Editor’s note: Adams wouldn’t have been first New York City mayor to go for an ambassadorship

Seventy-five years ago, a former Brooklyn cop turned New York City mayor undone by corruption scandals resigned in disgrace and immediately received a plum ambassadorship, when President Harry Truman named Mayor William O’Dwyer ambassador to Mexico.

For a while last week, it looked like history might repeat itself. Numerous reports said that President Donald Trump would appoint Mayor Eric Adams to be the next ambassador to Saudi Arabia if he resigned – or at least dropped his quixotic bid for a second term.

Trump’s promises to Adams are a blatant attempt by the president to interfere in New York City’s mayoral election to try to stop Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani. The president has made it clear that he wants both Adams and Curtis Sliwa, the Republican mayoral nominee, to end their campaigns and instead support former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whom he believes has the best shot at defeating Mamdani.

There’s nothing wrong with candidates ending their campaigns when they realize they have no chance of winning. Independent candidate Jim Walden, who was polling at just 1%, did that last week. But the president’s attempt to push Adams and Sliwa out of the race gives the impression that Trump is trying to undermine the city’s democracy. Adams’ reelection bid may be doomed, but there is something noble about his decision to see the race through to the end rather than play into Trump’s scheme to undermine Mamdani.

If Adams were to take Trump’s deal, the election could turn into a referendum on the unpopular president, allowing Mamdani to mobilize Democratic voters against both Trump and Cuomo, whom he’s taken to calling Trump’s “puppet.”