As challengers emerge, Eric Adams touts support from Al Sharpton

NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams eagerly shared a supportive op-ed from Al Sharpton Tuesday — signaling to an emerging field of rivals that prying away his Black support will not be easy.

“I really want to thank Reverend Sharpton,” Adams said at the beginning of his weekly, wide-ranging press conference. “He really just laid [it] out. When you read how this administration is covered, you’d think you’re living in a different city!”

He then launched into remarks celebrating his perceived successes as mayor.

In Sharpton’s piece, the reverend and prominent civil rights leader praised the mayor’s management, and said he needs to be treated better than the city’s first Black mayor, David Dinkins, who was denied a second term by Republican Rudy Giuliani during a crime wave in the 1990s.

Sharpton’s argument wasn’t new — one of the country’s top Black leaders, he has said the city should not be unfair to Adams like it was to Dinkins several times over Adams’ two and a half years in office. But Sharpton’s op-ed this week coincided with Adams’ continued slump in public opinion polls and looming scandals.

The mayor is expected to face a handful of mostly white serious contenders looking to unseat him in the primary next June.

Tuesday’s boost from one of the city’s most politically influential Black leaders is designed to shore up support among a key demographic with which Adams has been flagging. An April poll from the conservative Manhattan Institute found that 47 percent of Black likely general election voters said they would vote for “someone else” over Adams, while just 38 percent would reelect the mayor.

Black voters were crucial to Adams’ victory over a crowded field for an open seat in 2021. He dominated areas with large Black populations in Central Brooklyn and Southeast Queens.

Sharpton’s piece is a clear reminder to potential challengers like Comptroller Brad Lander and his predecessor, Scott Stringer, as well as former Gov. Andrew Cuomo that they’ll be accused of trying to take down a Black leader if they run.

A person close to Adams called it a “not so subtle warning to Cuomo and Lander.”

“When I first took office, I looked back at some of the things they were saying about David Dinkins,” Adams said on Tuesday, echoing Sharpton’s piece. “And the coded words, ‘incompetent.’ We know what that means.”

Adams’ opponents have been using that very term as. they test out messages criticizing him.

“New Yorkers are ready for change,” Stringer’s campaign wrote in a fundraising text sent Sunday. “They’re sick of the incompetence and self-dealing in City Hall.”

State Sen. Zellnor Myrie, who is Black, announced in May he was exploring a run and opened by saying, “I think what people are looking for is leadership and competence.”

And Cuomo recently blamed suspected arsenic poisoning at a New York City public housing complex on “two years of government incompetence.”

Sharpton and Adams have a long relationship, dating back to the police captain-turned-mayor being a founding member of the reverend’s National Action Network.

But they have not always been especially close, and Sharpton did not endorse in the 2021 mayor’s race while at times elevating candidates rivaling Adams.

Now they talk weekly, and the reverend re-baptized Adams at the Rikers Island jail complex earlier this year in an evocative example of their deep bond.

His longtime adviser Rachel Noerdlinger told POLITICO “he definitely gave the mayor a heads up” before publishing the piece, “and said he wanted to write it because what is happening with the mayor is reminiscent of what he fought against with David Dinkins.”

Dinkins, who died in 2020, battled a mostly white press corps who he believed held him to an different standard. He also blamed racism for his loss to Giuliani, a former prosecutor who vowed to crack down on crime in the wake of the Crown Heights riots.

Sharpton, forever maintaining an activist streak, is wary of being seen as too close to the mayor. Noerdlinger noted Tuesday’s op-ed was not an endorsement, “because he doesn’t know who’s running yet.”

Still, Sharpton’s piece was also well received on Adams’ team.

First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright held out a printed copy during the press conference Tuesday and called it “perfect.” Other people expected to play a role in Adams’ reelection, including former Chief of Staff Frank Carone, Deputy Chief of Staff Menashe Shapiro and Deputy Mayor Fabien Levy, all reposted the story on X.

History has been kind to Dinkins as more New Yorkers reassess his legacy. Meanwhile, Giuliani has gone from “America’s mayor” to a political punchline. An appeals court officially disbarred him Tuesday, hours after Sharpton’s op-ed was published.