Mayoralty of Eric Adams
The mayoralty of Eric Adams began when Eric Adams was inaugurated as the 111th mayor of New York City shortly after midnight on January 1, 2022, and ended on December 31, 2025.
On November 17, 2020, Adams announced his candidacy for mayor of New York City. On July 6, 2021, the Associated Press declared Adams the winner of the 2021 Democratic mayoral primary. Adams defeated Republican Curtis Sliwa in the general election in a landslide victory. Adams was sworn in as mayor shortly after midnight on January 1, 2022.
As mayor, he has taken what is seen as a tough-on-crime approach and reintroduced a plain-clothed unit of police officers that had been disbanded by the previous administration. He has also implemented a zero-tolerance policy on unhoused people sleeping in subway cars alongside increased police presence. He also restored and expanded the gifted and talented program, trimmed agency budgets, and positioned New York as a cryptocurrency hub. His early tenure featured a Bronx apartment fire, a rise in major crime, changes to COVID-19 vaccination mandates, an affordable-housing “blueprint,” and the “City of Yes” zoning package amid sustained migrant-shelter pressures. His approval ratings fell sharply in mid-2022. His record on crime has been mixed, with a reduction in shootings, major crimes and transit crime. Overall crime has remained above pre-pandemic levels, however.
Adams faced criticism over hiring decisions and remarks, and his administration became the subject of federal investigations into campaign fundraising tied to Turkish interests, culminating in a September 2024 indictment later dismissed with prejudice in April 2025 after the U.S. Department of Justice under Donald Trump moved to drop the case. Seeking a second term, Adams exited the 2025 New York City Democratic mayoral primary to run as an independent but later withdrew from the race entirely.
Mayoral campaigns
2021 mayoral campaign
Adams had long been mulling a run for New York mayor, and on November 17, 2020, he announced his candidacy for Mayor of New York City in the 2021 election. He was a top fundraiser among Democrats in the race, second only to Raymond McGuire in terms of the amount raised.Adams ran as a moderate Democrat, and his campaign focused on crime and public safety. He has argued against the defund the police movement and in favor of police reform. Public health and the city's economy were cited as his campaign's other top priorities. Initiatives promoted in his campaign include "an expanded local tax credit for low-income families, investment in underperforming schools, and improvements to public housing."
On November 20, 2020, shortly after formally announcing his run for mayor of New York City, Adams attended an indoor fundraiser with 18 people in an Upper West Side restaurant during the COVID-19 pandemic, drawing criticism. He held an already scheduled fundraiser the following day in Queens, when a 25-person limit on mass gatherings was in place. Adams's campaign said that there were eight people at the event and that they were required to wear masks and practice social distancing.
While Adams opposed NYPD's "stop and frisk" policy, during his State Senate tenure, he supported it during his 2021 mayoral campaign. In February 2020, Adams stated that "if you have a police department where you're saying you can't stop and question, that is not a responsible form of policing..." For much of the race, Adams trailed entrepreneur Andrew Yang in public polling. However, Adams's standing in the polls grew stronger in May, and he emerged as the frontrunner in the final weeks of the election. In the months leading up to the election, crime rose in New York, which may have benefited Adams, a former police officer, who ran as a tough-on-crime candidate.
During his run, Adams's residency was questioned by various media outlets. Adams and his partner, Tracey Collins, own a co-op in Bergen County, New Jersey in Fort Lee, New Jersey near the George Washington Bridge, where some critics allege he actually resides.
Primary election
On July 6, Adams completed a come-from-behind victory and was declared the winner of the Democratic primary, ahead of Kathryn Garcia, Maya Wiley, Andrew Yang and others in New York's first major race to use ranked-choice voting.Following his primary victory, Adams hosted a series of political fundraisers in The Hamptons and Martha's Vineyard and vacationed in Monte Carlo, which critics contended contradicted his message of being a "blue-collar" mayor.
General election
Adams faced Republican Curtis Sliwa in the general election and was heavily favored to prevail. He was elected on November 2, 2021, winning 67.4% of the vote to Sliwa's 27.9%.After winning the election, Adams celebrated at Zero Bond.
Endorsements
Adams received support in the primary from New York elected officials including US Representatives Thomas Suozzi, Adriano Espaillat and Sean Patrick Maloney, as well as fellow Borough Presidents Rubén Díaz Jr. from The Bronx and Donovan Richards from Queens, along with a number of city and state legislators. Adams also received endorsements from labor union locals, including the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, District Council 37, and Service Employees International Union, Local 32BJ.Various local media outlets endorsed Adams, including El Especialito, The Irish Echo, The Jewish Press, New York Post, Our Time Press, and the Queens Chronicle. He was ranked as the second choice in the Democratic primary by the New York Daily News behind Kathryn Garcia.
2025 mayoral campaign
Adams announced he would run for reelection, even in the midst of a federal indictment. Initially running in the Democratic primary, Adams faced multiple challengers while facing low polling numbers. Notably, former governor Andrew Cuomo was consistently shown to beat Adams in opinion polling among Democratic voters.On April 3, 2025, Adams announced that he would exit the Democratic primary and instead run in the general election as an Independent. Adams is the first incumbent mayor to run without the nomination of either major party since John Lindsay in 1969, losing the Republican nomination but winning on the Liberal Party line.
Tenure
Mayoral transition
In August 2021, Adams named Sheena Wright, CEO of United Way of New York City as chair of his transition team. In November, Adams named nine additional co-chairs, including CUNY Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez, SEIU 32BJ President Kyle Bragg, Goldman Sachs CFO Stephen Scherr, YMCA of Greater New York President and CEO Sharon Greenberger, Infor CEO Charles Phillips, and Ford Foundation President Darren Walker.After getting elected, Adams reconfirmed his pledge to reinstate a plainclothes police unit that deals with gun violence. Some Black Lives Matter activists denounced the effort, but Adams labeled the behavior "grandstanding".
On November 4, 2021, Adams tweeted that he planned to take his first three paychecks as Mayor in bitcoin and that New York City would be "the center of the cryptocurrency industry and other fast-growing, innovative industries".
Adams announced he would bring back the "gifted and talented" school program, improve relations with New York State, review property taxes, and reduce agency budgets by 3% to 5%.
Inauguration
Adams took office shortly after the New Year's Eve Ball Drop at midnight in Times Square, holding a picture of his deceased mother, Dorothy, while being sworn in. He became the city's second mayor of African descent to hold the position and the first since David Dinkins left office in 1993.First 100 days
Shortly after becoming mayor, Adams sought a waiver from the Conflicts of Interest Board to hire his brother, Bernard, for a $210,000 paying job in the NYPD where he would serve as his "personal security detail". Bernard started working the job on December 30, 2021, two days before Adams was inaugurated as mayor. Adams was accused of nepotism for this pick. Adams said white supremacy and anarchists are on the rise and "suggested that he can trust no one in the police department as much as he can his own kin." He was also criticized for his hiring of Philip Banks III, a former NYPD commander, to serve as deputy mayor for public safety. Banks had been the subject of a federal investigation by the FBI in 2014, the same year he resigned from the police force.Eight days into Adams's tenure as Mayor, an apartment fire in the Bronx killed 17 people including eight children. In response to the fire, Adams announced that a law requiring self-closing doors to prevent smoke and fires from spreading throughout apartment buildings would be enforced. However, his administration faced criticism for its slow response in distributing disaster funds to those impacted by the fire.
New York City faced a significant uptick in crime during the first months of Adams's tenure as Mayor. The uptick in crime was highlighted by the shooting deaths of two NYPD officers, Jason Rivera and Wilbert Mora, when responding to a domestic disturbance in Harlem. In response, Adams announced that he would be bringing back a police unit made up of plainclothes officers, which was disbanded by de Blasio in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd. The unit was officially revived on March 16, 2022. In the midst of the crime spree, President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland visited New York City and vowed to work with Adams to crack down on homemade firearms, which lack traceable serial numbers and can be acquired without background checks. Throughout Adams's first year in office, crime continued to rise resulting in both The New York Times and the New York Post labeling his plans as "ineffectual".
In early February 2022, a video of Adams from 2019 leaked in which the then-Borough President boasted about being a better cop than his "cracker" colleagues. Adams apologized for his comments, saying, "I apologize not only to those who heard it but to New Yorkers because they should expect more from me and that was inappropriate."
Later in February, Adams implemented a zero-tolerance policy for homeless people sleeping in subway cars or in subway stations. Police officers, assisted by mental health professionals, were tasked with removing homeless people from the subway system and directing them to homeless shelters or mental health hospitals. The plan has been met with criticism from some activists. The Adams administration also took a stand against homeless encampments. In the first three months of Adam's tenure, more than 300 homeless encampments had been declared and cleared. In an effort to track encampments, Adams's administration created a shared Google Doc that NYPD officers are directed to use to report homeless encampments. The Department of Homeless Services is then tasked with responding to such reports within a week.
On February 14, 2022, 1,430 New York City municipal workers were fired after refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19. The mandate had been introduced in October 2021 by Adams's predecessor, but kept in place by Adams. In March 2022, Adams ended the city's vaccine mandate for indoor setting and city's mask mandate in public school. That same month, Adams announced that he would be keeping the city's vaccine mandate for private-sector employees in place, but would be creating an exemption for athletes and performers. The policy became known as the "Kyrie Carve-Out", as it was intended to allow unvaccinated Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving to play home basketball games.
On February 23, 2022, Adams called on companies based in New York City to rescind remote work policies put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, saying "you can't stay home in your pajamas all day." Adams cited the need for in-person workers in the city who would patronize local businesses, saying "I need the accountant in the office, so that they can go to the local restaurant, so that we can make sure that everyone is employed."