Eric Adams abandons reelection bid for mayor of New York City

YC Mayor Eric Adams makes a statement during a press conference in New York, on Friday Sept. 5, 2025. Mayor Adams’s campaign was left foundering after repeated scandals, a federal indictment and his courtship of President Trump. (Olga Fedorova/The New York Times)

By NICHOLAS FANDOS, DANA RUBINSTEIN, WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM and MAGGIE HABERMAN

Mayor Eric Adams of New York City announced Sunday that he would abandon his foundering campaign for a second term, upending the race to lead the nation’s largest city just five weeks before Election Day.

In a nearly nine-minute video message that began with Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” the mayor conceded that despite his best efforts, he could no longer see a path to reelection and would conclude his tumultuous mayoralty at year’s end.

He blamed “continued media speculation about my departure” and a decision by the city’s Campaign Finance Board to deny him public matching funds for his campaign, which has flagged amid anemic poll numbers and a cloud of scandal around City Hall.

“Despite all we’ve achieved,” he said, “I cannot continue my reelection campaign.”

The mayor did not endorse one of his rivals. But he offered voters what appeared to be a veiled warning about Assembly member Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee and front-runner, and what he characterized as growing extremism in politics.

Without naming Mamdani, a democratic socialist, the politically moderate mayor warned that “insidious forces” were pushing “divisive agendas” in city politics. He claimed that “our children are being radicalized to hate our city and our country.”

“Major change is welcome and necessary,” Adams said. “But beware of those who claim the answer is to destroy the very system we built together over generations.”

In a copy of his prepared remarks shared with The New York Times shortly before the video’s release, Adams also vented about former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, another third-party candidate whom he has called “a snake and a liar.” In the prepared remarks, he said that politicians who waffled on key issues and sought to push others aside in their quest for power “cannot be trusted.”

But the comments appear to have been cut from the final video without explanation, stoking questions about whether Adams might eventually endorse Cuomo.

The extraordinary decision to quit the race ended weeks of speculation about Adams’ future. He had insisted publicly that he would see the campaign through, but behind the scenes had been exploring potential exit ramps to avoid an embarrassing finish. At one point, his advisers engaged in negotiations with President Donald Trump’s about an ambassadorship to Saudi Arabia.

Those talks fell apart, and Adams gave no indication Sunday that he had a specific job lined up after his term expires at the end of the year.

His name will remain on November’s ballot because the deadline to change it has passed.

The decision also signaled what may be the beginning of the end of a decades-long political career that was in turns exhilarating and unlikely. It took a working-class son of Queens, who said he was beaten by police as a teenager, to the highest office in New York City government, where accusations of corruption eventually undid him.

His exit all but guarantees that Adams, the city’s second Black mayor, will make history again as the first New York City leader to serve just one term since David N. Dinkins, the city’s first Black mayor, lost his reelection bid in the 1990s.

Whether Adams’ decision will be enough to reorder the race to succeed him may take longer to come into focus.

Cuomo, like Trump, had been openly agitating for Adams to drop out to consolidate opposition to Mamdani. Now, the former governor believes he can potentially pick up votes from Black and Orthodox Jewish voters who had supported Adams, and to unlock six- and seven-figure contributions from business leaders who had been hesitant to donate while the mayor was in the race.

But with so little time left, catching Mamdani will be no easy feat. Polls have consistently put Adams’ support in the single digits, suggesting that the number of votes he will free up for other candidates will be limited.

Cuomo, who is polling second, could get closer if he and his allies can persuade Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee, to also drop out of the race. But unlike the mayor, Sliwa has refused all entreaties to suspend his bid, even from Trump, the leader of his party, who publicly dismissed his candidacy as unserious.

In a video posted to social media and a string of television interviews Sunday, Mamdani projected confidence in his position in the race and sought to tie Adams to Cuomo, who resigned as governor in scandal four years ago.

“To Andrew Cuomo, you got your wish: You wanted Trump and your billionaire friends to help you clear the field,” he said. “But don’t forget, you wanted me as your opponent in the primary, too, and we beat you by 13 points. Looking forward to doing it again on November 4th.”

Cuomo, speaking Sunday after an unrelated event in Queens, praised Adams and sought to make the case that his exit “changes the entire dynamic of the race,” even with the mayor polling in the single digits.

“We are facing an existential threat in an extreme radicalism that threatens the existence of this city as we know it,” Cuomo said. “This is not an election between two people. This is an election between different philosophies.”

Adams, 65, a retired police captain who served as a state senator and Brooklyn’s borough president, stormed into City Hall four years ago with ambitious promises to rein in crime and restore the city after the COVID pandemic’s deep disruptions. And by many measures, he succeeded, presiding over both a resurgent economy and falling crime rates.

But New Yorkers, struggling with fast-rising costs, quickly tired of his bluster and of the constant drip of corruption allegations that surrounded his administration.

Frank Carone, one of the mayor’s closest advisers who was overseeing his campaign, suggested that his withdrawal “isn’t the end, but a pivot” to defeat Mamdani. Carone, who also runs a large lobbying business, said he personally planned to start working for Cuomo’s campaign or a super political action committee aligned with Cuomo’s interests.

“I had no doubt that the mayor would win and deserved another term,” he said. “However, for many reasons outside of our control, that seemed unlikely at this point.”

Adams himself tried to strike an upbeat tone in Sunday’s video. Sitting on the steps of Gracie Mansion with a large photograph of his mother, Adams ticked off accomplishments and maintained that he had been “wrongfully charged because I fought for this city.”

But he seemed to acknowledge that New Yorkers did not agree with his assessment, at least not yet.

“I hope that, over time, New Yorkers will see that this city thrived under our leadership, and that the policies we put in place should be continued and expanded,” he said. “I hope you will see that — despite the headlines and innuendo — I always put you before me.”