By The Daily Wire (World News) | Created at 2025-04-03 14:20:11 | Updated at 2025-04-04 23:45:36
1 day ago
Just one day after a federal judge dismissed his corruption case, New York City Democratic Mayor Eric Adams announced that he is running for re-election as an independent, skipping the Democratic primary to focus on November’s general election.
Adams, who has served as mayor since 2022, said that the months-long corruption case brought against him “dragged on too long, making it impossible to mount a primary campaign while these false accusations were held over me.” He was indicted on federal charges last September that included accepting payment for overseas travel expenses paid by wealthy Turkish nationals.
In an announcement video posted to X, Adams said that while he remains a Democrat, he will “forego the Democratic primary for mayor and appeal directly to all New Yorkers as an independent candidate in the general election.” Adams trails other Democrats in polling for the June 24 primary. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who resigned as governor amid sexual harassment allegations, leads Democratic candidates in the race, followed by Queens Assemblyman Zohran Momdani and New York City Comptroller Brad Lander.
Adams added, “I firmly believe that this city is served by truly independent leadership, not leaders pulled at by the extremists on the far-Left or the far-Right, but instead those rooted in the common middle, the place where the vast majority of New Yorkers are firmly planted.”
“New Yorkers are strong and they deserve strong leadership,” he continued. “And when New Yorkers worry about their bills at the kitchen table or feeling safe on a subway platform, they don’t expect a political party to help. They want leadership from a person who understands their struggle and their story.”
— Eric Adams (@ericadamsfornyc) April 3, 2025
The decision gives Adams more time to submit his petitions to the Board of Elections to qualify for the ballot, The New York Post reported. Instead of submitting the petitions on Thursday to qualify for the Democratic primary, the mayor has until May 27 to come up with 3,750 more petitions. According to the Post, Adams has just $3 million cash on hand as he struggles to regain New Yorkers’ trust following the corruption accusations.
U.S. District Judge Dale Ho dismissed the charges against Adams on Wednesday “with prejudice,” meaning the Department of Justice cannot bring charges against Adams in the future based on the same evidence. Adams was indicted by the DOJ under the Biden administration, a move that senior Trump officials argued was politically motivated to punish Adams for his criticism of former President Joe Biden’s immigration policies.
The DOJ dropped the case against Adams weeks after President Donald Trump was sworn into office, and Adams made an appearance with Trump’s border czar Tom Homan on “Fox & Friends” after the case was dropped to discuss cracking down on violent illegal immigrants in New York.
In his dismissal of the case, Ho stressed the importance of formally dropping it “with prejudice,” writing that if the DOJ were allowed to resurrect the charges, it “would create the unavoidable perception that the Mayor’s freedom depends on his ability to carry out the immigration enforcement priorities of the administration, and that he might be more beholden to the demands of the federal government than to the wishes of his own constituents.”
