Mayor Eric Adams dangles endorsement less than 3 weeks till Election Day
LOWER MANHATTAN, New York (WABC) -- With less than three weeks until Election Day, it was a busy Wednesday on the campaign trail for the candidates, and the question still remains: who will pick up Mayor Eric Adams' endorsement now that he has dropped out of the race.
Republican Curtis Sliwa declared on Wednesday that he has a path to City Hall, speaking before a modest audience at the Association for a Better New York, the same group that hosted Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani last week, before an audience so large that it was held at Jazz at Lincoln Center.
"I am Curtis Sliwa, Republican populist, representing working class people, who's also running on the independent Protect Animals line. And I believe I will have enough votes to become the next mayor," Sliwa said.
In his characteristic bravado but without his characteristic beret, Sliwa tried to link his opponents to one another.
"I'm the only clear candidate that differs from them on almost every instance," Sliwa said. "To me, Andrew Cuomo is really Zohran Mamdani-lite, and he's trying to morph more and more to the Zohran Mandani position."
On Wednesday, Mayor Eric Adams appeared on a webcast and confirmed that he has been in direct talks with former Governor Andrew Cuomo about an endorsement.
"I'm in conversation with Andrew. I think it's important that we can't succumb to the far-left agenda in the city," Adams said. "And so, I need to make sure if I say to New York is this is who I endorse, I need to make sure that they are not going to be harmful to the city that I love so much. So, when that time comes, I'll make an announcement."
Cuomo responded by saying, "I think the more support you have, the better."
It all comes as Mamdani stepped into the lion's den Wednesday afternoon, appearing for his first-ever interview on the conservative Fox News Channel, where he is often derided as a Communist.
"I'll apologize to police officers right here, because this is the apology that I've been sharing with many rank and file officers," Mamdani said. "And I apologize because of the fact that I'm looking to work with these officers, and I know that these officers, these men and women who serve in the NYPD, they put their lives on the line every single day."
Mamdani also explained in more detail what changed his mind.
"You know, I moved to the city when I was 7 years old. I grew up here, and two of the things that I thought often about was safety and justice. And growing up here, learning about the case of the Exonerated Five, learning about Sean Bell, learning about Eric Garner, learning about Michael Brown, and then in 2020, the year where all of these tweets are referring to, it was the year when George Floyd was killed, and it felt like safety and justice had never been further apart. And it was actually Eric Adams in 2021 who said that New Yorkers need not choose between these two things. And so, one of my focuses was, how do we deliver that justice?"
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