pressed him to resign for the good of the city.

While the mayor was sequestered for much of Thursday at Gracie Mansion, his home in Manhattan, Brad Lander, the city comptroller who is running for mayor, held a well-attended news conference in the rotunda of City Hall to assert that the management of the city would suffer under Adams.

The mayor, he said, cannot possibly handle the plethora of problems facing the city, such as the housing crisis and the influx of migrants, while fighting the criminal case against him and the increasing number of vacancies in his administration.

Quality candidates for important leadership roles are not going to feel comfortable working for someone who is under federal indictment, Lander said.

“He can’t provide the leadership that the mayoralty demands,” he said. “The charges are really serious and they are going to take serious work, not just from his lawyer, but from him.”

Political consultants and former New York officials doubted that Adams would step aside, given his combative stance and personality.

Chris Coffey, a Democratic political strategist who ran Andrew Yang’s mayoral campaign against Adams in 2021, said that it was extremely unlikely that Adams would resign and that his fate would most likely be decided by a deal with prosecutors or at the ballot box next June in the Democratic primary.

“He’s not going to resign because of media or political pressure,” he said.

Former Gov. David Paterson said that it was difficult to face pressure to resign — something that happened to him in 2010 when he ended his campaign for governor. But he said he had known “spiritually that I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“It’s a very hard thing to do, and most times when you’ve seen an elected official resign, it’s because there is condemning evidence against them,” he said.

Indeed, during a defiant news conference in front of Gracie Mansion with a group of Black clergy and community leaders, the mayor somewhat mockingly referred to the charges as a “story,” much in the way that he had routinely referred to the federal investigation that resulted in his indictment as a “review.”

“The story will come from the federal prosecutors,” the mayor said.

He also pledged to continue running the city, saying, “my day-to-day will not change,” and promised that there would be no decline in the city’s quality of life or services.

“It’s an insult to the hardworking people of this city that anyone will say that they won’t do their jobs while this case proceeds in the background,” Adams said.

As he spoke outside Gracie Mansion, the symbolism of those he chose to surround him — a group of clergy and community leaders, almost all of them Black — could not be missed.

Adams has tried to make the case that he is being targeted because he is Black, even going so far as to compare himself to the city’s first Black mayor, David Dinkins, calling himself “Dinkins 2.”

But protesters at Gracie Mansion were not moved. They compared his rhetoric to that of former President Donald Trump and said he had brought shame to Dinkins’ legacy.

“Resign, resign, resign,” the crowd chanted as Adams ended the news conference.