Adams Ditches Dems, Plans to Run as Independent after Judge Dismisses Criminal Case

The strange and convoluted race for mayor is growing more bizzare by the day.

On the deadline day to submit petitions to get on the ballot to run for reelection in the June 24 Democratic primary, Mayor Eric Adams said instead on April 3 he going to avoid the primary altogether and form his own independent party run for reelection.

That cuts the number of Dems in the race to ten, leaves only Curtis Sliwa in the Republican race and now Adams as an independent.

“Though I am still a Democrat, I am announcing that I will forego the Democratic primary for mayor and appeal directly to all New Yorkers as an Independent candidate in the general election,” Adams said in a six minute video.

His announcement came a day after a federal district court judge on April 2 reluctantly dismissed the five count criminal indictment filed against Mayor Adams last September. Judge Dale Ho took pains to point out that it certainly appeared to be a quid quo pro with Adams cozying up to Trump in exchange for getting the Trump DOJ to drop the bribery and conspiracy charges filed against the mayor.

Mayor Adams continued to cozy up to the Trump Administration on Friday, April 4 by taking Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy on a two stop “tour” on the B subway line. The Wisconsin-born Trump appointee had recently called the subway system a “shithole” blasted what he said was Governor Kathy Hochul’s mishandling of the crime in the subway and called congestion pricing an “elitist” toll that he seeks to end.

Meanwhile, the Adams-appointed NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the first quarter crime statistics show subway crime is actually down 22 percent compared to a year earlier. When asked by a Daily News reporter who was among only a handful of reporters tipped off about the subway ”tour” if he still considered the subway system a shithole, Duffy reportedly responded, “Some would say.”

The move by Adams to go independent will give him time to regroup and avoids a potentially embarrassing defeat in primary, where recent polls said he was in third place with only single digit support among likely Democratic voters. He trailed former disgraced Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who had a commanding double digit lead in his comeback bid, and Queens Assembly member Zohran Mamdani, a 33 year-old progressive who has been endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of New York.

The left leaning Working Families Party meanwhile endorsed four candidates still in the race: City Comptroller Brad Lander, Queens Assembly member Zohran Mamdani, City Council speaker Adrienne Adams from Queens and NYS Senator from Brooklyn Zellnor Myrie. Under ranked choice, voters can vote for up to five candidates and the Working Families Party hopes to thwart Cuomo.

Adams said in a hastily called press conference at Gracie Mansion on April 2 after the ruling dismissing the criminal charges was announced: “Let me be clear. As I’ve said all along, this case should have never been brought. And I did nothing wrong.”

Adams made no secret of his estrangement from the Democratic party at that press conference when he held up a book, “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth and the Battle for Our Democracy,” by deep state conspiracy believer Kash Patel who Trump appointed as head of the FBI earlier this year. The former podcaster said he wants to turn the FBI HQ into a Museum of the Deep State.

While Adams won’t face criminal prosecution, the fallout from the indictment filed last September lingers.

“Everything here smacks of a bargain: dismissal of the Indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions,” Judge Ho said pointedly in his 75 page ruling.

The now dismissed charges said Adams had accepted expensive overseas travel via Turkish Airlines going back to his days as Brooklyn Borough President and had used illegal straw donors to funnel money to his campaigns. The later claim could still be enough to bar him from matching funds, especially since one Turkish construction executive has entered a guilty plea that he reimbursed company employees who made donations to Adams’ campaigns. THE CITY, a not for profit news service, reported before the dismissal of the case that Adams, despite his insistence that he was “fighting” to get $4 million in matching funds restored after the campaign finance board barred the reimbursement had yet to file an appeal.

Judge Ho also shot down the claim advanced by Adams of a “witch hunt” by Biden Administration because the mayor was sharply critical of the federal response to the immigration crisis in New York.

”The Southern District of New York prosecutors who worked on this case followed all appropriate Justice Department guidelines,” Ho wrote. “There is no evidence–zero–that they had any improper motives,” Ho concluded.

In a poll from Quinnipiac College released last month, Adams had a job approval rating of only 20 percent. Adams continues to point to rising number of people employed and crime statistics heading down over the past two years. Critics have taken to hammering him on his ties to Trump. Those broadsides are not likely to abate in the months before the election in a city where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 6-to-1 margin and Trump’s sweeping tariff’ taxes have tanked stock globally.