On February 10, Eric Adams was on his way to meet John Catsimatidis, the billionaire supermarket magnate and friend of Donald Trump’s, at century-old midtown steakhouse Gallagher’s when word came that the Department of Justice was looking to end its corruption case against him. “It looked like a thousand pounds of bricks were off his shoulder,” Catsimatidis said.
In the ensuing days, chaos was ignited in City Hall. The DoJ memo stated explicitly that it was seeking to drop the charges so Adams could assist the administration in carrying out its policies, particularly as related to crime and immigration. The prosecutors retained the right to pick up the case again, if they chose to, after the November mayoral election: Adams, it seemed, was on the hook to do as he was told. His half-dozen Democratic challengers in the upcoming primary charged that he was serving at the pleasure of Trump, and he did little to dispel the accusation, meeting with border czar Tom Homan a few days later, then sitting on the Fox & Friends couch with him the next morning. When Homan said he would be “up his butt” if the mayor didn’t meaningfully curb illegal immigration, Adams laughed.
By that afternoon, four deputy mayors told Adams they were resigning. On the following Monday, City Comptroller Brad Lander, who is running for mayor, threatened to convene a committee tasked with considering removing Adams, using a quirk in the City Charter previously presumed to apply to incapacitated officials. By that evening, Governor Kathy Hochul announced she would be consulting House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic congressman Gregory Meeks, and the Reverend Al Sharpton and weighing whether she should remove Adams, a power never yet utilized in the state’s history. On February 20, she announced she had decided against deposing the mayor in the immediate future and would instead institute new oversight of City Hall.
Officials across the city are now bracing for a larger exodus and for underqualified loyalists to be named as replacements. But Adams, according to people who have spoken to him in recent days, seems almost a new man, bolstered by the DoJ decision and willfully blind to his political peril. “Have faith in me,” he said at a recent Cabinet meeting, according to people present. “I turned around the economy, I turned around COVID, I turned around this city. Have faith that I know what I am doing and I know how to navigate this.”
He maintains, to staff and allies, that everyone has the Trump story wrong — he’s not in the president’s pocket but simply managing a mercurial executive. At a recent meeting of senior officials, he asked a deputy mayor how many billions are still owed to the city from Joe Biden’s infrastructure law and then reminded those in attendance that if he were to send one critical tweet about Trump, the president could very well pull the whole thing.
Adams also insists privately — as he does publicly — that he is still running for reelection, and people in contact with him in recent days say he has been genuinely energized by the DoJ’s decision and really thinks he can win. “He knows it is tough, he knows it is an uphill battle,” said Adam Clayton Powell IV, a lobbyist and longtime ally. “But he really believes he has a shot.”
It’s hard to see how. Adams has no campaign manager and no real campaign staff, has been denied matching funds from the campaign-finance board, and is spending more than a million dollars on lawyers while some of the megadonors who financed his last campaign have so far decided not to throw in. Adams has received no endorsements, not even from the labor unions and electeds who had endorsed by this point four years ago. A private poll in mid-February put the mayor’s approval rating at 9 percent among Democratic-primary voters. And though Adams has reportedly considered running as a Republican, conservatives like him even less.
Interestingly, the mayor’s confidence seems matched only by Catsimatidis’s. “Eric Adams is going to run as a Democrat in a Democratic primary,” he said. “If, God forbid, anything goes wrong for him, Trump will help him out somehow.” He wasn’t sure exactly what the president had in mind, he said: “Endorse him for the Republican Party line? But I’m not sure that is going to happen. Offer to make him an ambassador to other Black mayors to bring back the rest of our cities from the crime? Maybe.”
In recent days, Adams has spoken with allies about the possibility of running as an independent, hoping that if an extremist candidate wins either primary, he could win the general election from the center. Most of those around him in City Hall, however, do not share his optimism. They’re frustrated that the administration has failed to accomplish much of anything and has now all but run out of time. Many of those who stuck around through the mayor’s prior scandals are said to be planning their exit. Others are hunkering down to wait out the clock on the doomed remainder of the term. For some, the end can’t come soon enough. “It just feels like we are whistling past the graveyard,” said one senior official.
A few in City Hall still believe the administration has a future or are at least putting on a good show of it. When rumors surfaced of a possible bid for mayor by Adrienne Adams, Speaker of the City Council, some close to the mayor started calling allies outside their camp to discuss how to box her out, acting unaware that many in the political class view the mayor as almost irrelevant to the primary campaign. “He completely does not matter in this election,” said one operative working for a rival campaign. “Eric Adams is at 20 percent, and it’s not even that he is at 20 percent because of all the corruption. He is at 20 percent because the voters think he is a fucking moron who can’t run the city.”
Meanwhile, senior officials say City Hall has started to resemble a ghost town. Phone calls aren’t being returned. Planning has dropped to a minimum. The mayor seems to travel mostly alone now, and even longtime allies wonder whom he’s going to for counsel. (Representatives of the mayor’s office did not respond to the substance of these claims but said they continue to be proud of their work.) Senior officials expressed real dejection that it had come to this, working for a mayor in denial, sidelined by the governor and the president. “There is just a profound sadness around here right now,” said one. “It feels like we have crossed the Rubicon and we can’t go back.”
Some pointed out that the mayor could demonstrate his independence from Trump anytime if he really wanted to. It would significantly cheer his staff, most of whom are loyal Democrats with a history of progressive activism. But Adams’s ambitions make that impossible.
Now, Hochul looks increasingly unlikely ever to remove him. If the mayor were deposed, left-wing public advocate Jumaane Williams would most likely be his replacement, something a few prominent Democratic leaders are said to want to avoid. Meanwhile, former governor Andrew Cuomo is inching closer to declaring his candidacy for the mayoral race, meeting with power brokers. Petitioning to get on the ballot begins February 25 and goes until early April, so he would have to get in soon. Although some in the Cuomo camp think having the tainted mayor in the race would help them, others worry that Adams will go scorched earth and make it a real contest.
In the meantime, the work of City Hall is stalled. One senior City Council aide said it was almost unimaginable how a budget deal would get done by the June deadline.
It’s a preview of the greater chaos Trump could sow. Adams is an extreme character — so flagrantly corrupt that the president could toy with him as he has — but he isn’t unique. Neither is a crooked president, in theory. But Trump is different. He could have pardoned Adams and probably gotten what he wanted. Instead, he let it be known that the mayor of New York has agreed to do his bidding and could be punished at any time for stepping out of line.
More on Eric Adams
- Christine Quinn Says Hochul Keeps Being Underestimated
- The Eric Adams Legal Drama Goes Into Overtime: Live Updates
- Kathy Hochul Wouldn’t Risk the Cost of Ousting Adams
