NYC Mayor Eric Adams drops out of Democratic primary, says he’s running for reelection as an independent

NEW YORK — Eric Adams announced Thursday that he won’t seek the Democratic nomination for mayor and instead run as an independent in this fall’s general election — a move that drastically reshapes the dynamic of the race.

Adams, who just earlier this week claimed he would vie for the Democratic nod, attributed his abrupt shift to Wednesday’s dismissal of his federal corruption indictment, a decision that still left him severely politically vulnerable.

“The dismissal of the bogus case against me dragged on too long, making it impossible to mount a primary campaign while these false accusations were held over me, but I’m not a quitter,” he said in a pre-recorded video released by his campaign. “I am a New Yorker, and that is why today, although I am still a Democrat, I am announcing that I will forego the Democratic primary for mayor and appeal directly to all New Yorkers as an independent candidate.”

The announcement — rolled out the same day petitions were due to qualify for June’s Democratic mayoral primary — comes as the embattled Adams faces serious challenges.

His approval ratings have plummeted to historic lows, his fundraising has all but screeched to a halt, he has little visible campaign infrastructure, ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo is seen as a favorite to replace him, and critics and former allies alike have raised concerns that he’s beholden to President Donald Trump because of his administration’s successful bid to drop his indictment.

Adams, a onetime registered Republican, is also staring down growing outrage in the city over his warming relationship with Trump, whose Justice Department secured the dismissal of his indictment after informing the mayor it expects him to play a larger role in assisting the president with targeting immigrant New Yorkers for deportations. In turn, Adams has pledged to let ICE on Rikers Island and committed to not publicly criticize Trump, while cozying up to the president’s inner circle, including by attending his inauguration in January after a last-minute invite.

The judge who dismissed Adams’ case said the law left him no choice except to kill the indictment that charged him with orchestrating a sweeping bribery and campaign finance fraud scheme involving Turkish government operatives. But the judge also defended the merits of the case and slammed the Trump DOJ’s “disturbing” effort to secure immigration enforcement assistance from Adams, writing, “Everything here smacks of a bargain: dismissal of the Indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions.”

In his video announcement, Adams maintained he has done nothing wrong, but for one of the first times expressed regret in the context of his indictment, the first against a sitting New York City mayor in modern history.

“I know that the accusations leveled against me may have shaken your confidence in me and that you may rightly have questions about my conduct, and let me be clear: Although the charges against me were false, I trusted people I should not have, and I regret that,” he said.

Adams’ new campaign, which is expected to be led by his longtime confidant Frank Carone, will focus on pressing the message that his criminal case and other corruption scandals engulfing his administration distracted from accomplishments, like drops in some crime categories and an uptick in some forms of affordable housing construction, Carone told the Daily News on Thursday.

Adams will need to submit another set of petitions by May 27 in order to qualify to run as an independent in the Nov. 4 general election. Carone said he will do so.

The switch to an independent run, first reported by Politico, comes after Adams has fared poorly for months in polls of the Democratic mayoral primary set for June 24, typically placing third or fourth in most surveys, a low ranking for an incumbent.

Running as an independent will give him more time to build up his campaign coffers and convince voters to support him in the November election. He has about $3 million in his political war chest and says he will try to overturn the Campaign Finance Board’s decision to deny him public matching funds now that his indictment is undone.

But Adams’ campaign switch also sets up a four-way general election between him, whoever clinches the Democratic nomination, Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa and fellow independent Jim Walden.

New York City’s deep blue politically, and in recent decades, winners of Democratic mayoral primaries typically go on to become the head of City Hall.

Candidates running on independent ballot lines have historically not fared well in local citywide elections.

In his video, Adams, a moderate Democrat who was elected in 2021 on a pro-police platform, quoted John Lindsey, one of the only mayors in recent memory who won a general election as an independent.

“As Mayor Lindsey said when he successfully ran as an independent candidate for mayor, ‘I have made mistakes,’ and I am saying to you my fellow New Yorkers: So did I,” he said before listing actions he explained he didn’t regret, including focusing on fighting crime.

“And it wasn’t a mistake to put politics aside, defy my party when needed and speak with a voice of working New Yorkers,” Adams added, a reference to his persistent criticism of President Joe Biden’s handling of the migrant crisis, a stance that drew ire from many fellow Democrats.

Cuomo, who resigned as governor in 2021 amid sexual harassment accusations he denies, has consistently polled as the front-runner to win the Democratic primary. But there are more than a half dozen other candidates vying for the nomination, too, including Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, City Comptroller Brad Lander and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams.

“Just one day after a slimy deal from Donald Trump got his corruption charges dropped, Eric Adams has officially left the Democratic party,” Mamdani, a democratic socialist who has polled as the runner-up to Cuomo in many recent surveys, said after Adams’ move. “The irony is, there is nothing ‘independent’ about Eric Adams, who is completely beholden to real estate moguls, billionaires, and the far-right.”

Even before Thursday’s announcement, many of Adams’ top allies, including Brooklyn Democratic Party boss Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, defected from him to endorse Cuomo for mayor instead. To date, Adams doesn’t tout any prominent endorsement for his reelection.

In his video, Adams didn’t call out any of his opponents by name, but slammed “some” for “advocating against more police” and “fighting the pro-growth strategies of our administration.”

“I humbly put my record up against any of these other candidates,” he said.

According to sources familiar with the matter, Adams and his team have for weeks privately weighed the possibility of running as an independent amid his legal woes and narrow chances of prevailing in the Democratic primary.

But in public, he has insisted he’s running as a Democrat. That includes this past Tuesday, when Adams said in a radio appearance: “I’m going to be a Democrat, I’m going to run as a Democrat, and I’ve said that over and over again.”

Adams has switched party affiliation before.

In the mid-1990s, he became a Republican, only to flip back to Democrat in the early 2000s before running successfully for his first elected position as a state senator representing central Brooklyn.

“There is not a liberal or conservative way to fix New York,” Adams said in Thursday’s video, “but there is a right way and a wrong way, and true leaders don’t just know the right path, they have the guts to take it.”