Eric Adams’s Independent Run Shows New Yorkers Are Done With Radicalism

New York City mayor Eric Adams shocked news watchers Thursday morning by declaring that he would seek reelection not as a Democrat, but as an independent. Adams’s pivot, which comes less than 24 hours after a federal judge ended the corruption investigation that has dogged his campaign for months, marks the first time the city will have a serious mayoral contender from outside the two main parties since John Lindsay’s reelection bid in 1969.

Adams’s decision is a reflection in part of his electoral weakness. With just under three months remaining before the primary election, former governor Andrew Cuomo seems to have a lock on the Democratic nomination. Recent polls of the crowded field consistently show Cuomo getting 30 percent to 40 percent of the vote. That’s well north of both Adams and the 10–15 percent being siphoned off by second-place Zohran Mamdani, the state representative and Democratic Socialists of America member who has emerged as the poster child of the city’s far Left.

But Adams’s move—and his promise to run on a “public-safety-focused” ballot line—says something important not only about New York City but also about the state of urban politics. That Cuomo, with his fraught past, is easily outpolling the more radical but less scandal-ridden Mamdani says the same thing. In 2025, voters will overlook all sorts of character flaws as long as that person is promising sanity—not Mamdani-style radicalism.

If either Cuomo or Adams wins, the comeback will be one for the books. Adams was likely to lose the Democratic primary thanks largely to the pall of corruption that now hangs over him, beginning with alleged payments from the Turkish government and extending to a suspect deal with the Department of Justice. The nature of his judicial reprieve—granted largely for legalistic reasons—is unlikely to reassure voters.

Cuomo, meantime, was forced to resign in 2021 following a wave of allegations of sexual harassment. His departure came amid pressure from rank-and-file Democrats, including then-President Joe Biden, and likely forestalled an impeachment by the state legislature.

Many of Cuomo’s signature achievements as governor have since turned rotten. His once-vaunted handling of the Covid-19 crisis involved a scandalous cover-up of nursing-home deaths. Key legislative initiatives, especially his work on bail reform, have turned into major political liabilities.

Nonetheless, Cuomo remains the hands-down favorite, but Adams’s independent run signals that at least someone believes the mayor still has a chance. Which raises the question: Why wouldn’t New Yorkers prefer someone like Mamdani, or any of the other candidates, who don’t come with Cuomo and Adams’s baggage?

The simple answer is that New York City voters care far less about character than they do about keeping their city from falling into the hands of radicals.

Cuomo has worked to signal his seriousness on New Yorkers’ top issues: affordability and crime. His campaign website, for example, highlights the need to build more housing “across all income levels”—a sign of support for broad-based housing policy. The website dedicates separate sections to public safety (including quality-of-life enforcement), subway safety, and “Mental Health, Addiction, & Homelessness.” In other words, Cuomo understands that New Yorkers feel unsafe and financially insecure—and he wants to address those anxieties.

Adams, too, seems set to focus his campaign on public safety. In a campaign video announcing his independent run shared with Politico, Adams tried to reintroduce himself as a moderate centrist. In particular, he signaled a campaign focused on crime, quality of life, and affordability. And he blasted his opponents for failing to prioritize these issues.

Contrast that with Mamdani. Yes, as Liena Zagare, author of the Manhattan Institute’s “The Bigger Apple” newsletter, noted in City Journal on Monday, Mamdani is running on improving affordability. But as Zagare further notes, any thinking voter recognizes that the candidate’s ideas would push the city toward bankruptcy, and that his aggressive regulatory plans would strangle any “social” housing growth he might offer. And his criminal-justice agenda is straight out of the Black Lives Matter era: shrink the NYPD, keep cops off the subways, strengthen sanctuary-city laws, and even refuse to ticket unlicensed vendors.

This agenda has a clear constituency. In reviewing Data for Progress’s polling, political commentator Steve Morris noted, “Mamdani’s best groups are white voters, those with degrees, those under 45, and Brooklyn.” In a two-way face-off, Cuomo trounces him among working-class, black or Latino, older, and outer-borough voters. Mamdani’s got the Bushwick DSAers; Cuomo’s got everyone else.

It’s no mystery why. The job of local government is fundamentally nonideological: keep streets clean, people safe, and businesses thriving. If you can credibly promise voters that you will do these things, they’ll forgive many of your foibles. If, on the other hand, you want to run radical experiments in municipal socialism, then your constituency will probably never grow beyond a clique of people whose money insulates them from the consequences of their own ideology.

Adams and Cuomo’s strategies, and their position relative to Mamdani, is a warning to other big-city progressives. Yes, America’s cities remain reliably blue. But they also lurched right in 2024 because voters were sick and tired of the excesses of progressive governance. Candidates who promise to get back to basics—public safety, fiscal sanity, and support for economic growth—will be rewarded. The urban electorate had more than its fill of radicalism in 2020.

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images