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Independent run gives Mayor Adams a 'shot of adrenaline.' His campaign needs it.
By
Jon Campbell
Published Apr 3, 2025
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Benny Polatseck/Mayoral Photography Office
By
Jon Campbell
Published Apr 3, 2025
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New York City Mayor Eric Adams may have bolstered his chances of getting on the November ballot by skipping out on the Democratic primary in June, but he still faces long odds as he tries to secure a second term.
Adams announced Thursday that he intends to remain a member of the Democratic Party but run for re-election on an independent, yet-to-be-named ballot line, which he can do by securing 3,750 valid signatures from registered voters by late May.
The move increases the odds that general-election voters will get a chance to cast a ballot for — or against — the incumbent mayor. It comes a day after a federal judge dismissed pending bribery charges against Adams, a decision that wasn’t based on the merits of the case against the mayor.
“ I firmly believe that this city is better served by truly independent leadership, not leaders pulled at by the extremists on the far left or the far right, but instead those rooted in the common middle,” he said in a six-minute video announcing his decision.
Here’s what you need to know about Adams’ new strategy:
Why is Adams running as an independent candidate?
It’s a move that had been anticipated for some time. Adams had “essentially run very little semblance of a campaign thus far in a very crowded Democratic field,” Fordham University political science professor Christina Greer told WNYC on Thursday.
The judge’s decision to dismiss Adams’ criminal charges provided the mayor “a shot of adrenaline,” Greer said. And now, by running as an independent, Adams has bought himself some time.
While his competitors circulated petitions and fundraising pleas, Adams had been notably absent from the campaign trail – and his poll numbers and fundraising were hurting. It was clear the mayor was falling behind. Now, as Greer put it, he can focus on “regrouping” – and he has until November instead of June.
To hear Adams tell it, he couldn’t run much of a campaign while his fraud and bribery charges were pending.
”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,” Adams said in his announcement video.
So does this help Adams’ chances of winning re-election?
In a sense, yes.
Adams was not in a strong position in the crowded Democratic primary field. Poll after poll showed the incumbent wallowing in the single digits, with an Emerson College poll showing the mayor trailing front-runner Andrew Cuomo — the former New York governor — by 30 percentage points last week.
His fundraising, meanwhile, had nearly ground to a halt. In the most recent campaign finance filing period, Adams raised $18,967 from just 43 donors. Cuomo, by comparison, raised $1.5 million and had only been in the race for a portion of the filing period.
By running as an independent, Adams has a much better chance of actually finding his way onto the November ballot — something that likely wouldn’t have happened if he lost the Democratic primary.
But Adams still faces an uphill climb. It’s difficult for a non-major-party candidate to win almost any race, and even though his charges are gone, many voters may still see the mayor as damaged goods.
Adams never stood trial on his federal corruption case, so a judge never determined whether the charges had merit. Instead, the federal Department of Justice intervened and sought a dismissal on political grounds, leading prosecutors to accuse Adams and the Trump administration of a quid pro quo and the judge in the case to say the move “smacks of a bargain.” Ultimately, the judge dropped the charges for good, but the mayor may not be able to escape the perception that he’s indebted to Trump. The mayor has maintained his innocence and independence.
To top it off, Cuomo has already encroached on Adams’ political turf.
In the last couple weeks, Cuomo has picked up endorsements from Brooklyn Democratic Chair Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn — a state assemblymember who was one of Adams’ biggest allies — and U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks, the Queens Democratic chair.
“Seeing someone like, say, Greg Meeks out of Queens openly support Andrew Cuomo is definitely a blow for Eric Adams,” Greer said. “I know that Andrew Cuomo will go after a lot of the Black leadership not just in Harlem, but in Queens and even parts of Brooklyn.”
But if he does have a shot, what does Eric Adams need to do to get on the ballot?
He needs to collect a bunch of signatures — and fast.
An independent mayoral candidate needs to turn in petitions signed by 3,750 registered voters in New York City to get on the ballot. Each of those voters must not have signed petitions for any other candidate in order to be counted.
But it’s not that easy. Surrogates for opposing candidates often try to disqualify signatures to make it harder for their opponent to qualify. The general rule of thumb is that politicians try to get twice as many signatures as they need in order to ward off potential challenges.
“ Ultimately, it'll be up to you who runs this city for the next four years,” Adams said in his video address to New Yorkers. “As someone who has always fought for you and who is accountable to only you, I hope I can earn your vote.”
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new york city
Politics
eric adams
Jon Campbell
Jon Campbell covers the New York State Capitol for WNYC and Gothamist. Prior to that, he covered the Capitol for more than a decade for the USA TODAY Network. He has twice earned the Walter T. Brown Memorial Award, an honor given annually by the Legislative Correspondents Association alumni for outstanding state government coverage. Jon grew up in the Buffalo area and graduated from the University at Albany. Got a tip? Email Jon at [email protected] or Signal at JonCampbellNY.90.
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