Adams Vows to Stay in Race as Reports Swirled that Trump Dangled Ambassador Job

Amid reports that President Donald Trump was dangling an ambassadorship to Saudi Arabia to lure him out of the race for mayor, Eric Adams said at a hastily called press conference Sept. 5 that he is staying in the race.

Trump has falsely claimed that front-runner Zohran Mamdani, a self-declared Democratic socialist, “is a communist” that the president wants to defeat. Trump said he wants to two-way race between Mamdani and former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who lost in the Democratic primary but as an independent candidate is running second to the Queens assemblyman in the polls.

Reports in the New York Times and Politico said Trump was dangling the Saudi ambassadorship in order to get Adams to drop out. Reports also said Trump was trying to lure Republican nominee and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa out of the race with a promise of a federal appointment of some sort.

In a two-way race, a recent Tulchin Research survey conducted between Aug. 7 and Aug. 14 of 1,000 likely New York voters, found Mamdani would lose the New York mayoral election 41 percent to Cuomo’s 52 percent.

And the race is quickly turning nastier. “Andrew Cuomo is a snake and a liar,” Adams said at the press conference at Gracie Mansion. “I am in this race, and I am the only one that can beat Mamdani.

“I’m running for reelection, and I’m going to tell New Yorkers every day why I believe I should be the mayor of the city of New York in 2026,” Adams said.

He also called Mamdani and Cuomo “two spoiled brats running for mayor,” and said he should be re-elected because he has driven down crime since COVID ended. He ignored the Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa in the broadside.

Mamdani called the attacks from Adams “noise” from “Trump puppets,” in an appearance on CNN.

And in an appearance at the Labor Day parade in Manhattan, Cuomo blasted back, trying to the dispel the belief that Trump wants Cuomo to win.

“Mamdani is a perfect stooge for President Trump,” Cuomo said, insisting that if Mamdani wins Republicans will “use him against the Democrats all across the country. They will say, ‘Look who the Democrats are. They’re socialists. They are for disbanding the police. They’re for legalizing prostitution. They sympathize with terrorists.’ That’s what Mamdani represents.”

Adams insisted at his press conference, after canceling a previously scheduled event with Jewish leaders, “I committed myself and dedicated myself to a city that I love and I’m going to continue to do that,” he said.

”What we have done in three-and-a-half years shows why we have to continue the success we have. I have two spoiled brats running for mayor. They were born with silver spoons in their mouths, not like working-class New Yorkers. I’m a working-class New Yorker. They are not like us.”

It is currently a four-way race after independent candidate Jim Walden earlier in the week dropped his long-shot bid to be mayor and urged others who are trailing to also drop out in order to create a two-person race.

“In a choice between values and ambitions, values must win,” Walden posted on X. “For months I have been steadfast in my view that, unless there is a one-on-one race in November, a Trojan horse will take control of City Hall. I cannot spend more public money in the futile hope I am the one called to battle.

“At bottom, [Mamdani] is proud of his radical beliefs. . . . They will shape his whole administration,” Jim Walden said about giving up his long-shot mayoral bid.

“In our last poll, Jim Walden was only pulling 2.1 percent so this decision makes sense,” noted Dustin Olson, a pollster with American Pulse, after the Walden decision but before the ambassadorship rumors began swirling around Adams.

“While it was a small percentage, I expect Cuomo and Sliwa to benefit from [Walden’s] departure,” Olson said.

One source said that one reason Adams did not want to take an ambassador job was because the succession laws of the city would make Public Advocate Jumaane Williams the interim mayor. Williams, a member of the progressive wing of the party, has opposed Adams on many issues. Adams, according to one source, was seeking a way to hand over the reins of government to Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro instead by taking a leave of absence instead of formally resigning.

Another factor that might influence the mayor on whether to stay or go in the race: Adams is the only one of the four candidates who has been refused taxpayer-funded campaign funds from the NYC Campaign Finance Board, allegedly due to unresolved legal and procedural issues tied to his earlier federal Justice Department indictment. While the federal corruption indictment was dropped by Trump’s justice department, one Turkish business executive pleaded guilty to getting illegal straw donors for Adams’s past campaigns.

Pollster Olson thinks that voters have only now begun to zero in on the campaign, and that could erode some of Mamdani’s commanding lead.

“While many in the media and political types have been following the race closely, most voters are really just familiar with Cuomo and Adams and only superficially familiar with Mamdani, and not very familiar with Sliwa. I’d expect all of the money that has flooded into the race to start getting spent this month, and the race could look different in a month from now,” Olson said. “For instance, 58 percent of voters told us that learning about Mamdani’s Defund the Police past and call to disband the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group made them less likely to vote for him. Millions of dollars in advertising on that topic would have an impact in a city where 85 percent say crime is a problem,” said Olson.

According to the most recent poll by Tulchin Research, Walden was pulling in only 3 percent of the likely voters if all candidates remain in the race. In that scenario Mamdani still had the lead with 42 percent, a 16-percentage-point lead over Cuomo with 26 percent, followed by Sliwa with 17 percent, and Adams with just 9 percent.