NYC NOW - Midday News: Eric Adams to Skip Democratic Primary and Run as Independent, A Look at What It Means for the Mayoral Race, and Joan Didion Archive Draws Crowds

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

Mayor Eric Adams says he’ll bypass the June 24th Democratic primary and run as an independent in November’s general election, just one day after a judge dismissed his federal corruption case for good. Meanwhile, the New York Public Library’s new Joan Didion archive is drawing researchers and fans from across the country. Plus, WNYC’s Jon Campbell joins us to explain how Adams’ decision could reshape the mayoral race.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Thursday, April 3rd. Here's the midday news from Veronica Del Valle. Mayor Eric Adams says he's skipping the June Democratic mayoral primary. He'll instead run as an independent in the general election in November. This comes a day after a federal judge dismissed the corruption case against Adams for good. Christina Greer is a political science professor at Fordham University.

She says Adams has been largely absent from the crowded mayoral race, and this strategy opens up a clear lane. So he can focus on kind of regrouping post his legal woes and getting ready for November and not having to rush and get ready for June 24th, which is the day of the Democratic primary. Adams says he had hoped to run in the Democratic primary, but the criminal case against him made that impossible. In New York, only candidates registered with the Democratic or Republican parties can run in the primaries. The Special Collections Research Room of the New York Public Library is usually a pretty quiet spot. But since the Joan Didion archive opened last week, it's been packed. The journalist and author Leslie Bloom said she flew out from Los Angeles to have the very first appointment at the archive as research for her new book, which features Didion as a protagonist.

It was quite a scene. I have spent a lot of time in the special collections room at the New York Public Library, and it's never a situation where every desk is filled. The archive features 336 boxes of love letters, grocery lists, research notes, photos, and more. You can see highlights at our news site, Gothamist. 56 and rainy right now. Today, patchy fogs still ahead after this morning's rain, a high of 73 and gusty. Tonight, overnight showers likely, lows in the middle.

mid-50s still gusty. Tomorrow, morning showers likely. Stay close. There's more after the break. Mayor Eric Adams is not running in the June 24th Democratic primary. He's aiming to go straight to the general and appear as an independent. This comes a day after a judge dismissed charges against the mayor for good in his federal corruption case. My colleague Michael Hill spoke with WNYC's John Campbell to walk us through the events. Okay, John, it's been another wild 24 hours with Eric Adams. Walk us through all that happened since this time yesterday.

Well, Michael, so much has happened. I mean, for one, a federal judge officially threw out the criminal bribery charges against the mayor. And that's something that many people have been expecting since the Trump Department of Justice ordered prosecutors to drop the charges. And that cleared the way for this morning's news. In a six-minute video, Mayor Adams announced he's running. for re-election this year as an independent. I firmly believe that this city is better served by truly independent leadership, not leaders pulled at by the extremists on the far left or the far right.

So what does that mean? It means Eric Adams will not be running in the Democratic primary in June. And so long as he can gather petition signatures from about 3,700 voters over the next two months, that would put him on the ballot in November so long as those signatures survive court challenges over whether they're valid or not. A lot of times, other candidates like to challenge those signatures. John, isn't it safer to run as a Democrat?

Why is Adams doing this? Well, it's certainly safer to run as a Democrat. I mean, New York City is a deep blue city, and Adams is still registered as a Democrat. But poll after poll showed he was just getting crushed in the Democratic prime. field. So this move means he won't be on the Democratic Party line in November. Instead, he'll be on a different yet-to-be-named independent line further down the ballot. And he says he

did that because of his criminal case. The dismissal, the bogus case against me, dragged on too long, making it impossible to mount a primary campaign while these false accusations were held over me. Now, we should note that the case wasn't dismissed on the merits. It was procedural. So anyway, this move gives the mayor more time to ramp up his campaign since he's running in November and not June. He hadn't really been raising money. He hadn't really been holding campaign rallies or events. This buys him some more time. John, so given all that, what are the mayor's chances, though, in the general election as an independent? Well, Michael, he faces, long odds for sure. I mean, it's just harder to win an election when you're not on a major

party line. But the polls made pretty clear that Adams wasn't going to win the Democratic line anyway. So this improves his chances in the sense that it assures he'll be on the ballot in November if he gets those petition signatures. But November is a long time away. I mean, it's a lifetime in politics. And a lot of things can happen. It'll also depend on who comes out of the Democratic primary. There's more than a handful of candidates right now. Adams is more of a centrist. He would probably match up better against one of the candidates on the left, people like Zerran Mamdani and Brad Lander. And he'd probably have a tougher time against, say, Andrew Cuomo, who would be competing for the same centrist voters. Any sense, John, of what other Democrats

might be thinking about this? Can he still govern? Well, most Democratic leaders have been pretty troubled by the mayor's conduct for for weeks now i mean remember some of the mayor's own deputies resigned after some federal prosecutors accused him of basically cutting a deal with the trump administration you drop the bribery charges i help you out on your term immigration crackdown which the mayor has denied by the way but we're starting to see statements from the other candidates kind of trickle in now that adams has announced this independent run that includes a statement from senator state senator i should say zelnor myri He's a Brooklyn Democrat running in the primary.

He took jabs at both Mayor Adams and Andrew Cuomo, the former New York governor, who's attempting his own political comeback in the mayor's race. Myree said, quote, this isn't leadership, this is a circus, this is our home, not their comeback stage. John, we know Governor Hohel has the ability to remove the mayor from office, but to this point she's decided against it. Does anything from the last 24 hours, does it change? any of that calculation for her? I'd say almost certainly not.

We haven't heard from the governor on the mayor since the charges were officially dropped or since he announced this independent run. But she decided against using her removal power when the mayor was first charged. She decided against it again when he was accused of cutting a deal with Trump. And both times she made really clear that she didn't want to overturn the will of the voters. She viewed it as anti-democratic for a mayor, I'm sorry, a governor to remove a mayor from office in the middle of his term. I'd be very surprised to see anything changed on that front after what we've seen in the last 24 hours. John, less than a minute left here asking you to speculate on this, what is fundraising going to be like for the mayor?

Because he's not in line with Republicans, not in line with the Democratic Party either. So what's it going to be like for? It's going to be very difficult. I mean, the mayor has not really been raising money since his criminal case came down. And other candidates have and have been very aggressive in trying to reach donors, the same donors that the mayor would have to reach. So a lot of those donors are spoken for and won't want to be tapped twice. So, yeah, it's going to be a very difficult challenge for the mayor to raise the funds necessary to say,

get on the air and air television advertisements or web advertisements. It's going to be a challenge. But perhaps him being the incumbent, well, he can talk about different things while he's on a trail and talk about it as mayor. Absolutely. The power of incumbency is very real and gives him a very big megaphone to speak to the voters. All right. WNIC's John Campbell. Thank you, John. Thank you. Thanks for listening. This is NYC. now from WMYC. Catch us every weekday three times a day for your top news headlines

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