Embattled Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday stepped up attacks against those challenging his re-election in the 2025 NYC mayor’s race, lashing out at two candidates who are beating him in the polls: former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Queens Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani.
After weeks of mostly holding back on going after his opponents, Hizzoner unloaded on Cuomo and Mamdani during an April 1 City Hall news conference. Cuomo is currently the front-runner in the mayor’s race, leading three recent polls by double digits, while Mamdani appears to have solidified a spot in second place. Meanwhile, the incumbent mayor has dropped into the single digits and is struggling to gain traction.
Mayor Adams was set off when asked about Cuomo’s view that additional state-level changes to make it easier for the city to involuntarily hospitalize mentally ill people, which he has been pushing for, are unnecessary. Specifically, the mayor appeared to be bothered by Cuomo, who indicated that the problem was a result of Adams’ own mismanagement.
Adams responded by charging that it is actually Cuomo who mismanaged a slew of issues during his 11 years as governor.
“Like the management that he did with the nursing homes, or the management he did when he was not having all communities, particularly Black and brown communities, get the vaccine, or the management he did with arguing with [former Mayor] Bill de Blasio that we didn’t have a test site up at [Citi Field],” Adams said.
The mayor was referring to criticisms that Cuomo was responsible for New York’s high COVID-19 nursing home death rate, did not equitably distribute coronavirus vaccines to Black and brown communities, and a Politico report that he witheld vaccines from a Citi Field testing site as part of a 2021 dispute with de Blasio. He also took aim at Cuomo for cutting funding to a now-defunct state housing voucher program that he said made “homelessness spike” in the city and signing reforms to the state’s cash bail system into law.
Cuomo’s campaign has repeatedly refuted that he mishandled COVID-19 in nursing homes — stating that he followed federal guidelines and was politically targeted by the first Trump administration. Furthermore, they contend Cuomo opened vaccine sites in neighborhoods of color across the city; did not withhold vaccines from the Citi Field site, but rather had exhausted its supply due to federal supply-chain issues; and replaced the housing voucher program with others that received more funding.
‘Management’ skills questioned
Adams also questioned how Cuomo would manage someone with apparent mental illness on the subways if he were to approach them in person and blasted his use of a slideshow presentation in an interview with the New York Post editorial board last month.
“Ask him when was the last time that he was on the subway alone?” Adams said. “Ask him, when did he walk up to a person with no shoes on, no shirt on, in the dead of winter, yelling and screaming, about to push someone on the tracks?…How would he manage that?”
In response, Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi directly responded to the mayor’s accusations in a statement, saying it was what he characterized as the former governor’s strong management that yielded his successes in office.
“It is management Mr. Mayor: management like keeping your fiscal house in order with a 2% spending cap; management like building infrastructure projects like the Second Avenue Subway and LaGuardia Airport; management like raising wages for millions of New Yorkers; and, yes, management like leading the world through COVID,” Azzopardi said. “It is management — something you and de Blasio know nothing about.”
“But hey, like we said last week when the mayor went on his last unhinged rant, desperate men — particularly ones acting as an agent of Trump — say desperate things,” he added, referring to the mayor’s warm relationship with the Trump administration.
‘Pie in the sky’
Cuomo was not the only competitor who entered Adams’ sights on Tuesday. He also went out of his way to attack Mamdani, a Democratic socialist and one of Adams’ sharpest critics.
Specifically, the mayor slammed Mamdani’s newly released public safety plan, which calls for establishing a new city agency that would take over certain duties currently under the NYPD’s purview. Mamdani envisions his “Department of Community Safety” as a non-police agency assigned to address mental health on the subways, stem gun violence, and offer services for victims.
Mamdani said establishing the new agency, which would have a budget of $1.1 billion, would not affect the NYPD’s current funding level. He added that the budget would be partially funded by $400 million in new revenue that could be raised from tax hikes on the wealthiest New Yorkers.
When asked about the proposal, Adams mocked the Assembly Member as “Defund the Police Mamdani,” while insisting his own policing-focused approach to public safety has been successful. He also cast the plan as unrealistic, given its price tag.
“All the sudden, he wants to talk about more community policing, something that I cut my teeth on,” he said. ““For him to say that he wants a billion-dollar tax on New Yorkers, you know that hurts the economy. … These pie in the sky’s ideas that people are running prior to coming into the real work of running a city of this level of complexity, it’s just unrealistic.”
Mamdani hit back in a social media post where he mocked Adams for the rent increases on stabilized tenants that have occurred during his time in office. He also issued a statement blasting the mayor for resorting to “nicknames and lies” rather than confronting public safety concerns.
“Meanwhile, I have released a comprehensive evidenced-based plan that will address violence and crime at its source, deploy trained mental health crisis responders across our subway system, relieve the excessive burden we’ve placed on police officers, and keep New Yorkers safe,” Mamdani said. “It’s time to turn the page on Eric Adams’ four years of failed governance and elect leadership that takes these issues seriously.”
