City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams announced late Wednesday she will run for mayor this year, jumping into an already crowded primary field that was reshaped by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s recent entry into the race.
“New Yorkers can’t afford to live here, City Hall is in chaos, and Donald Trump is corrupting our city’s independence. It’s time to stand up,” the speaker said in a statement confirming her plans to run for mayor.
“I never planned to run for mayor, but I’m not giving up on New York City,” she continued. “Our city deserves a leader that serves its people first and always, not someone focused on themselves and their own political interests.”
The speaker — whose announcement was first reported by Politico — faces an uphill battle in mounting a run against Mayor Adams in June’s Democratic primary.
Though seen internally in the Council as a steady hand, she has little name recognition on a citywide level.
Petitioning for the primary, meantime, started late last month and must be completed by April 3, giving her team a short window of time to complete the labor intensive signature process required to get on the June 24 ballot.
According to a source familiar with the matter, the speaker will immediately start petitioning.
The speaker only had about $210,000 in her Council campaign account at the end of the most recent filing period. That pales in comparison to the millions of dollars that most of the other Democratic 2025 mayoral candidates are sitting on after months of fundraising.
Speaker Adams’ candidacy could spell trouble for both Mayor Adams and Cuomo, though.
Representing a section of eastern Queens that includes Jamaica and South Ozone Park, the speaker is popular with moderate Black voters, a key base of political support that the mayor and Cuomo also court. The speaker endorsed Eric Adams’ successful 2021 campaign, but has since soured on him amid heavy clashes over policy and budgetary issues.
For months, Cuomo — who launched his campaign on March 1 — has been ranked in polls as the race’s clear front-runner, as Mayor Adams faces intense political headwinds amid his continuing federal corruption indictment, surrounding scandals and record-low approval ratings.
The speaker’s entry could scramble Cuomo’s calculus in the race, given their overlapping bases of support.
“I’m a public servant, mother, Queens girl and I’m running for mayor,” her statement said. “No drama, no nonsense—just my commitment to leading with competence and integrity.”
She is only the second woman to announce a mayoral campaign this year, with the other being Queens state Sen. Jessica Ramos, who announced her run in September. If elected, Adams would become the first Black woman and female mayor in New York history, giving her candidacy a historic air.
Adams was first elected to the Council in 2017 and is term-limited from serving another four years in the legislative body.
She’s widely considered a moderate Democrat though she has as speaker helped push through a slate of progressive legislation. That includes leading the charge to override the mayor’s vetoes last year of two high-profile public safety bills that implemented new transparency requirements on NYPD officers and banned solitary confinement in city jails.
Adams has also as speaker clashed with the mayor over budgetary matters and mounted an aggressive advocacy campaign last year that resulted in the mayor undoing spending cuts he enacted to the city’s public libraries.
In her fourth and final State of the City speech as speaker earlier this week, Adams hinted at her discontent with the mayor.
“The dignity and trust in government leadership has been shaken in our city,” she said, “and it must be restored.”
