Importance Score: 75 / 100 🔴
New York City Mayor Eric Adams will run for reelection as an independent, opting out of the Democratic primary just one day after a federal judge dismissed corruption charges against him.
“I have always put New York’s people before politics and party — and I always will. I am running for mayor in the general election because our city needs independent leadership that understands working people,” Adams said in a Thursday morning post on X.
The news comes after bribery and wire fraud charges against Adams were permanently dismissed by a judge on Wednesday. Adams was indicted in September after prosecutors alleged that he received more than $100,000 worth of plane tickets and luxury hotel stays from Turkish nationals for nearly a decade as he was serving in local government.
“To the extent that the Government may be seeking to extract policy concessions from the Mayor, dismissal with prejudice rather than continuation of the prosecution best addresses that concern,” U.S. District Judge Dale Ho ruled wrote in a 78-page order dismissing the charges. “It ensures that going forward, the charges in the Indictment cannot be used as leverage over Mayor Adams or the City of New York.”
The Justice Department moved to dismiss the charges against Adams in February, stating that they would interfere with the mayor’s ability to govern and threaten “federal immigration initiatives and policies.”
In a Thursday interview with Politico, which first reported the news, Adams explained that he wants to “mount a real independent campaign” now that he is “uninhibited” by the federal bribery case that “handcuffed him.” The independent campaign, he explained, would rely on a “solid base of people” outside Manhattan.
“I have been this racehorse that has been held back,” he added. “This is so unnatural for me.”
In a six-minute video posted on X, Adams detailed his decision to switch parties for the race, saying that while he is still a Democrat, he will “forgo the Democratic primary for mayor and appeal directly to all New Yorkers as an independent candidate in the general election.”
“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,” he said. “Let me be clear: although the charges against me were false, I trusted people that should not have, and I regret that.”
Nine Democrats, including former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, are currently in the running for mayor.
“I humbly put my record up against any of these other candidates,” Adams said in the video. “While they were playing politics or sitting on a couch, my administration was building record levels of housing, driving down crime, distributing $30 billion in benefits to low and middle-income New Yorkers, and creating the most jobs ever in our city’s history.”