Campaign

Adams plays down talk of a Cuomo mayoral run

by Olafimihan Oshin - 11/27/23 6:47 PM ET

New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) downplayed the recent talks of the possibility of former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) launching a bid for the city’s mayoral seat.

Adams’s response on the matter came during a Monday appearance on La Mega 97.9, a New York City-based Spanish radio station.

“We talk often,” Adams told the radio show hosts. “I don’t see him running for mayor. I think he is looking at his next political move, and there is a lot of things he can look at, but I have to be ready to run New York and that is what I’m focused on doing right now.”

Politico reported last week that Cuomo, 65, was weighing the idea of launching a mayoral campaign if Adams continues to sink into a deeper hole into the federal investigations against him.

Sources close to the former governor told the news outlet that Cuomo would not run in a primary race against Adams due to his friendship with the mayor.

“My opinion is if he runs, he will win,” Rev. Ruben Diaz Sr., a former state senator, told Politico in an interview. “People are in need of a leader. Even though Governor Cuomo and I have our differences, we’ve had many fights in the past, and besides the differences, I think he was a great governor.”

This would be Cuomo’s first attempt of running for political office after he resigned from his position as state governor in August 2021. In August of that calendar year, New York state Attorney General Letitia James (D) released a report that found that Cuomo sexually harassed 11 women, including a number of former state employees.

Adams, 63, has been under scrutiny for the past weeks after the FBI seized his electronic devices amid an ongoing federal investigation into his 2021 mayoral campaign fundraising. Adams has denied any wrongdoing in the matter.

Adams also was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in 1993 when he was a member of the city’s police department. In a statement to The Hill, a City Hall spokesperson said that the mayor vigorously denies the allegations against him.