As New York Mayor Eric Adams continues to see cratering poll numbers and two investigations that could find he engaged in criminal acts, some are wondering if he might end up resigning. That, in turn, could open the door for a disgraced former New York governor to return to politics.
It may be hard to believe at this point, but Adams came to office as the “conservative” choice over his far-left opponents. Adams ran for office only a year ago as the “law and order” candidate promising to end crime, and said he’d be an ally to the New York Police Department.
Despite riding into the mayor’s office on a wave of centrist ideals, since taking office the mayor’s approval rating has crashed to a disastrous 28 percent approval, with a whopping 58 percent who disapprove of what he has done thus far in office, a Quinnipiac poll finds.
The demographic breakdown isn’t good, either. While his biggest bloc of supporters is black voters, they still disapprove of him at a 38 to 48 percent margin. Usually, blacks support their candidates and politicians at a margin of 80 percent and up, so this is an extremely bad showing for the black mayor.
Unsurprisingly, white voters are an unsupportive segment of the population. Sixty-one percent of white voters disapprove of Adams’ job a year into his mayoralty. Asian voters are just as negative, with 60 percent in criticism of his work thus far. But the poll also finds that Hispanics are his worst bloc of voters, with fully 65 percent saying he has failed as mayor. It seems his support for illegals has not helped him much with this block of voters.
The latter is an incredible finding since Adams has bent over backwards to push millions of city tax dollars toward giving free housing, clothing, food, health care and education to illegal border crossers and to put them on the fast track for jobs. Apparently, all his pandering to illegals has not put him in good stead at all with New York City’s Hispanic voters.
Indeed, the new Quinnipiac poll put that question to Hispanic voters directly, asking: “Do you approve or disapprove of the way Mayor Adams is handling — the surge of migrants seeking sanctuary in New York City?” The answers showed that Adams is upside down on the question with 68 percent of Hispanics disapproving of his actions and only a scant 25 percent approving.
Overall, this is an even worse finding than the last Quinnipiac poll which found his approval rating had sunk to 31 percent in July.
The polling is bad enough, of course. But Adams faces an even more serious threat to his position. He is now the subject of two tough investigations, one into sexual assault and a second one, a probe into the question as to whether he took illegal campaign contributions from foreign sources.
Will Eric Adams resign as mayor of New York City?
In the one case, the embattled mayor was accused of sexual harassment that a victim claims occurred back in 1993. The allegations were made in a lawsuit filed on November 22, with Adams accused of sexually assaulting a woman he was working with when he was a captain on the New York Police Department.
The second investigation is being conducted by the FBI which is looking into whether the mayor took illegal campaign donations from the Turkish government during his 2021 campaign for mayor. The first hint of the investigation came early in November when the home of his chief fundraiser was raided by the bureau.
With these two serious investigations dogging him, along with his plummeting favorability ratings, there is already talk in the media of his possible resignation.
So, with a large majority of voters opposing him and two serious legal issues hanging over him, some are wondering if he might just resign and bag the whole thing. With that in mind, Politico recently looked at who might step up to replace Adams if he were to resign and try to slink off into obscurity. And who did Politico suggest as a possible replacement but Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of the state who was also driven into retirement thanks to scandal.
Politico noted that Cuomo was considering a bid for Big Apple mayor back in November as a means to make a political comeback.
This month, the political website noted that a recent Slingshot poll found that Cuomo would garner 22 percent of the vote in a race against progressive candidate Public Advocate Jumaane Williams (15 percent) and former Democrat candidate for mayor Kathryn Garcia (12 percent). Garcia now works in the New York governor’s office. The only Republican on the list was former GOP mayoral nominee Curtis Sliwa, who figured in at 9 percent in the poll.
Adams’ office blasted the poll as “misleading,” Politico added.
“Another day, another misleading poll, but this one by the same pollster who got the 2021 mayoral race completely wrong,” Deputy Mayor Fabien Levy said of the poll. “Let’s stop spreading false narratives by want-to-be candidates who are not going to be on the ballot. Crime is down and jobs are up, and that’s because Mayor Adams continues to deliver for the working people of this city every day, but attempting to tear down the city’s second Black mayor for blatant political purposes is shameful.”
Politico also noted that the pollster claimed no candidate funded the survey.
Still, Cuomo, who resigned as the Empire State’s governor in 2021, has a much higher approval rating than Adams, despite the fact that he left office under a #MeToo cloud of accusations. Cuomo has a 46-42 approval rating compared to Adams’ dismal 28-58 rating.
Regardless, these polls are bad news for Adams and show that he is doing so poorly that voters are willing to take another look at a former governor who left office on the tail of accusations that he sexually harassed his employees. But, perhaps even worse, these polls show that New York’s Democrat bench is so shallow that even the disgraced Cuomo could have a shot at a political comeback.
