New York City Mayor Eric Adams holds a press briefing after former Governor Andrew Cuomo enters the mayoral race on March 03, 2025 in New York United States.
Selcuk Acar | Anadolu | Getty Images
Fresh off the dissolution of his criminal corruption case, New York City Mayor Eric Adams says he’s back to focusing on working for New Yorkers. He just plans to do it with another party.
The embattled Democrat announced Thursday that he will run instead for mayor as an independent, leaving Andrew Cuomo, who resigned as governor of New York amid a sexual harassment controversy, the primary contender at the top of the blue ticket. City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams is also running.
I have always put New York’s people before politics and party—and I always will. I am running for mayor in the general election because our city needs independent leadership that understands working people.
— Eric Adams (@ericadamsfornyc) April 3, 2025
The development comes with three months to go until a Democratic primary that is likely to choose the city’s next mayor. Adams faces a large field of challengers and several Democrats who say he’s now too indebted to Trump for New Yorkers to be sure he’ll prioritize their interests. A recent poll shows Cuomo trouncing him.
Adams has said he’s “solely beholden to the 8.3 million New Yorkers that I represent, and I will always put this city first.”
As recently as Jan. 6, the assistant U.S. attorneys in New York who were prosecuting Adams wrote in court papers that they continued to “uncover additional criminal conduct by Adams.” But a month later, their new superiors in Washington decided to abandon the case.
In court filings and a hearing, acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove has said he was “particularly concerned about the impact of the prosecution on Mayor Adams’ ability to support” Trump’s immigration objectives. Bove also has questioned the prior administration’s motives in pursuing Adams, who had criticized then-President Joe Biden’s handling of an influx of migrants.
The Trump administration’s acting U.S. attorney in New York, Danielle Sassoon, resisted Bove’s order, saying she couldn’t defend a dismissal linked to political considerations.
Adams, a retired police captain and former state lawmaker and Brooklyn official, was elected in 2021 as a centrist Democrat in one of the United States’ liberal strongholds. But since his indictment in September, Adams has cultivated a warmer relationship with Trump, telling his staff not to criticize the president publicly and making media appearances with administration officials.
Adams insists that he’s just looking out for the city by having a working relationship with the administration.
