Wild Week as Adrienne Adams Enters Race and Eric Adams Gets Grilled–by ‘fellow’ Dems
The wild race just got wilder. An 11th candidate entered the race and the special advisor to Judge Dale Ho in the corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams says rather than letting the Justice Department hold it over him until after the November election, it should be dismissed outright.
| 10 Mar 2025 | 04:41
City Council speaker Adrienne Adams, from Queens, became the 11th candidate to enter the Democratic race for mayor with less than four months to go before the June 24 primary. (
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The four new deputy mayors are clockwise from top left: Adolfo Carrión Jr., Suzanne Miles-Gustave, Jeffrey D. Roth, and Kaz Daughtry. (
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”I did nothing wrong,” Mayor Eric Adams, seen here at an Interfaith Prayer breakfast in late February, has insisted since the five-count corruption charge was unveiled in September. His poll numbers have been sinking of late. (
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Even on its best days the campaign for mayor of New York is chaotic, and in recent days it grew even more tumultuous as City Council speaker Adrienne Adams jumped into the race on March 5 becoming the 11th player in the derby.
“New Yorkers can’t afford to live here, City Hall is in chaos, and Donald Trump is corrupting our city’s independence,” the speaker said in her statement. “It’s time to stand up.”
“I never planned to run for Mayor, but I’m not giving up on New York City,” she said. “Our city deserves a leader that serves its people first and always, not someone focused on themselves and their own political interests.”
When Eric Adams was asked about her entrée into the race at an off topic press conference on March at City Hall he said: “I said this over and over again, come one, come all. But what one can’t do is they can’t run in the shadows. They have to be in the town halls, take the tough questions, meet the New York City journalists. They have to answer the tough questions. You can’t campaign through tweets and videos and only be in this little confined place. Come out here and [ask] tough questions. “
And even though primary day is less than four weeks away and there are already 11 candidates in the mayor’s race, Eric Adams said the field may grown even further. “There are going to be more people in the race,” he said. “And this race is going to go through so many twisted terms, you’re not going to be able to imagine it.”
Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor who entered the race for mayor only on March 1, appears to be the new frontrunner despite his past sexual harassment allegations. On March 8, he picked up another key union endorsement from the Teamsters to go along with the carpenters union.
Eric Adams remains embattled but seems to be breathing a little easier in recent days. Paul Clement, the special counsel that Judge Dale Ho tapped to offer advice on how best to handle the Trump justice department request before him to drop the five-count corruption and bribery case against Eric Adams, now says he thinks the DOJ should just dismiss it outright. That is because in its original controversial request, the DOJ said it wanted to withdraw the case so it would not interfere with Eric Adams’s ability to help the Trump administration in its move to deport illegal migrants. But the Trump DOJ said would only drop the charges “without prejudice,” which meant the case could be resumed down the road. Some claimed the Trump DOJ was trying to hold Eric Adams hostage.
“I did nothing wrong,” Adams said. “And so there was never a time or moment that I felt as something was held over my head. That was a narrative that was created by the same people who were attacking me from January 1, 2022. It’s the same chorus. The chorus didn’t sing. They are singing off-key. I did nothing wrong.”
The Trump DOJ pushing to withdraw the indictments filed last September of course, triggered an enormous backlash, with seven DOJ lawyers resigning in protest, including the acting US attorney in NY, Danielle Sassoon, who said there was a quid pro quo: Adams cooperates with the crackdown and the Trump Justice Department drops the corruption charges.
Democrats in the House, however, see a deal. When Eric Adams went to Washington, D.C., on March 4 to testify with other sanctuary-city mayors from Chicago, Denver, and elsewhere, it was the Democratic representatives who laced into him with intense questioning.
“We have a right to know if the Trump administration has actually coerced you into agreeing to him,” Rep. Robert Garcia of California asked Adams “Are you selling out New Yorkers to save yourself from prosecution?”
“There’s no deal, no quid pro quo, and I did nothing wrong,” Adams insisted at the hearing.
But at least four of his deputy mayors had already resigned in protest shortly he went on Fox News with Trump’s border czar Thomas Homan sitting next to him on the Fox 5 couch said: “If he doesn’t come through, I’ll be back in New York City, and we won’t be sitting on the couch,” Honan had threatened during the interview with Adams sitting at his side. “I’ll be in his office, up his butt, saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’ ”
It was within hours of that appearance of Feb. 14 that the four deputy mayors reportedly had had enough. Maria Torres-Springer, first deputy mayor; Anne Williams-Isom, deputy mayor for health and human services; Meera Joshi, deputy mayor for operations; and Chauncey Parker, deputy mayor for public safety, all told Adams that they would step down from their posts. On Feb. 17, all four handed in their resignations.
Now the replacements are named: Adolfo Carrión Jr., Suzanne Miles-Gustave, Jeffrey D. Roth, and Kaz Daughtry. Two of the apppointments are already in posts in the Adams’s administration: Carrión, is the commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and he will become the deputy mayor for housing and economic development and work force.
Daughtry, a deputy police commissioner where he has publicly feuded with members of the press on social media, will be the deputy mayor for public safety. He will not oversee the new NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who will continue to report directly to Adams.
Miles-Gustave will be deputy mayor for health and human services, and Roth will be deputy mayor for operations. They will assume their new roles on March 14.
It remains to be seen if the new appointments will calm the turmoil. Interestingly, none of the four new deputy mayors were tapped to be first deputy mayor, the role Torres-Springer held. The New York Times reported that Randy Mastro, a former top aide to Mayor Rudy Giuliani who withdrew his name from consideration as corporation counsel in September, is now in the running to be the new first deputy mayor. The mayor’s office acknowledged that Mastro is under consideration.
The man in the latest poll who was pegged as the number two candidate behind Cuomo is from the progressive wing of the party, Assembly member Zohran Mamdani.
In addition to Cuomo, Eric Adams, Adrienne Adams (who are not related to each other) and Mamdani, the race includes the current city comptroller Brad Lander; former Manhattan borough president and former comptroller Scott Stringer; NYS Senator Jessica Ramos; NYS Senator Zellnor Myrie; Jim Walden, a Lawyer and a former Asst. US Attorney in Brooklyn; former NYS Assembly member Michael Blake; and former hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson.