(AFP) – New York mayor Eric Adams launched his re-election campaign Thursday by taking direct aim at the credentials of his presumed Democratic opponent, Zohran Mamdani.
“It’s a choice between a candidate with a blue collar and one with a suit and a silver spoon,” Adams, who was elected in 2021 as a Democrat but is running as an independent, told supporters outside City Hall. Adams, 64, is now facing off against 33-year-old Mamdani, a self-declared socialist who on Tuesday surprisingly beat out former governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic Party primary.
Mamdani’s win has yet to be certified, but Adams is already campaigning against him with accusations of empty idealism and false promises of “giving everything to everyone for free.” “They have a record of tweets. I have a record on these streets. A record of results. They talk about problems? I fix them. That’s the difference. You don’t lead this city from a soapbox,” Adams said of Mamdani.
Mamdani’s surprise win resonated as a political thunderclap, drawing the ire of US President Donald Trump and his collaborators, who accuse the left-leaning Democrat of being a radical extremist. In response Thursday, Mamdani said he launched his campaign to target Adams’s corruption and his failure to address affordability.
“New Yorkers have been suffocated by a cost of living crisis and this mayor has taken almost every opportunity to exacerbate it, all while partnering with Donald Trump to tear our city apart,” Mamdani said. He promised to “end this era of corruption, incompetence and the betrayal of working-class New Yorkers.”
Adams faced a series of major federal corruption charges, but they were dropped by the Justice Department after Trump took office in January. Mamdani and other New Yorkers have accused Adams of allowing the Trump administration to conduct immigration raids in exchange for burying the charges.
Polling currently shows Mamdani ahead of Adams and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa for the November election. Cuomo, though defeated in the primary, is still weighing a possible run as an independent, which could further complicate the race.
© 2024 AFP
