By Joseph Ax and Daniel Trotta
NEW YORK (Reuters) -New York City Mayor Eric Adams declared on Friday he would continue to seek re-election, following days of reports that President Donald Trump planned to offer him a federal job in exchange for dropping out of the mayoral race.
Trump has vowed to do what he can to stop the Democratic nominee and frontrunner, 33-year-old liberal state lawmaker Zohran Mamdani, from becoming the next mayor of his native city. Earlier this week, Trump said he would like to see two of the three other main candidates – Adams, former Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa – step aside to avoid splitting the anti-Mamdani vote.
Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, has alarmed much of the New York business community and some within the Democratic Party with his leftist views. Election Day is November 4.
“It would seem to me that if he (Adams) stays in, if you have more than one candidate running against him (Mamdani), it can’t be won,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, shortly after Adams’ statement.
“I would say that Cuomo might have a chance of winning if it was a one-on-one. If it’s not one on one, it’s going to be a hard race,” Trump added.
Adams said press reports of him being in Washington for meetings about his future were wrong, but he did not directly address whether he had been in talks with Trump’s team.
“I am running and I am going to beat Mamdani,” Adams told reporters gathered at the mayor’s official residence, Gracie Mansion.
“The voters will determine who’s the next mayor of this city, and I will respect the outcome from the voters,” Adams said. He declined to take questions from reporters.
The New York Times, citing four people familiar with the discussions, on Friday reported that close Trump advisors had devised a plan to nominate Adams to become U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia in order to get to him to quit the mayoral race.
Asked whether he had offered Adams the job of an ambassador, Trump said: “I didn’t do that. No, I wouldn’t do that. It’s nothing wrong with doing it. But I didn’t do that.”
Adams, an elected Democrat and former police captain, was running as an independent after his indictment on federal bribery counts made him the city’s first sitting mayor to face criminal charges. He pleaded not guilty and maintained his innocence.
In an extraordinary move, Trump’s Justice Department dropped the case not because of the strength of the evidence, but because officials said the prosecution was interfering with Adams’ ability to support the president’s deportation agenda.
Adams shocked many fellow Democrats when he appeared alongside Tom Homan, Trump’s so-called border czar, on the conservative news program “Fox & Friends.” There, Homan threatened to be “up his butt” if Adams reneged on his agreement to help with federal immigration enforcement.
The apparent quid pro quo prompted half a dozen senior Justice Department attorneys to resign rather than follow instructions to dismiss the charges. Adams and his attorney denied that there was any deal to secure a dismissal.
Adams’ re-election chances had appeared slim for months, with polls showing he is deeply unpopular among the city’s heavily Democratic populace.
Mamdani, a previously obscure state legislator, pulled off a surprising victory over Cuomo in the city’s Democratic primary election. His grassroots campaign deftly used clever social media videos to inspire an army of volunteers.
Cuomo, who resigned as governor in 2021 during a sexual harassment scandal even though he denied wrongdoing, is running as an independent.
The Cuomo campaign declined to comment on Adams’ statement. The Mamdani and Sliwa campaigns did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax in New York, Daniel Trotta in Carlsbad, California, and Jasper Ward in Washington; editing by Paul Thomasch and David Gregorio)
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