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From 'snake' to successor: Eric Adams endorses Andrew Cuomo for NYC mayor
By
Jimmy Vielkind
Published Oct 23, 2025
Modified Oct 23, 2025
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Al Bello/Getty Images
By
Jimmy Vielkind
Published Oct 23, 2025
Modified Oct 23, 2025
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New York City Mayor Eric Adams is endorsing former Gov. Andrew Cuomo as his successor, less than four weeks after the incumbent mayor yielded to pressure from Cuomo and others to end his re-election bid.
Cuomo, who is running on a third-party line after losing the Democratic primary to Zohran Mamdani, was the only candidate in Wednesday night’s debate who said he would accept Adams’ backing. The men sat together at a Knicks game immediately after the debate.
Their new alliance is an abrupt turnabout from the summer, when Adams attacked Cuomo’s record as governor and said he had a history of sidelining Black officials who stood in the way of his ambitions. Adams called Cuomo “a snake and a liar.”
But the mayor told the New York Times on Thursday that he is now prepared to campaign with Cuomo in areas where his support remains strong.
“I think that it is imperative to really wake up the Black and brown communities that have suffered from gentrification on how important this race is,” Adams told the Times, which first reported the endorsement.
The mayor said at a childcare announcement that he would appear with Cuomo later on Thursday. Adams’ campaign spokesperson, Todd Shapiro, confirmed the endorsement would happen. He said the time and location of the joint appearances is still being finalized.
Cuomo’s spokesperson didn’t comment.
The political impact of the endorsement is unclear. Polls show Mamdani with just under 50% of the total vote — and a double-digit lead over Cuomo. Republican Curtis Sliwa is polling in the mid-teens.
Adams was polling in single digits when he ended his campaign, dogged by corruption cases involving several of his close associates and federal charges against the mayor himself that were dropped after pressure from Trump administration officials.
Basil Smikle, a Columbia University professor and former executive director of the New York State Democratic Committee, said Cuomo and Adams share a common base that has largely shifted its support to Cuomo already.
But the endorsement gives Cuomo a shot of momentum and attention at a time when he’s trying to argue that Mamdani doesn’t have the experience to lead the nation’s largest city.
“Adams represents to a lot of voters a firewall against more progressive politics,” Smikle said. “They saw him as the one thing that stood between their view of governance of the city and something that was more left-leaning. Andrew Cuomo represents that also.”
Mamdani’s campaign said in a statement that the Adams-Cuomo alliance showed Cuomo would continue Adams’ practices at City Hall.
“We are going to turn the page on the politics of big money and small ideas that these two disgraced executives embody and build a city every New Yorker can afford,” he said.
Sliwa’s spokesperson didn’t return messages seeking comment. When asked during Wednesday’s debate whether he would accept Adams’ endorsement, Sliwa replied, “put that crook in jail.”
As the campaign enters its final stretch — early voting begins on Saturday — Cuomo’s attacks on Mamdani have grown darker. The former governor said on WABC that he couldn’t imagine Mamdani, who would become the city’s first Muslim mayor, handling the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
“He would be cheering,” host Sid Rosenberg said.
“Heh heh,” Cuomo replied. “That’s another problem.”
The former governor’s campaign also briefly posted an AI-generated video on social media purporting to show criminals who have endorsed Mamdani. The two-minute clip includes Mamdani eating rice from a bowl with his hands and shows a man who has apparently just beaten a woman.
Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi said the video was posted inadvertently by a junior campaign staffer and quickly taken down.
Smikle said the attacks are strategic fear-mongering — that he expects will continue.
“ People have already formed their opinion” of Cuomo, Smikle said. “So, the one tactic he has left isn't to get people to embrace him — it's to get voters to hate his opponents more.”
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new york city
Jimmy Vielkind
Jimmy Vielkind covers how state government and politics affect people throughout New York. He has covered Albany since 2008, most recently as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Jimmy led a team of reporters that won a New York Press Club award for coverage of Andrew Cuomo’s downfall and was on a team that won a Gerald Loeb Award for coverage of Amazon’s HQ2 process. A native of the Capitol Region, Jimmy has two degrees in urban planning. His position is funded by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Reach Jimmy at [email protected].
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