Is There Any Path to Victory for Eric Adams as an Independent?

Earlier today, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced what most people expected: He’s not running for re-election as a Democrat. He’s, instead, running as an independent. Adams can read a poll as well as anyone and no matter how unfairly treated he feels, the math to win in a Democratic primary just isn’t there. In a recent survey of 2,200 registered voters conducted by John Della Volpe, Adams’ support stood at 12%. There likely is not a viable path for Adams as an independent either, but it’s worth at least exploring what it would take for him to win.

Running as an independent is always difficult. At the time I ran Mike Bloomberg’s 2009 re-election campaign, Mike was an independent, and we looked hard at the idea of him not running on any party line. The numbers never added up, not even for a guy who could spend billions on paid media. In most cases, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City walks in with roughly 40-45% of the vote. The Republican nominee has 10-20% of the vote. Once you add those two together, there’s just not enough votes left to win.

But perhaps there is a scenario that changes the underlying math — making Adams (or for that matter, Jim Walden, who is also running as an independent) viable. It would look something like this.

First, Andrew Cuomo would have to lose the Democratic primary. (Full disclosure: Two people who work for my consulting firm — Chris Coffey and Shontell Smith — are advising the Cuomo campaign, although the campaign itself is not a client. I am not personally involved with any of the campaigns.) Cuomo is a moderate and if he wins the primary, he will not only win most Democratic votes, he’ll do very well among independents and Republicans too. Beating him in a general election is not feasible.

The argument for Andrew losing in the primary is based on the path of a different Andrew four years ago — Andrew Yang. At this point in the race, Yang (who was a client of my firm) was up by a similar margin to Cuomo’s. As we all know, that lead ultimately dissipated. However, knowing the Yang campaign extremely well, I do not think the same factors apply to Cuomo as did Yang.

Elections, in my experience, are based in large part on the zeitgeist of the moment. For the first half of the 2021 mayoral race, the zeitgeist was about recovering from COVID. Yang was the perfect candidate for that. But once vaccines became fully available that spring, anxiety about COVID plummeted, and concerns shifted to other topics like crime. At that point, Eric Adams, a 23-year veteran of the NYPD, became the candidate who best fit the zeitgeist. 

The zeitgeist of this election is that the city feels awful. It feels dirty, dangerous and unsafe. Crime may be trending down this year, but lots of New Yorkers are fed up. They want someone who can come in and fix the problem, and around 40% in most polls are naming Andrew Cuomo as that solution. I’m not really sure how that will change much in the next 12 weeks. 

But let’s say, for sake of argument, it somehow does change and someone other than Cuomo does win the primary. Right now, the second-place candidate is Zohran Mamdani, a Socialist from Queens. Mamdani is the most far-left candidate in the race. He has run a dynamic campaign, capturing attention, donations and support. If Mamdani wins the primary, a lot of traditional Democratic voters will be looking for other options because his views are so extreme. Eric Adams is banking on being that other option. 

The same argument holds somewhat true if someone else from the left (Brad Lander, Scott Stringer, Adrienne Adams, Zellnor Myrie, Jessica Ramos) wins the primary, but all of those candidates are far more traditional and far less controversial than Mamdani, so the odds of giving Eric Adams a clear opening are a lot lower.

But let’s say it’s Mamdani as the Democrat, Adams and Walden as independents and Curtis Sliwa as the Republican. This isn’t a ranked-choice general election – a plurality is good enough to win. Let’s say 42%, for the sake of argument. Based on 2021 turnout, that would require Adams to win just under 475,000 votes. To do this (again using 2021 turnout), he’d need roughly one-third of Democratic votes cast and two-thirds of Republican, independent and other party votes. That doesn’t sound impossible if the opponent is someone like Mamdani, but it’s still incredibly difficult. 

To win over that many voters and take them away from the major party candidates, Adams would have to have a massive independent expenditure run on his behalf. It would likely require tens of millions of dollars in advertising and get-out-the-vote efforts to bring out enough voters to overcome the systemic advantages held by the major party candidates. That money would have to come from a combination of major Jewish donors terrified of Mamdani’s anti-Israel stance, major Wall Street donors terrified of a Socialist mayor, tech donors terrified of their New York employees wanting to leave a city possibly facing a meaningful decrease in law enforcement resources and a host of other rich people and organizations. 

On top of that, Donald Trump would have to be able to bring most GOP voters into Adams’ column without alienating the Democratic and independent voters Adams also needs. This requires nuance and subtlety, traits that are not normally associated with Trump (or Adams). 

Because Adams is the incumbent, for him to have any chance at a second term, the city also has to feel better and safer to voters by Election Day. The good news is that crime has been declining. That helps. If the administration can pick up the pace of closing illegal weed shops, making sure scaffolding that isn’t essential is taken down and enforcing basic quality-of-life laws like not driving e-bikes on sidewalks, that would all help too. 

But the macro climate is likely to be very challenging for Adams. Trump’s tariffs are going to be a double whammy for the city, both increasing prices for consumers and also hammering the markets, the lifeblood of the city’s economy. Adams’ close ties to Trump will be reinforced by his opponents at every turn. 

Winning as an independent is a very tricky path that, probabilistically speaking, won’t happen. But no one anticipated 9/11, and that ended up electing Mike Bloomberg. The availability of the COVID vaccines shifted the zeitgeist of the race in 2021. Weird things happen in campaigns. And Adams clearly had no path in the Democratic primary. So if you’re him, pivoting to independent, for now at least, makes sense. If he somehow draws a royal flush, maybe New York City will wind up with a competitive general election for the first time in 16 years. That in and of itself would be interesting indeed.