Wednesday, June 11, 2025
Adams Team Works Behind Scenes to Try to Sway Rabbis Against Cuomo
Mayor Eric Adams may be running an unusually low-key race for re-election in New York City, opting out of the Democratic primary and mounting an independent general election run without even a campaign manager to steer it.
But behind the scenes, he is making an aggressive play to try to shape the field to his liking and hold onto a key voting bloc.
A top aide to Mr. Adams, Menashe Shapiro, has been calling Orthodox Jewish leaders in recent weeks to urge them not to back Andrew M. Cuomo in the June 24 Democratic primary, or to temper their support for him if they do, according to six people familiar with the effort.
Mr. Adams's allies have indicated they believe he would have a better chance of winning the general election if Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist assemblyman now polling in second place, defeats Mr. Cuomo and becomes the Democratic nominee.
At the same time, Mr. Adams has used his mayoral powers to make policy pronouncements that seem designed to resonate with some Orthodox Jews. He signed an executive order recognizing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of antisemitism and created the Mayor's Office to Combat Antisemitism to address the spike in antisemitic hate crimes in the city.
"He is going around to people to ask for support for the general election," said Rabbi Moishe Indig, a leader of one faction of the Satmar Hasidic group in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. "He would love that everyone just ignore the primary and wait until the fall."
The mayor's efforts have had mixed results. Mr. Cuomo, the race's front-runner, has rolled out a series of endorsements from important Orthodox rabbis in Brooklyn and Queens in recent days, but lost out on others.
The mayor's influence campaign suggests he sees an opportunity to try to weaken his chief rival at the margins and make a case before the general election that his own candidacy is still viable.
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