Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced Thursday that he would seek reelection as an independent candidate in his city’s 2025 mayoral race.
Adams said in a video announcement that there is not “a liberal or conservative way” to fix his city, but that “there is a right way and a wrong way.” Adams’ decision to launch an independent bid in the mayoral race — which was first reported by Politico — comes just one day after a federal judge dismissed a federal indictment against him after he was indicted in September 2024 on five counts of bribery, conspiracy and campaign finance violations.
“I have always put New York’s people before politics and party—and I always will,” Adams said Thursday in a post on X. “I am running for mayor in the general election because our city needs independent leadership that understands working people.”
The Democratic mayor said that he was still a member of the Democratic Party but claimed he would “appeal directly to all New Yorkers” as an independent mayoral candidate.
“I think … one of the reasons he [Adams] dropped out is he did not want to be embarrassed,” Mike Zumbluskas, a former Republican candidate for New York’s 12th Congressional District, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “He might have only made it to the fourth slot before he got kicked out. He might not have even made it that high.”
“I know that the accusations leveled against me may have shaken your confidence in me and that you may rightly have questions about my conduct,” Adams said in his announcement video. “Let me be clear, although the charges against me were false, I trusted people that I should not have and I regret that.”
New York City’s 2025 mayoral race is already massively crowded. Other mayoral candidates include former Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Democratic City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, Democratic City Comptroller Brad Lander, Democratic State Sen. Jessica Ramos, Democratic State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, Democratic former City Comptroller Scott Stringer, Democratic State Sen. Zellnor Myrie, Democratic former State Assemblyman Michael Blake, Independent former federal prosecutor Jim Walden and Democratic candidate Whitney Tilson, a former hedge-fund manager.
Currently, the only Republican candidate in the city’s mayor race is Curtis Sliwa, a conservative activist and founder of the Guardian Angels.
“It’s hard for people to cross [party] lines,” Zumbluskas told the DCNF. “Not everybody, but probably about 35% of the Democratic [Party] and Republican Party cannot cross party lines.”
Notably, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg switched parties to run in the Republican mayoral primary in 2001, and later registered as an independent in 2007. In 2018, Bloomberg officially returned to the Democratic Party.
“People often say, ‘You don’t sound like a Democrat. You seem to have left the party,’” Mr. Adams said in a January interview with Tucker Carlson. “No, the party left me, and it left working-class people.”
Adams has overseen a variety of problems in New York City during his time in office, including a massive migrant housing crisis and a host of high-profile crimes allegedly committed by illegal migrants.
Moreover, the Democratic mayor has been grappling with record-low approval ratings, with only 20% of voters approving of the way he is handling his position, while 67% disapprove and 13% did not offer an opinion, according to a Quinnipiac University poll of registered New York City voters released March 5.
The New York City mayoral election will be held on Nov. 4, 2025.
Adams’ office did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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