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New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, seen here speaking at a press conference last year, would become acting mayor of New York if indicted Mayor Eric Adams were to resign.
If you read the indictment handed down by a federal grand jury, you will see lurid documentation of New York Mayor Eric Adams as a classic grifter. The story is cheesy in its details and simple in its essence—a tawdry tale of bribery in exchange for illegal favors.
It seems inconceivable that Adams can survive. But he can probably string out the process of negotiating some kind of plea bargain for several months. As we shall see, that timing is key for the question of who might succeed him.
Here’s where the four-dimensional chess comes in.
Person of Interest #1: Andrew Cuomo. The former governor was forced out of office in August 2021 on a sludge tide of charges of serial sexual harassment. Cuomo is embittered, feeling that he was wrongly pushed out, and desperately wants back in. The route in could be mayor, or governor, or mayor as a relaunching pad for governor.
The oddity is that Cuomo shares much of Adams’s base of socially conservative white ethnic New Yorkers anxious about crime, plus many Black voters, plus New York’s ever-potent real estate interests. Like Adams, Cuomo is also a bully, but a much smarter politician.
Lately, Cuomo has been speaking a lot at Black churches. Last Sunday, at a Black congregation in Brooklyn, Cuomo echoed Adams, decrying crime “seemingly everywhere” harming Black and brown New Yorkers, and migrants “out of control.”
Precisely because they have the same base, Cuomo can’t be seen as pushing Adams out. In a statement released on Friday after Adams pleaded not guilty in federal district court, Rich Azzopardi, Cuomo’s longtime spokesman, said that he “will do whatever he can to help.” Yet it’s in Cuomo’s interest that Adams step down sooner rather than later because that would trigger a nonpartisan special election, which would be easier for Cuomo to win. And Adams has to know that.
Person of Interest #2: Kathy Hochul. Gov. Hochul, a political nonentity in New York until Cuomo needed an upstate running mate, has been a weak and inept governor. Cuomo still considers her a political nonentity. She and Cuomo detest each other—Cuomo because he sees a much lesser figure having usurped his rightful place, Hochul because Cuomo keeps demeaning her.
Hochul has the constitutional power to remove Adams from office. She keeps demurring, issuing noncommittal statements. But the real reason for her reluctance is Andrew Cuomo and the calendar.
Under New York law, if Adams leaves office before next March 28, there will be an acting mayor and a nonpartisan special election within 80 days. However, if he leaves office after March 28, there will still be an acting mayor, but with the usual June party primaries and a general election in November.
Cuomo would do much better in a nonpartisan special election. The last thing Hochul wants is for Cuomo to be New York mayor, where he will make her life miserable, and maybe even decide to run against her for governor. So, weirdly, the interests of Hochul and Adams converge. It’s better for her, and worse for Cuomo, if Adams stays in office past March 28.
Adams may well pursue some kind of plea bargain in which he agrees to resign in exchange for lesser charges that avoid prison time. People knowledgeable about this kind of deal tell me that Adams can easily stretch out that process until March.
Persons of Interest #3 and 4: Jumaane Williams and Brad Lander. If Adams steps down, the popular Williams, who is the city’s public advocate, becomes acting mayor. Williams has expressed no interest in running for mayor. He is very close to New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, another favorite of progressives, who has already declared his candidacy. Some say the two have an understanding that Williams will not run against Lander.
If Williams does become acting mayor, he could change his mind and decide that he wants to keep the job. Conversely, if he decides that he’d rather not be mayor at all, Lander is next in line to serve as acting mayor, which would give him a big head start.
Should Adams resign before March 28 and Cuomo decide to run in a nonpartisan election, he’d be the odds-on favorite. But he’d have a harder time winning a Democratic primary, especially if progressives can agree on who stays in, who drops out, and how to devise a common strategy for New York’s complex ranked-choice system.
The election is further complicated by race. Adams has turned to Black leaders and suggested that what is a cut-and-dried corruption case is somehow motivated by racism. Al Sharpton and Hazel Dukes have said that Adams should not be hounded from office. In an election to succeed Adams, with Cuomo in the contest, some would argue that a Black progressive might have the best chance of defeating Cuomo.
Cue Person of Interest #5: Tish James. The popular state AG has expressed no interest in running. It was James whose investigation pushed Cuomo out of office. Cuomo is famous for holding grudges. Cuomo against James would be the mother of all grudge matches.
