“I am the poster child of missteps,” Eric Adams told the Times, reflecting on the trajectory of his life, in 2021, when he was running for New York City mayor. Adams, who grew up in South Jamaica, Queens, in the nineteen-seventies and eighties, has long aspired to be regarded as a role model for working-class kids from the outer boroughs, particularly for Black youth. In time, though, his flaws became what he was known for. “I’m perfectly imperfect,” he has said on many occasions, when caught in the little lies, contradictions, and conflicts of interest that have shaped his political reputation. On Sunday, in a rambling eight-minute-and-forty-six-second video posted on X, Adams announced that he would no longer actively seek reëlection, making official what has been expected for quite a while—that, come January 1st, he will no longer be mayor—and cementing his latest and greatest missteps as his legacy.
The roster of forgettable, failed, crooked, and compromised New York City mayors is a long one, and yet, even in that unproud tradition, Adams will stand out for some time. What began as “swagger”—a mayor out on the town, in ways not seen in decades—advanced to a blatant, unscrupulous disregard for the corruption and inside dealings of his friends, allies, and advisers. Despite overseeing a City Hall that pushed ahead major initiatives in housing and zoning, that provided temporary housing and other services to hundreds of thousands of migrants, and that containerized the city’s trash, among other accomplishments, Adams should perhaps be best remembered for the moment, in fall of 2023, when he surrendered his iPhone to the F.B.I. during a federal investigation into his campaign fund-raising, and the Mayor, ludicrously, claimed to have forgotten the passcode. The feds never did access the contents of that mobile device. Before the criminal-corruption case against Adams could proceed to trial, Donald Trump won the 2024 Presidential election, and Adams ended up cutting a deal with the Trump Administration to escape the charges. The price was coöperation—or at least silence—as the feds embarked on their immigration crackdown in New York. “If he doesn’t come through, I’ll be back in New York City,” Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, said, during a joint appearance with Adams on Fox News, after the deal was done. “I’ll be in his office, up his butt, saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’ ”
In the video announcing his dropout on Sunday, Adams, in a crisp white shirt, with his sleeves rolled up, descends a carpeted staircase in Gracie Mansion and perches a large photograph of his late mother, Dorothy Mae Adams-Streeter, next to him on the steps. Once again, he refuses to take responsibility for making himself not just a legal and political liability for the city but a laughingstock as well. “I was wrongfully charged because I fought for this city, and, if I had to do it again, I would fight for New York again,” he says to the camera. His deal with Trump may have kept him out of prison, but it was obvious afterward, from the way his poll numbers dropped and his staff and allies fled, that his political career was over. That Adams remained mayor and kept his reëlection bid going, despite being so visibly and deeply compromised, belied his pledges, which he repeated again on Sunday, that “this campaign was never about me.”
As he watched his support and funding dry up, the sixty-five-year-old Adams recently let his younger aides go wild online, posting cracked meme content in the hope of attracting the YOLO vote, but it was futile. Polls showed him consistently trailing not just Zohran Mamdani, the young socialist upstart that shocked the world by winning the Democratic primary in June, and Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor who has mounted a scorched-earth Independent bid after getting rinsed by Mamdani in the primary; he also slipped behind Curtis Sliwa, a red-beret-wearing former street vigilante and political gadfly who will appear on the Republican line. On Sunday, Adams acknowledged reality. “The constant media speculation about my future and the Campaign Finance Board’s decision to withhold millions of dollars have undermined my ability to raise the funds needed for a serious campaign,” he said. Shortly after, a spokesperson sent out a statement indicating that Adams planned to serve out the rest of his term but that “he will not be doing one-on-one interviews and appreciates the understanding of the press and the public,” as if Adams were a celebrity in the midst of a high-profile divorce.
Months ago, it was Adams who predicted that this year’s mayoral campaign would have “so many twists and turns,” and would wind up being “one of the most exciting races we had in the history of this city.” It’s unclear what effect his exit will have, though. The persistent rumor in recent weeks has been that the Trump Administration is sizing him up for a job, perhaps in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or as the Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, or some other equally absurd position. His withdrawal will please Mamdani’s powerful and deep-pocketed opponents, who have been trying to consolidate the field against the young candidate before November. Mamdani has a healthy lead in every poll, though, and has already beaten Cuomo badly once this year. In his exit video, Adams offered an implicit critique of Mamdani, warning that “our children are being radicalized,” and he has recently called Cuomo a “snake” and a “liar”—it is hard to see him getting behind either candidate in the campaign’s closing weeks, though Adams has been right about the twists and turns. A few days ago, when reports suggested that he was leaving the race, Adams angrily denied it numerous times. Why he decided to bow out now, as opposed to six days ago, or three months ago, or the moment the F.B.I. asked him for his iPhone, may go down as yet another inscrutable mystery in a political career whose passcode was forgotten a long time ago. Another misstep from a master of them. ♦
