Adrienne Adams lets colleagues know she’s launching campaign for New York City mayor

New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams called several City Council colleagues Wednesday night to let them know she’s running for mayor, three members who received calls confirmed to City & State. They said she will hold a campaign launch event on Saturday, officially entering the crowded field of challengers looking to oust Mayor Eric Adams.

The speaker’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Speaker Adams will be the next politician to test whether City Council speaker is a dead-end job in elected office, or if it could, for the first time, be a launching pad to the top job in City Hall.

Speaker Adams, who grew up in Southeast Queens with Mayor Eric Adams but is not related to him, is joining an already crowded field. It’s not an open seat, but Mayor Adams’ weakened incumbency – beset by legal, political and financial woes – has invited a spirited crowd of challengers, including most recently, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Mayor Adams has insisted that he is still running – and in the Democratic primary – but his campaign apparatus remains barebones. 

First elected to the council in 2017 before becoming the first Black woman to lead the legislative body in 2022, Speaker Adams has presided over a City Council that is the most diverse in history, including distinct ideological factions and the most number of women ever in the council – experience she’ll likely highlight on the campaign trail.

Her candidacy for mayor – a somewhat late, surprise entrance in the race – is not unlike her underdog, and ultimately successful run for City Council speaker back in 2021. In that instance, she emerged as a well-liked and respected consensus pick who didn’t catch fire until late in the chaotic race.

Now, after showing little interest in continuing her career in elected office – she’s term-limited out of the council at the end of this year – Speaker Adams was effectively drafted into the race as some power players remain unconvinced by the current crop of candidates. Everyone from Attorney General Letitia James to 2021 mayoral runner-up Kathryn Garcia has fielded calls to run, but the push for Speaker Adams to jump in the race picked up last month at “Caucus Weekend” in Albany, where James and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams loudly chanted “run Adrienne run!” during a speech she made. Williams has committed to ranking Comptroller Brad Lander first or second in the ranked-choice Democratic primary in June, but told City & State on Tuesday that he’s “particularly excited” about the possibility of Speaker Adams running too.

In recent weeks, Speaker Adams has also reportedly received some encouragement about the idea of a mayoral run from leaders at District Council 37 and 32BJ SEIU. But she’s also taken a more active role in pursuing the possibility. City & State first reported that she’s been making calls and actively taking the temperature of members of the City Council about the possibility. Last week, she filed paperwork to open a campaign committee, titled “Adrienne for the People.”

Still, Speaker Adams will face substantial challenges, starting with catching up in fundraising. She has a little over $211,000 in her campaign account from 2023, but will need to work quickly to keep pace with candidates who have been fundraising – and some who have received substantial public matching funds – for months. Building out a campaign apparatus is also expected to be a challenge late in the game. Her campaign could cut down on some of that pressure if an outside political action committee assembles to support her run. Cuomo is expected to benefit from outside spending in his own bid.

Though no single candidate has coalesced a stronghold of support from labor or elected officials, the competition for that is already steep – and getting steeper, with Cuomo’s recent entrance into the race. Already, two City Council members: Kamillah Hanks and Farah Louis, have endorsed Cuomo. Despite effectively serving in a citywide role, Speaker Adams, a former chair of Queens Community Board 12, has only ever been elected by voters in Queens. Building name recognition on a citywide level will be a huge task for the campaign, though her base in vote-rich Southeast Queens will be a boon.

Sharing a last name with the mayor could be confusing for voters who see two Adamses on the ballot. The order of names on the ballot is determined by a lottery. On top of all that, there’s the so-called “speaker’s curse” – the inconvenient fact that no past City Council speaker has successfully made the jump to being elected in another citywide role, including mayor or comptroller. 

Despite those challenges, the still unsettled state of the race leaves an opening for Speaker Adams. And in her annual State of the City address – which happened to take place on Tuesday – she laid out of vision that doubled as a preview of what her campaign could emphasize.

Among the work she highlighted during the speech are initiatives fully undertaken by the City Council, including the establishment of new trauma recovery centers, a program to help adult students finish degrees at CUNY, and a guaranteed income program for low-income mothers. 

In contrast with Mayor Adams, she took a hard line against the Trump administration, sounding an alarm about threats to democracy in D.C. – and at home, she said, in what may have been a veiled reference to Mayor Adams’ administration. “It is up to us to counter the tyranny taking root at our federal level and right here in our own backyard,” she said. 

Despite ringing those alarms, she struck a somewhat optimistic tone on Tuesday – one that contrasted with the image of the city painted by Cuomo, who has promised to save a New York City in crisis. Speaking about what she called the administration’s attempted erasure of LGBTQ, Black, Latino, indigenous communities, she said, “They’re counting on our despair and our inaction. What a grave mistake.”

In characterizing her own political identity, Speaker Adams took a similar approach as some of the other mayoral candidates in eschewing labels. “I’ve been labeled as a moderate in people’s attempts to make sense of who I am,” she said on Tuesday. “But my focus has always been public service, which has no political label.”

Despite coming into office with that reputation as a moderate Democrat, Speaker Adams has increasingly served as leader of a body that plays left-leaning foil to Mayor Adams’ administration – pushing for the closure of Rikers Island, battling over vetoed legislation to increase reporting on police stops, and fighting budget cuts. While Speaker Adams has suffered her fair share of losses in power struggle battles with the other side of City Hall, she’s taken on fights against Mayor Adams’ administration that some weren’t sure she would back in 2022, when she was viewed as more aligned with the mayor’s politics. Still, some, typically those on the left, have desired even more aggressive action from the City Council to counter the mayoral administration. 

A measured public speaker who rarely lashes out against the mayor, her criticism of him has nonetheless intensified in recent weeks, as the mayor has come under fire for his alignment with the Trump administration on immigration enforcement and as Trump’s Department of Justice moved to drop the corruption charges filed against the mayor last year.