City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams has taken a first official step toward a potential run for mayor this year, filing paperwork late Wednesday to open a campaign account that allows her to start fundraising, her team confirmed.
But a source close to the speaker — who would face a bevy of logistical challenges in running against Mayor Adams in June’s Democratic primary — said she has yet to make a final decision on whether to formally jump into the crowded race.
“We got to move to be prepared if that decision to get in the race happens,” the source told the Daily News, noting that petitioning is already underway for the June 24 primary while other candidates have already set up rigorous campaign operations.
That includes former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who hasn’t formally announced a campaign yet, but is widely expected to enter the race as early as this weekend after months of preparations as polls project he’d be the front-runner.
AP
Ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo. (Cliff Owen/AP)
In a statement to The News confirming she has opened a campaign account, the speaker, who’s term-limited from serving another four years in the Council, said she didn’t until recently plan to stay in city politics after this year, and certainly not run for mayor.
“But as more and more serious stakeholders in our city have urged me to consider serving the city in this way, I have given it increasingly serious consideration,” said the speaker, a moderate Democrat who has helped push through progressive legislation, such as a ban on solitary confinement in city jails and increased transparency requirements for the NYPD.
“There is an opportunity to build a diverse coalition of New Yorkers who want leadership that restores effective management and trust to deliver results that make the city safer, more affordable, and better protected from the chaos of the Trump Administration,” her statement added.
The speaker’s creation of a mayoral campaign account, first reported by the New York Times, comes after she seriously started considering a bid just a couple of weeks ago, when State Attorney General Letitia James and other New York politicos began urging her to run during a political confab in Albany.
Since then, other power-brokers have been in talks with her encouraging her to consider a run, including leaders at DC 37 and 32BJ, two of the city’s largest labor unions, both of which endorsed Mayor Adams in the 2021 election and were seen as key to his win that year.
Adams is the first Black woman to serve as a Council speaker. She would become the first woman and the first Black woman to ever be elected mayor, giving her potential campaign a historic air.
In recent months, she has been increasingly outspoken against the embattled mayor, including coming out last week to call on him to resign over concerns that he’s a “hostage” to President Trump’s agenda.
Like many other high-profile elected leaders in the city, the speaker came to that conclusion after Trump’s Department of Justice filed a motion seeking to dismiss the mayor’s federal corruption indictment with the understanding that it could come back as early as November.
In the interim, Trump’s DOJ spelled out in the motion — which is pending approval from a federal judge — that it expects quashing the mayor’s indictment will enable him to help the president target undocumented New Yorkers for “mass deportations.” The mayor has said there is no quid pro quo.
There are a number of serious headaches on the horizon for the speaker should she decide to run for mayor.
While she’s known internally the Council as an deliberative leader, she has little name-recognition on a citywide level.
At the same time, she has just over $211,000 in her old Council campaign coffers, and it’s unclear if she can even pump all of that into her mayoral account due to restrictions on such transfers. Petitioning — the resource-intensive process of collecting signatures from thousands of registered city voters in order to get your name on the primary ballot — started Tuesday and runs through April 3.
Meantime, the more than a half dozen candidates already challenging Mayor Adams have spent months fundraising and racking up endorsements for their candidacies, meaning the speaker would have lots of ground to catch up on in a short period of time.
Cuomo’s likely entry is also expected to shake up the entire dynamic of the race, given that he’s expected to be the front-runner.
Spokespeople for Mayor Adams and Cuomo didn’t immediately return requests for comment on the speaker’s move.
