With less than four weeks before early voting begins, New York Mayor Eric Adams announced yesterday that he would bow out of his reelection campaign, making him the first since David Dinkins to serve a single term.

In a nearly nine-minute announcement video on X, Adams lamented the Campaign Finance Board’s decision to deny him matching funds, blaming it for preventing him from running a serious campaign. Turning to his legacy, the Mayor said that he was proud of “making this city better to those who have been failed by government”.

Though many today instinctively think of Adams’s corruption charges as his primary legacy, he has achieved some noteworthy successes. He entered office amid spiralling crime and two unprecedented crises, Covid-19 and the influx of hundreds of thousands of foreign migrants since 2022. He will leave City Hall on New Year’s Day with a mixed record.

Murders and shootings are near record lows, but felony assaults and other serious crimes remain elevated relative to 2019. The past year has also witnessed a significant improvement in subway safety and reliability; by some measures, this July and August were the safest summer months in the subway’s history.

The city feels more orderly than it did a year ago, particularly as the migrant crisis has abated. Adams was instrumental in securing a change in Albany this year to make it easier to commit the mentally ill to psychiatric hospitals. Even so, psychiatric beds remain in short supply, leaving many potentially dangerous individuals on the streets and subways.

The city has more private sector jobs than ever before, and tax revenues remain robust. But job gains have concentrated among low-paid home health assistant positions, which are ultimately paid through the state’s Medicaid programme, not the private market. Housing costs have risen during Adams’s tenure, but he successfully championed the most important citywide land-use reform in six decades. The mayor showed that it’s possible to overcome fierce political headwinds that prevent more housing supply, even as it will take over a decade to see the full extent of those new units.

His departure marks the most significant turning point since the June Democratic primary. Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, Independent former Governor Andrew Cuomo, and Republican Curtis Sliwa remain in contention, though Adams’s name will remain on November’s ballots. Most of Adams’s support will likely migrate to Cuomo, despite Adams not endorsing anyone in his announcement video. They share much of the same base of working-class black and Hispanic voters. Recent polls had Adams in the high single digits, so even if Cuomo receives a 10% boost from Adams’s departure, he’ll still be about 10% short of Mamdani’s numbers.

Cuomo therefore needs to execute a two-pronged strategy to win. He must mount an enthusiastic get-out-the-vote drive in friendly neighbourhoods, such as Orthodox Jewish, black, and low-income parts of the city, as well as the Upper East Side.

At the same time, he needs to woo Sliwa voters in more conservative areas, such as Staten Island, eastern Queens, and parts of south Brooklyn. For Cuomo to have a fighting chance, he must peel away about half of Sliwa’s support, which is currently registering in the mid-teens.

But Sliwa has been adamant about staying in the race. In recent social media posts, Mamdani has shrewdly found common ground with Sliwa in firm opposition to corporate interests and President Donald Trump. Some Republican voters may listen to the President, who earlier this month dismissed Sliwa as “not exactly prime time” and poked fun at the candidate’s love for cats. President Trump might make himself heard again before the campaign’s end.

In all, Adams’s departure gives him a chance to rehabilitate his legacy. It may prove too little, too late to reshape the race. The balance hinges on a Republican.

---

John Ketcham is the Director of Cities at the Manhattan Institute.

JKetcham91

---