Oct. 23 (UPI) — Outgoing New York Mayor Eric Adams officially endorsed former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to replace him.
Adams ended his campaign for re-election in late September after a federal bribery indictment and the Campaign Finance Board’s decision to withhold millions in public matching funds. After Cuomo pressured him to leave the race, Adams called him a “snake and a liar,” The New York Times reported.
But now the two are friends again, announcing the endorsement together on a sidewalk in East Harlem. “Brothers fight,” Adams said. “But when families are attacked, brothers come together.”
On Wednesday night, Cuomo, a Democrat running as an independent, participated in the final debate of the election season, facing off against front-runner Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist running as a Democrat; and Republican Curtis Sliwa.
In an interview with The Times Thursday, Adams said that he would campaign with Cuomo in neighborhoods where the mayor is most popular and try to urge people to vote for Cuomo.
“I think that it is imperative to really wake up the Black and brown communities that have suffered from gentrification on how important this race is,” Adams said. “They have watched their rents increase in terms of gentrification and they have been disregarded in those neighborhoods, and I’m going to go to those neighborhoods and speak one on one with organizers and groups, and I’m going to walk with the governor in those neighborhoods and get them engaged.”
Mamdani released a statement after the announcement.
“Today confirms what we’ve long known: Andrew Cuomo is running for Eric Adams’s second term,” Mamdani said. “It’s no surprise to see two men who share an affinity for corruption and Trump capitulation align themselves at the behest of the billionaire class and the president himself. We are going to turn the page on the politics of big money and small ideas that these two disgraced executives embody and build a city every New Yorker can afford.”
Sliwa brushed off the endorsement at a press conference Thursday. He told reporters that the two men were “corrupt birds of a feather flocking together.”
“The guy who called Andrew Cuomo a snake is now the snake charmer,” Sliwa said. “Are you surprised by that?”