While he may not want to emulate their results, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has sparked speculation he will follow in the footsteps of his last three predecessors by running for President of the United States.
Adams, just a little over a year into his first term and who has been rumored to be considering a bid for the presidency in the past, has raised over $1.27million for his re-election fund in that time, with half of that money coming from out-of-state donors, according to the NYC Campaign Finance Board.
That easily trumps the cash raised by former mayors Bill de Blasio ($7,997) and Rudy Giuliani ($719,760) who also both ran for president, though much later on in their time in office.
Adams, if he were to run despite crime continuing to rise in the Big Apple, would be fighting major historical precedent for the position, as no New York City mayor has successfully run for any since John T. Hoffman was elected governor in 1869.
While he may not want to emulate their results, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has sparked speculation he will follow in the footsteps of his last three predecessors by running for President of the United States
In fact, no Big Apple mayor has ever been elected to any higher office since 1913, when Ardolph Loges Kline was elected to Congress, though he was only mayor for three months after the previous mayor had died at sea.
About $632,636 of Adams’ campaign coffers are filled from donors outside the state of New York.
In the last six months, 87 donors have ‘maxed out’ or given him the limit of $2,100 in donations.
Adams has notably received over $13,000 from GrubHub officials, who are lobbying him to weaken regulations on food delivery and $10,000 from Broadway Stages execs.
At very least, the money raised would make it hard for a primary challenger from Adams’ left or a Republican to beat him in 2025. In 2021, Adams raised nearly $9 million in private funds and qualified to receive another $10.1million through the city’s public matching funds program.
Adams, 61, who once referred to himself as the ‘Biden of Brooklyn’, has ‘repeatedly’ told confidantes that he is considering running for the highest office and thinks he could ‘win,’ sources said as earlier as May of last year.
Ahead of the 2020 election, Biden himself had reportedly conceded he’d be a single-term president who hoped to reunite the US in the wake of Donald Trump’s divisive presidency.
Adams, 61, – who once referred to himself as the ‘Biden of Brooklyn’ – has ‘repeatedly’ told confidantes that he is considering running for the highest office and thinks he could ‘win,’ sources said as earlier as May of last year
About $632,636 of Adams’ campaign coffers are filled from donors outside the state of New York
Adams has raised a significant amount more than predecessor Bill de Blasio, who raised just over $7,000 in his first year
Adams will hope to break the string of unsuccessful presidential runs by predecessors de Blasio, Mike Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani (pictured)
But there is no obvious Democrat candidate to succeed him, with Vice President Kamala Harris’s personal approval ratings stubbornly low, and Biden is now said to be touting a 2024 run.
While only five months into his first term in office, Adams has pleased many centrist Democrats – and conservatives – by avoiding progressive or extreme stances on economic and social issues.
However, Adams’ advisor Evan Thies dismissed rumors, saying: ‘The mayor has not had any conversations with anyone about running for president. He is 100 percent focused on lowering crime and improving the economy in New York, and bringing this city back.’
The mayor does seem to have some backing, though, as CEO of Tusk Strategies Chris Coffey told the New York Post: ‘He is one of the best-known black elected officials in the country. The play works if Adams makes progress on crime and the president decides not to run. I think he would be crazy not to consider it.’
Even a GOP lawmaker told the Post he thought the Big Apple mayor could have a chance if he solved the crime riddling the City That Never Sleeps.
The statistics paint a bleak picture of the city’s efforts to address crime that’s rocketed since the pandemic – a campaign that has been touted as successful several times over the past year by Mayor Eric Adams
The unidentified lawmaker said: ‘I said you really have to consider that you are young enough where you will have a life after the mayoralty and if you solve the crime problem there would be a lot of interest in a big city Democrat, African American with progressive values but who mediated the crime problem in a major city.’
That said, seven months later, it was revealed that crime in the Big Apple is up in virtually every category, despite recent assertions from Adams.
The data shows that rapes, robberies, and assaults are all up from last year, since hitting highs not seen in decades in both 2020 and 2021.
Rape – which rocketed in 2020 when streets were empty and unemployment rife due to unrest caused by the coronavirus – rose by 7 percent, with more than 120 occurring this year than last.
Robberies, meanwhile, rose a shocking 20 percent, despite recent measures taken by Adams, 62, to increase police presence throughout the city.
Assaults and theft throughout the city, meanwhile, show a similarly pronounced rise, with felony assaults up 12 percent – 26,039 incidents this year compared to 22,835 seen last year – and burglaries up an alarming 25 percent.
All other crime categories – including grand larceny and motor vehicle theft – showed similar rises except for murders, despite the outset of the pandemic coming now nearly three years ago.