Before last week, Mayor Adams was already scrambling to push past the corruption concerns swirling around his candidacy.
But Thursday’s unsealing of four different bribery indictments ensnaring Ingrid Lewis-Martin and Jesse Hamilton, two of Adams’ most trusted political confidantes, marks a setback for the mayor’s effort to try to wash his hands of corruption concerns ahead of November’s election, experts told the Daily News. His opponents were quick to seize on the moment as emblematic of failed leadership.
“I think the people who have supported him until this point will stay with him, but if you were on the fence, I think you’re looking elsewhere,” Basil Smikle, a political strategist who used to serve as the executive director of New York’s Democratic Party, said when asked how he thinks the new indictments will impact the mayoral race.
Those on-the-fence voters are seen as critical for Adams to have any sort of path to a second term in City Hall.
Polls have consistently placed Adams in third or fourth place in November’s election, far behind Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani and also trailing independent candidate Andrew Cuomo.
Adams’ poor standing in the polls has so far been seen by many as linked to his own federal corruption indictment, which was quashed by President Trump’s Justice Department this spring as part of a controversial deal that led many to believe Adams is beholden to Trump. Several of his key aides resigned after being ensnared in federal probes. And, more recently, several NYPD officials, including Adams’ own former interim police commissioner Tom Donlon, have filed lawsuits accusing the mayor of allowing the police department to become a haven for corruption.
The new Lewis-Martin indictments are only likely to exacerbate concerns about corruption and mismanagement in Adams’ City Hall, including among the business community, which has recently shown signs of being willing to financially back his reelection bid.
One New York business executive who has contributed to Adams’ campaigns told The News that members of the donor class are, since Thursday, uneasy about the fact that the mayor allowed Lewis-Martin to come back and work on his reelection bid despite corruption concerns swirling about her. Her arrest this past week was her second round of corruption charges.
“We are used to the corruption and the scandals, it’s part of the package, but what I’m hearing now is concern about how bad the campaign is being run, and the potato chip thing isn’t helping,” the business executive said, a reference to how another embattled Adams campaign aide, Winnie Greco, ham-handedly gave a potato chip bag stuffed with cash to a reporter from the news outlet The City last week.
The executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid angering Adams, said the fresh indictments could drive some business honchos to Andrew Cuomo, who’s also running as an independent in November’s election after losing June’s primary to Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee seen as the favorite to become the next mayor.
“Cuomo’s the only place that’s left,” the exec said.
Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran New York political strategist who’s working on several pro-Adams and anti-Mamdani super PACs in this election, acknowledged the latest Lewis-Martin indictments could hurt the mayor’s standing with some donors. However, he discounted the idea that would result in donors flocking to Cuomo instead, arguing the ex-governor isn’t especially well liked among the business community at the moment, either, following his big primary loss to Mamdani.
“They’re both wounded,” Sheinkopf said of Adams and Cuomo.
By contrast, Sheinkopf said the new Lewis-Martin scandal “unquestionably helps Mamdani.”
Both candidates were quick to jump on the indictments as a chance to remind voters of the corruption allegations that have continued to dog the Adams administration.
Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani said Adams’ first term has amounted to a “resuscitation of Tammany Hall-style politics.”
“Mark Twain said that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes, and here we are, just a stone’s throw away from Tammany Hall, and we see that rhyme taking place with Eric Adams becoming a living, breathing testament to a continued legacy of corruption in this city’s politics,” Mamdani said Friday, speaking in Union Square Park, feet away from the infamous headquarters of the Tammany Hall organization that ruled city politics in the early 20th century.
Cuomo weighed in as well.
“I don’t believe that Mayor Adams can credibly ask New Yorkers to give him four more years,” Cuomo said Friday.
“I don’t think he has performed well, and I think that the series of corruption cases against the mayor are damning. And then on top of that was the deal he made with President Trump, where he saved his own hide by turning his back on New Yorkers. And to me, that is inexcusable.”
In his first public remarks about the new indictments, Adams on Friday offered a full-throated defense of both Lewis-Martin and Hamilton, saying he wishes them the best and that he only knows them as dedicated public servants. But speaking at City Hall, he also acknowledged “mistakes” have happened during the course of his administration.
“We have not always gotten it right,” he said, “but we have never stopped being dedicated to the people of this city.”
The new indictments, brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, alleged that Lewis-Martin, her adult son, Glenn Martin II, Hamilton and three business people engaged in several years-long bribery schemes. All six defendants pleaded not guilty, including Hamilton, who resigned from his senior administration post hours after his arraignment.
Lewis-Martin is accused of using her powers as Adams’ chief adviser at City Hall to pressure municipal agencies, like the FDNY, the Department of Buildings and the local public hospital system, to do favors for her alleged benefactors, including securing them migrant shelter contracts and fast-tracking property permits. Her alleged crimes played out more or less over her entire tenure at City Hall, starting in March 2022, just weeks after Adams became mayor, and spanning through at least November 2024, according to prosecutors.
Hamilton and Martin II conspired in the schemes by helping advance Lewis-Martin’s pressure campaign, prosecutors allege.
In exchange, the alleged bribers, Queens businessman Tian Ji Li and TV production moguls Tony and Gina Argento, showered Lewis-Martin, her son and Hamilton with cash and other forms of gifts. According to prosecutors, the bribes amounted to at least $75,000, though some of them weren’t monetary in nature, such as a guest appearance on Hulu show “Godfather of Harlem” that the Argentos secured for Lewis-Martin after she helped them derail a bike lane project in northern Brooklyn they disliked.
In his Friday remarks, Adams defended the Argentos, who are big donors to his campaigns, as “great New Yorkers.”
“They are beautiful people, and they really care about the city of New York,” he told reporters.
The latest bombshell indictments come on top of a separate set of corruption charges Lewis-Martin and her son were indicted on in December 2024 alleging they took $100,000 in bribes in exchange for fast-tracking building permits for two real estate investors.
Shortly before the December 2024 charges dropped, Lewis-Martin resigned as Adams’ chief adviser. Her resignation dealt a major blow to Adams, who had already months earlier seen a long list of top advisers, including his schools chancellor, police commissioner, first deputy mayor and deputy mayor for public safety, resign after being ensnared in federal probes. Those investigations have not led to charges.
