Eric Adams Has Another Challenger

Zellnor Myrie enters the fray

Zellnor Myrie, a state senator from Brooklyn, has formed an exploratory committee to run for mayor against Eric Adams. Exploring a bid means, in essence, you are campaigning—it’s possible Myrie decides against taking Adams on, but there’s far more upside than downside for the 37-year-old lawmaker in running.

Myrie, very coincidentally, made his announcement less than a day after I wrote about Adams’ deep unpopularity and growing irrelevancy. Myrie had been on my radar, but I didn’t expect him to enter the fray so soon. It’s a smart move for the little-known state senator because he needs all the time he can get to raise money and build name recognition. That will be his job for the rest of 2024 and into 2025. The Democratic mayoral primary is a little over 13 months away.

Myrie joins Scott Stringer, the former city comptroller, in a three-person field that can always grow, especially if Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor, decides to take his shot. Federal investigators are eying Adams in a potential fundraising and bribery scandal, but no indictments have been handed out yet. Assuming Adams is not personally indicted and no close aides are directly targeted, he can survive and win a second term. Several major labor unions are still supporting him, as well as working class Black voters. He has a war chest of $2.2 million. Real estate developers and Wall Street financiers can close ranks.

But Adams is, at the very minimum, the weakest mayoral incumbent in the last 35 years, and perhaps the most endangered since Abe Beame, who had to govern at a time when the city was nearly bankrupt. A new poll shared with me from the firm Slingshot Strategies shows that Adams is still struggling. Thirty-three percent of city voters have a very favorable or somewhat favorable view of him, while 47 percent view him unfavorably. A striking 54 percent disapprove of his job performance as mayor. The poll asked, very directly, if voters believe Adams should be re-elected or replaced. The split was 49-25, in favor of replacing Adams.

These numbers are dire. In 2003, Michael Bloomberg’s poll numbers declined precipitously and he was viewed as vulnerable heading into his 2005 re-election. Adams could, in theory, accomplish a similar political turnaround. The difference between the two politicians is competence and money. Bloomberg was guiding New York in the aftermath of 9/11 and was viewed, ultimately, as a serious steward of the city’s fiscal future. As a billionaire, he was able to far outspend rivals, and by the time he faced Fernando Ferrer in the general election—Bloomberg ran on the Republican line—he was able to unload nearly $80 million of his own cash to swamp the Democrat. Adams is not rich and he can’t do this. He will participate in the city’s matching funds system and will hope super PACs, trying to avert a progressive takeover of City Hall, rush to his defense. Perhaps, with organized labor, they will.

But ranked-choice voting is a real problem for Adams. Voters will get to pick up to five candidates, as they did in 2021, and the winner will be rewarded for building a deep coalition across the city. Adams was much more popular three years ago and endured media scrutiny only when the primary was in its final weeks. Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate, was a media obsession, and helped shield Adams from the kind of furious opposition that could have peeled away enough votes to make Kathryn Garcia mayor. At the time, crime was higher and Democrats were very concerned about the fate of the city in the wake of the pandemic. As a former police captain, Adams could talk up crime control and pitch himself as a savvy moderate with a working class touch.

His mayoralty, rife with scandal and failure, has done lasting damage to that image. Hence Myrie, an Afro-Latino progressive, entering the primary. Myrie has a base in central Brooklyn that overlaps with Adams’ own. In fact, Myrie holds a version of Adams’ old State Senate seat and defeated one of his close allies, Jesse Hamilton, in a 2018 primary that saw voters revolt against Hamilton for his Adams-sanctioned alliance with Senate Republicans. There’s much to like in Myrie, if you’re hunting for a fresh Adams challenger. He’s championed election reform and expanding childcare, and he’s forged relationships with socialists and center-left lawmakers alike. He’s an attorney, a charismatic public speaker, and someone who can, with enough time, appeal to professional class Black and white voters in Brooklyn and Queens. It’s not hard to imagine Myrie creating a coalition similar to what Jumaane Williams built in 2019 when he ran for public advocate, uniting wealthier liberals with working and middle class Black voters. Myrie, unlike Stringer, will probably have an easier time appealing to the growing leftist, DSA-friendly voting bloc in western Queens and northern Brooklyn.

Myrie’s challenge is straightforward: raising money. Even with matching funds, running for mayor is extremely expensive. Stringer is in this race because he can raise a lot of cash. Perhaps the Working Families Party, so obsessed right now with congressional races that countless other national interest groups are spending time and money on, will reorient themselves to New York City and assist Myrie. He will need, before matching funds, about $1 million to be competitive—to show up on television, open field offices, and fund a large team. He has no experience raising these sorts of sums. The WFP, which will probably not support Stringer, could be helpful.

Does Myrie hurt Stringer? In the old system, he would have, with candidates competing in zero-sum primaries. Incumbents love when multiple insurgents decide to run. But RCV could lead to intriguing synergy between Stringer and Myrie. If Stringer is smart—and Myrie is open—the two Democrats could form an alliance. Garcia’s last-minute co-endorsement event with Yang lent her crucial support in the Asian community, and it’s plausible that if she and Maya Wiley, the top progressive candidate, figured out how to join forces, Garcia ends up beating Adams. Stringer will have a bigger war chest than Myrie; he’s run citywide multiple times and knows many more rich people. Myrie is a younger, newer face, and he might excite voters who are wary of Stringer. Together, they could gobble up enough votes to deny Adams a second term: Stringer running up the score in white Manhattan and parts of brownstone Brooklyn, while Myrie surges in Prospect Heights, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Williamsburg, Astoria, and Bushwick. Stringer will also make a play for more moderate, middle-class voters in neighborhoods like Forest Hills and Bay Ridge where Adams has lost a great deal of support. If Myrie and Stringer are strong enough, together, Adams will struggle to expand his coalition beyond working class Black and Latino voters. What Asian Democrats decide to do will be interesting—they’ve soured on Adams, but perceive Stringer and Myrie as too liberal. It’ll be intriguing, too, to see if Myrie’s launch convinces other Democrats to take on Adams. Politicians are far too risk-averse. Myrie understands he has little to lose and much to gain running for one of the most powerful offices in America.