New York City Mayor Eric Adams has reeled from one scandal to another since he took office at the beginning of 2022. A former city agency boss and close ally has already been indicted on corruption charges. Two donors have pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges stemming from a straw donor scheme tied to his 2021 mayoral campaign. And now the FBI has raided the home of his chief fundraiser, 25-year-old Brianna Suggs.
Federal investigators are reportedly looking into whether Adams’ 2021 campaign conspired with the Turkish government to receive illegal foreign donations. Investigators are also seeking to learn more about the potential involvement of a construction company with ties to Turkey, as well as a small university in Washington, D.C. that has ties to the country and to Adams.
Adams has not been accused of any wrongdoing and there is no indication the investigation is targeting him directly, according to The New York Times, which broke the news of the corruption investigation. But the investigation is still a serious problem for Adams.
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So far, the city press corps has treated him better than his predecessor, Bill de Blasio—the liberal Democrat was excoriated by the right-wing New York Post on a daily basis—but the tenor of coverage will only get harsher. The largest media market in America loves a good scandal, and Adams has handed them one. The fact that the details of the investigation ended up in The Times—as a plausible authorized leak from the U.S. Attorney’s office—indicates an indictment might be looming.
Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D)
Timothy A. Clary / GettyCorruption scandals, on their own, don’t necessarily finish New York political careers. Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor, was running for a third term as his closest aide, Joe Percoco, was found guilty in a sprawling corruption case. Percoco served time in prison before his conviction was eventually, earlier this year, reversed by the Supreme Court. Despite tough headlines, Cuomo easily defeated his progressive primary challenger, the actress and activist Cynthia Nixon, in the 2018 Democratic primary and later won reelection.
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY)
Jeenah Moon / GettyAdams will be up for reelection in 2025 and has every intention of running again. Like Cuomo, he boasts strong support in the majority Black neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens—Adams is New York’s second Black mayor—and buy-in from the city’s moneyed elites. Real estate developers and financiers see, in Adams, a pro-business ally who can successfully tamp down New York’s progressive wing.
Until Adams is truly embattled—more indictments of allies, or even an indictment of Adams himself—they’ll probably stick with him. Anyone running against Adams in two years needs to worry about well-funded super PACs spending against them.
No New York mayor in modern history has ever been indicted. Corruption scandals, though, have marred terms or forced resignations.
Ed Koch was a relatively popular mayor into his third term, when the shocking Parking Violations Bureau scandal took down multiple allies and destroyed much of his political capital. Koch lost his bid for a fourth term, falling to David Dinkins, who would become the city’s first Black mayor in 1990. Before Koch, two other mayors, Jimmy Walker and William O’Dywer, resigned from office to dodge possible prosecutions.
What Adams doesn’t have in common with some of these other politicians—Koch and Cuomo in particular—is a record of significant policy accomplishments to run on.
Cuomo, long before his downfall from a sexual harassment scandal, was a deeply flawed executive, but he could boast he raised the state’s minimum wage, overhauled LaGuardia Airport, and toughened gun laws. Koch was, for a time, a national celebrity, leading the city through the aftermath of the fiscal crisis and building a large amount of affordable housing.
For Adams, governing has been mostly an afterthought. Unlike his predecessor, Bill de Blasio, he has created no new program on the scale of the city’s universal pre-kindergarten initiative, which has become a national model. Several important agencies are now run by patronage hires. Talented bureaucrats and junior staff have fled the Adams administration, including his housing czar and first police commissioner. City government itself has been hollowed out like few can remember. The metrics are damning.
Adams does have one success story to tell, however. The city’s murder and shooting rates have declined from last year, and the overall crime picture in New York City is encouraging.
The economic recovery from the nadir of the pandemic is real. If midtown and downtown Manhattan haven’t returned to their 2019 heights, many outer borough businesses are doing quite well. Restaurants, museums, and clubs are packed. New York nightlife is thriving. Fear of crime remains, but the city is on an upward trajectory.
Adams, a charismatic night owl, has done much to promote the city’s comeback. But he’s also fearmongered too much on crime to readily undo the narrative of decline, of the city slipping back to the murderous 1980s and 1990s.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D)
Jared Siskin / GettyAdams narrowly won his election as a tough-on-crime ex-police captain, outflanking rivals who were either viewed as too soft on the issue or insufficiently experienced to grapple with the uptick in murders. As recently as a year ago, he was declaring that “I have never in my professional career, I have never witnessed crime at this level.” For someone who was patrolling the streets when as many as 2,000 people a year were being murdered—438 were killed all of last year—this comment was particularly absurd.
For now, Adams’ ultimate saving grace is the lack of a viable primary challenger. New York City’s heavily Democratic electorate is unlikely to put a Republican in office again, so the action will reside in the 2025 primary. Prominent municipal Democrats, running in the same election cycle as Adams, don’t want to risk their seats when Adams will be term-limited in 2029. Some are wary of Adams’ incendiary, unpredictable nature, and don’t want to enter a primary that could boil down pitched battles over race and class.
Public polling of late has been scant. But Adams could be vulnerable if someone like Kathryn Garcia, the long-serving agency head and bureaucrat who almost beat him in 2021, runs again. A well-known progressive like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Jamaal Bowman could also make Adams’ life difficult, but neither is expected to run for mayor. A state senator in the Queens portion of Ocasio-Cortez’s district, Jessica Ramos, is one of the few Democrats who has talked openly about challenging Adams.
Adams likes to brag that the job of mayor isn’t nearly as hard as everyone says it is. Whether he’ll be able to swagger through these next months remains to be seen. His mayoralty has never been so precarious.
