Eric Adams Heads to the MAGAverse

The final pivot

Viewed through the lens of getting re-elected next year, it was a disastrous day for Mayor Eric Adams. A close advisor who was once the most powerful person in his administration is on the verge of getting indicted. The New York City Campaign Finance Board, which decides which campaigns receive taxpayer-funded matching funds, denied them to Adams, citing irregularities with his campaign and his corruption indictment. No new polls have appeared recently, but all indications are that Adams remains historically unpopular. Indicted on federal corruption charges in September, he has struggled mightily, for much of his tenure, to adequately govern the city.

But Adams has a trump card to play—pun fully intended. Donald Trump, soon to be president again, said the quiet part out loud when he told reporters he was considering pardoning Adams. This comes after Adams met with his incoming border czar, Tom Homan, and effectively stopped criticizing the former and future president. The pivot, for someone who once deemed himself the “Biden of Brooklyn,” is stunning. But it’s also to be expected. If the migrant crisis seemed to radicalize Adams, turning him against Joe Biden and national Democrats for good, he has shown himself, again and again, to be a canny opportunist with few convictions of his own. He has been everything from a Farrakhan supporter to a Giuliani Republican to a police reform activist to a law-and-order demagogue. Adams is good at surviving—he got himself elected mayor, after all—and he’s ready now for his next act.

Let’s get the easy part out of the way: Adams’ chances of actually getting re-elected mayor of New York are quite poor. If matching funds never arrive, he’ll be severely handicapped, battling rival Democrats like Scott Stringer and Brad Lander who will eventually have millions to spend against him. He could circumvent the system entirely, taking over-the-limit contributions from friendly hedge funders and crypto kingpins, but that will also raise the spending limit for his opponents. In 2021, Ray McGuire, a wealthy Citigroup executive, found this out the hard way. Whether Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor, gets into the race or not, Adams is going to struggle to win a Democratic primary next June. Under the ranked-choice voting system, voters can choose up to five candidates; contenders who build coalitions are rewarded, and the polarizing are punished. For all the support Adams may still enjoy in working class Black neighborhoods, it is plausible that he is left off many ballots in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens, especially in vote-rich, professional class areas. He barely won in 2021 and his coalition is far smaller today. In the old days, when pluralities were enough and top candidates hoped to make low turnout runoffs, Adams would have much more hope.

Can Adams win as a Republican or independent? I am doubtful, but he may have a better shot there than as a Democrat. To win as a Republican, he’d need to capture the GOP nomination. Unless Trump directly endorses him, this seems unlikely. Curtis Sliwa, the Guardian Angels founder and 2021 nominee, may run again, and he’d have the edge among the many registered Republicans who disdain Adams. The independent route is easier, and offers a historical parallel. In 1969, John Lindsay, a liberal Republican, lost his primary and triumphed on the Liberal Party line against the Republican, John Marchi, and a bumbling and very conservative Democrat, Mario Procaccino. Lindsay, as beleaguered as he was, probably enjoyed more goodwill from city voters than Adams—he had been, just a few years earlier, a national political star, and many Black and liberal white Democrats supported him still—and he benefited from two unpopular standard bearers. Running as an independent, Adams could hope the Democratic nominee is toxic enough that voters flock back to him, or that some kind of super PAC emerges to bolster his chances. Money is key. If Adams had Michael Bloomberg’s wealth—the billionaire spent north of $100 million to get himself re-elected in 2009—he could have a chance to save himself. Would billionaires, though, actually care enough to help him? As much as they might like his left-bashing, he is still a teetering, scandal-scarred politician. He’s not an attractive investment opportunity.

Adams, however, can’t despair entirely. He’s got a career to reinvent. And if Trump really pardons him, he can follow a path now well-trod by Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—he can go full MAGA and become a conquering hero on the other side.