As Adams Tries to Run on His Record, Scandals Keep Swirling Around Him

As he mounts a long-shot campaign for a second term, Mayor Eric Adams of New York City likes to say that once the true story of his administration’s successes is told, he will prevail.

But it took 14 hours this week to underscore just how dangerously his desired narrative about falling crime and housing production has spun out of his control — precisely when he needs voters to give him a second chance.

It began Wednesday evening when Mr. Adams was forced to distance himself from Winnie Greco, a campaign volunteer and former adviser, after she gave a journalist a wad of cash tucked in a bag of sour cream and onion potato chips. Then, on Thursday morning, the Manhattan district attorney unveiled a raft of new bribery charges targeting Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Mr. Adams’s former chief adviser and a confidante so close Mr. Adams has called her his sister.

Mr. Adams, who is running for re-election on a law-and-order platform, was not himself accused of wrongdoing in either matter. But the revelations dealt another blow to his already tenuous re-election prospects, and are all but certain to increase pressure on him from donors and his rivals to suspend his campaign.

“It’s like nothing I have ever seen before,” said Christine Quinn, the former speaker of the New York City Council.

“Prior to potato-chip-gate and today’s indictments of Ingrid, I didn’t think the mayor had any chance of getting re-elected,” she added. “Now, if there’s an ability to get a negative number of votes, that’s where he’ll end up.”

Polls in recent weeks already showed Mr. Adams, who is running as an independent, stuck in fourth place, far behind Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, and even Mr. Adams’s Republican rival in the last mayoral race, Curtis Sliwa. His support has hovered somewhere in the high single digits, a remarkable number for a Democratic incumbent in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans by six to one.

The fourth major candidate in the race, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, has been trying to push Mr. Adams aside for months as he also runs as an independent. Both men are moderates, and polls suggest they and Mr. Sliwa are splitting up the support of voters who are wary of Mr. Mamdani’s democratic socialist politics.

In a statement, Mr. Adams said, “I have not been accused of any wrongdoing, and my focus remains on serving the 8.5 million New Yorkers by making our city safer and more affordable every day.”

He stressed that Ms. Lewis-Martin no longer worked in City Hall, but called her “a devoted public servant” and said he was praying for her.

Todd Shapiro, a spokesman for Mr. Adams’s campaign, said he had been “shocked” to learn that Ms. Greco, formerly a City Hall adviser and one of Mr. Adams’s top fund-raisers, had offered a journalist cash.

“People are going to judge the mayor from his record from the last four years of bringing crime down, bringing the economy back,” Mr. Shapiro said. “You can’t look at something that happened that he had no control over.”

The mayor has been hobbling along with punishing poll numbers and anemic political support since he was himself charged with federal corruption last fall.

Mr. Adams succeeded in persuading the Trump administration to abandon the charges, but both the prosecutor who brought them and the judge who dismissed them said the administration’s move appeared to have been the product of a quid pro quo: prosecutorial leniency in exchange for assistance with the White House’s deportation agenda.

The mayor has steadfastly insisted since then that he can still win re-election. He has pointed to the city’s declining crime numbers, its improved economy and his push to create more housing as evidence of his successful leadership.

Multiple super PACs armed with hundreds of thousands of dollars have started spending on his behalf to reinforce that message and attack Mr. Cuomo.

Yet Mr. Adams was already facing a difficult task trying to persuade New Yorkers to overlook the stench of corruption that has surrounded City Hall for years now. “Mistakes were made,” he said, adopting the passive voice in a campaign video this week. “I hear it. I got it. But we learned from it.”

This week will make it far more difficult for Mr. Adams to prove that he has.

Ms. Greco, who passed the cash to a journalist, resigned from City Hall last fall, months after federal authorities raided her homes as part of a federal investigation into possible Chinese government interference in the 2021 mayor’s race. But no charges were brought, and Mr. Adams allowed her to return to his re-election campaign as a visible volunteer.

The episode on Wednesday involved a journalist for The City and took place after a campaign event with Mr. Adams in Harlem. Ms. Greco, through a lawyer, said it was all a misunderstanding.

Ms. Lewis-Martin, the mayor’s former top adviser, likewise left her post last December as Manhattan prosecutors prepared to bring an initial bribery case against her. But Mr. Adams welcomed her, like Ms. Greco, back to his campaign months later as a volunteer, despite the fact that the authorities were continuing to investigate her conduct.

On Thursday, the Manhattan district attorney said in fresh indictments that Ms. Lewis-Martin had used her position to, among other things, trade approval of renovations of a residential property for thousands of dollars of catering for events at Gracie Mansion and City Hall. She has denied wrongdoing.

Responding to the indictments, Mr. Mamdani said New York City needed “a new era of leadership.”

“Our city deserves a mayor who spends their time with constituents, not stuck in courtrooms,” he said.

Mr. Cuomo was expected to address the news later on Thursday.

The charges were but the latest in a resounding drumbeat of lawsuits, indictments, and plea deals around Mr. Adams.

Last week, Mohamed Bahi, the mayor’s former chief liaison to Muslim New Yorkers, pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit wire fraud.

A month ago, Thomas G. Donlon, the mayor’s former interim police commissioner, accused him in federal court of running the Police Department as a criminal enterprise.

All of it has drawn attention back to questions about Mr. Adams’s own conduct and judgment.

A federal grand jury made Mr. Adams the first New York City mayor in modern history to face criminal indictment last September. Prosecutors said the mayor had committed fraud and accepted bribes by soliciting and receiving illegal foreign donations and having them routed through straw donors; accepting gifts from the Turkish government; and using his power within city government to do favors for his benefactors.

Mr. Adams pleaded not guilty, but his job approval ratings, which were already at unprecedented lows, sank even further. He faced a deafening chorus of calls for his resignation. Prominent Democrats demanded Kathy Hochul, New York’s governor, remove him from office, as the state constitution allows.

But Mr. Adams saw another way. Over the course of months, he and his team openly courted the incoming president, Donald J. Trump, seeking a pardon, or at least an abandonment of his charges. Ultimately, Mr. Adams got his way, but not before half of his deputy mayors resigned.

Mr. Adams denied the existence of any agreement, but in appearing to bargain away his criminal charges for personal freedom, he risked destroying his political career. Apparently aware that his dealings with the Trump administration had rendered him toxic among many of his party brethren, he opted out of a Democratic primary that he seemed sure to lose.

Now, voters are being reminded anew that Mr. Adams seems to have no trouble overlooking the ethical shortcomings of his friends and aides.

“You are who you hang around with,” Ms. Quinn said.