As certain corners of the political elite panic over Zohran Mamdani’s historic victory in New York’s Democratic primary, the city’s scandal-plagued mayor is suddenly swaggering.
“No one does it like New York, no one,” Eric Adams said at his official reelection announcement on Thursday. “We laid the foundation, and now it’s time to build the future.”
To protesters, some of whom shouted “criminal” as he spoke, Adams had this to say: “You can call me all the names you want, but I’m going to answer to only one: Mayor Eric Adams.”
Such were the fighting words of a man newly reinvigorated as a chill falls over a certain class of New Yorkers. They are an invariable mix of establishment-type Democrats, billionaires, and racists united in a shared desperation to stop the 33-year-old democratic socialist. Though several have already met with Adams, it has yet to be seen whether the full levers of power and capital rally behind him. But the mayor is already hellbent on showing that he’s ready to punch. There he was on Fox and Friends, decrying Mamdani as a “snake oil salesman.” (“He will say and do anything to get elected,” Adams warned, apparently missing the piercing irony of the accusation coming from an elected official so recently accused of vast abuses of power.)
On X, Adams’ reelection campaign rattled off a list of his perceived achievements—many of them questionable, at best—before zeroing in on Mamdani. “We’re not about to throw away all that progress to a socialist who will tear it all down with false promises he can’t keep. The cruelest thing one can do to a family in need is to promise them something that you can’t deliver.”
It’s easy to laugh off Adams’ reawakened confidence. It arrives despite an almost comical parade of (alleged) corruption. The selling out of the city’s immigrants. Trump-like behavior against the press. Constant partying that veers from tacky to ethically challenged. Monstrously ignorant policy. But the Democratic Party has always been ready to back less-than-ideal candidates when they think it benefits them. It’s a playbook close to this very race in the string of Democrats who endorsed Cuomo after calling for his resignation less than four years ago. Could the arc repeat itself once more?
Consider 2001, when heading into the mayoral election, polls had consistently shown Democrat Mark Green in the lead. But it was technocrat Mike Bloomberg, who had changed his voter registration from Democrat to Republican, who ultimately won in November, thanks, in part, to the September 11th attacks.
In Novemeber, for those freaking out—and with money to beat back change—it might come down to the simple fact that Eric Adams is a living, breathing man who is not Zohran Mamdani. Cuomo, too, is a living, breathing man who isn’t Mamdani. But even with the money and backing of the Democratic establishment, Cuomo ran into a problem. He is a living, breathing man named Andrew Cuomo.
