New York City Mayor Eric Adams, one day after a judge dismissed federal corruption charges against him, announced Thursday that he will not be running as a Democrat in his bid for reelection.
The mayor said he is still a Democrat, but plans to campaign as an independent with a new party that emphasizes public safety, reports The Wall Street Journal.
This means that Adams will not be running in the Democratic Party’s primary election in June, where he would have faced an increasingly crowded field of competitors, but will instead be running independently in the November general election.
Adams announced the news in a video posted on X early Thursday.
“More than 25,000 New Yorkers signed my Democratic primary petition, but 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 the announcement.
“But I’m not a quitter. I’m a New Yorker,” he added. “And that is why today, although I am still a Democrat, I am announcing that I will forgo the Democratic primary for mayor and appeal directly to all New Yorkers as an independent candidate in the general election.”
In the video, Adams also denied the corruption allegations but admitted he made some mistakes.
“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,” the mayor said. “Let me be clear, although the charges against me were false, I trusted people that I should not have and I regret that.”
Frank Carone, a close adviser to Adams, said that changing the strategy will allow Adams a longer time to launch his campaign after the months that have been spent fighting the criminal case, reports the Journal.
“Now he is going to use every moment to bring his message to New Yorkers,” Carone said.
Adams had been keeping his campaign plans quiet while holding off on announcing what he had in mind until after the charges were dropped against him at the request of the Justice Department, which said the proceedings were distracting him from running the city and helping President Donald Trump in his fight against crime and illegal immigration.
Meanwhile, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is the frontrunner in the June primary, and if he wins will face Adams and the eventual Republican nominee this fall.
Carone said the mayor plans to campaign on the successes of his administration, including the city’s bounceback from the COVID pandemic. Adams, a former New York City Police Department officer, also plans to focus on the city’s drop in violent crime under his tenure.
Adam will need to collect 3,750 petition signatures by the end of May to get on the November ballot under a new party, according to state election laws.
His strategists say that they hope the general election will attract centrist Democrats and Republicans to support him, considering mayoral races in deep-blue New York City often end up going to the winner of the Democratic Party’s primary.
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