Here’s who’s running for New York City mayor in 2025

Eric Adams

New York City mayor

His ideological stance in brief: Conservative, pro-business Democrat who is now running as an independent candidate. More likely to criticize progressives than the Trump administration.

Major endorsements: None reported yet, but President Donald Trump has voiced support.

Fundraising: $4.8 million raised so far. He has just under $3 million in the bank, as of the most recent disclosure deadline June 9. He has been denied public matching funds so far.

Where’s home? Gracie Mansion, but he previously claimed to live in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

What is he running on? Delivering a “safer, more affordable city,” closing illegal smokeshops, the landmark City of Yes zoning reform will spur more housing. He petitioned on the “Safe Streets, Affordable City” and “EndAntiSemitism” ballot lines in November. You’re technically only allowed one line as an independent candidate but Adams said he would sue to keep both.

What’s holding him back? Federal corruption charges that were suddenly dropped by Trump’s DOJ, coziness to Trump, abysmal approval ratings, being denied public matching funds… it’s also not easy to win as an independent candidate.

What’s his deal: There’s a reason so many candidates have come out to challenge Adams. He certainly started 2025 with more political vulnerabilities than most incumbent mayors do. The most obvious, of course, is the fact that he faced a federal criminal indictment on bribery and corruption charges – at least until the Trump Justice Department instructed the Manhattan U.S. Attorney to drop them. The mayor’s overtures to the Republican president, including trips to Florida and Washington, D.C., to get in his good graces, seem to have paid off. 

Adams has always maintained he did nothing wrong. 

Adams announced on April 3 that he’d run for reelection as an independent instead of running in the Democratic primary. This move gave the mayor more time to make a case to voters on why he should be given a second term – and set up what’s expected to be an unusually competitive general election in November – but he still faces great obstacles. 

Adams has struggled to maintain a sense of stability in his administration. He was pressured by the governor to clean house last year after multiple aides were touched by federal investigations, and he elevated trusted public servants in their place. But many of those aides have since tendered their resignations as well. There’s also been chaos in the top ranks of the New York City Police Department during Adams’ time as mayor. Jessica Tisch is a popular and successful police commissioner, but she’s also Adams’ fourth one – an unusually high level of turnover. 

So in short: He’s a longshot. Adams’ approval ratings have hit record lows. The New York City Campaign Finance Board has deemed him ineligible to receive public matching funds (he’s suing them for that). Public safety is still a top concern for New Yorkers, and certain major crimes have increased since he took office. But he does at least have a number of accomplishments to point to. Shootings and murders are way down since January 2022. Adams also got his sweeping City of Yes for Housing Opportunity zoning overhaul across the finish line. He’s negotiated contracts with the vast majority of the unionized city workforce and unemployment in the city has fallen. And after his case was dropped, Adams has returned to campaign mode with a renewed sense of determination. With Mamdani’s shocking victory over Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary, Adams is facing an opponent he thinks he has a chance to beat.

Further reading:
Adams and Adams announce $116 billion FY 26 NYC budget
Eric Adams, surrounded by faith leaders, officially launches his reelection campaign
New Yorkers want their mayor to be a good manager. What does that mean?
Eric Adams’ survival strategy
Eric Adams’ federal corruption charges dismissed
WTF is Eric Adams doing?
Eric Adams denied public campaign funds for reelection bid

Zohran Mamdani

Assembly member representing Queens

His ideological stance in brief: A pro-Palestine socialist Democrat who isn’t shy about it.

Major endorsements: Working Families Party, labor unions including the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council and 32BJ SEIU, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jerry Nadler, New York City Democratic Socialists of America, state Sen. John Liu

Fundraising: $8.8 million including matching funds. He’s got $6.3 million in the bank, as of June 9.

Where’s home? “The Peoples Republic of Astoria,” Queens

What is he running on? He achieved a historic victory in the Democratic primary, defeating a former governor everyone thought would easily win. He wants to freeze the rent, make buses free, make child care free, launch a Department of Community Safety and build public supermarkets.  

What’s holding him back? The business community is panicking, and detractors are trying to paint him as antisemitic for being critical of Israel. Some establishment Democrats have been slow to back him. 

What’s his deal: The operative word for Zohran Mamdani’s performance in the Democratic primary? Stunning. Mamdani trailed front-runner and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in almost every poll. Cuomo and his supporters outspent him by millions of dollars, and almost every major power broker in the city had gotten behind the former governor. But on election night, Mamdani, combining a clear affordability message, an army of tens of thousands of volunteers, a masterful social media strategy and his innate charisma, absolutely dominated. Now, the 33-year-old democratic socialist Assembly member is the Democratic nominee in the general election, where he faces the incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, independent candidate Jim Walden and possibly Cuomo.

As Democrats processed the city’s rightward shift in the presidential election, most of Eric Adams’ challengers attempted to distance themselves from the progressive label. That left the leftist lane of the mayor’s race wide open for the Assembly member, and he hasn’t shied away from it. Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who successfully primaried a well-liked establishment Democrat in 2020, easily appealed to the typical highly educated yuppie socialists in North Brooklyn and western Queens, but the lawmaker, who sponsored controversial state legislation to withhold public funds from organizations that operate in illegal settlements in the West Bank, also brought Muslims and young people outraged over the war in Gaza into his unprecedented primary coalition. Many South Asian voters also love him for his successful advocacy for debt relief for taxi medallion holders – including with a 15-day hunger strike in 2021, and they too contributed to his impressive coalition.

Mamdani has articulated several simple policy ideas that set him apart from the pack – even if their feasibility isn’t clear. Building on a pilot program he pushed in the state Legislature, he wants to make public buses free. (The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is a state agency, but he says he’ll get creative with his mayoral authority.) He also wants to freeze rents for rent-stabilized units. He is also promising free child care, a $30 minimum wage and city-owned grocery stores.

Further reading:
And ultimately – Zohran Mamdani stuns New York
Zohran Mamdani is trying to build a new NYC Democratic primary coalition
Episode 5: An Interview with Zohran Mamdani
Mamdani unveils ‘$30 by ‘30’ minimum wage push as part of mayoral campaign
Zohran Mamdani wants to make NYC buses free as mayor. How would that work?
Could this pro-Palestinian socialist really be NYC’s next mayor?

Jim Walden

Partner at Walden Macht Haran & Williams

His ideological stance in brief: Independent with a pugnacious streak.

Major endorsements: New York City Public Service Retirees; former prosecutors including former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Richard Donoghue. He initially launched with support from former Gov. David Paterson, but the two parted ways.

Fundraising: $3.4 million including public matching funds and a $500,000 loan to his campaign. He has an estimated $1.9 million in cash on hand as of June 9. 

Where’s home? Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn

What is he running on? He wants to root out corruption in New York City, create jobs and tackle intractable problems like housing production with public-private partnerships.

What’s holding him back? Outsider candidates often face outside odds. 

What’s his deal: In launching his mayoral campaign as an independent candidate, Jim Walden is cutting a different path than his partisan competitors.

That’s not the only way he stands apart from the field. The founding partner at Walden Macht Haran & Williams is a first-time political candidate whose legal career has nonetheless left him well-acquainted with the major players and systems in New York politics. In his launch, Walden emphasized trial wins for New York City Housing Authority residents and experience taking on the mafia as a prosecutor for the Eastern District.

Between running as an independent, business-minded technocrat and injecting $500,000 into his own campaign, the comparisons to former Mayor Michael Bloomberg are obvious. But Bloomberg floated his own campaign a much larger chunk of change, and Walden still faces an uphill battle to pull off a Bloomberg-like win. But he’s making a go of it, assembling a policy platform that so far leans heavily on his pitch to root out corruption, but includes other proposals that defy conventional thought about alignment on the ideological spectrum; he wants to build more bike lanes and expand the NYPD. Walden is suing to allow the words “independent” and “independence” back on the ballot, and he called for all non-Mamdani candidates to coalesce behind the front-runner to beat Mamdani in the final weeks before the election.

Further listening:
Episode 2: An Interview with Jim Walden

Curtis Sliwa

Founder of the vigilante anti-crime group the Guardian Angels, radio show host

His ideological stance in brief: An eccentric conservative activist who joined the Republican Party a few years ago

Major endorsements: All five county Republican parties

Fundraising: $304,000 as of June 9. He hasn’t gotten public matching funds. 

Where’s home? The Upper West Side

What is he running on? Combating crime, building up the police department, opposing migrant shelters and e-bikes 

What’s holding him back? He’s a Republican running for mayor again in a city that remains deeply Democratic. Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams seems to be making a play for conservative voters – and already seems to have President Donald Trump’s preference.

What’s his deal: Curtis Sliwa might be well-known for his red beret and deep love of cats, but he’s also proven himself time and time again to be excellent at garnering attention. Over the past couple of years, his Guardian Angels misidentified a man as a migrant and tackled him during a live TV interview, he had Guardian Angels members resume volunteer safety patrols on the city subways, and offered up a solution to Adams for his rat problem: deploying a fleet of feral cats. 

This is not Sliwa’s first time running for mayor. He was the Republican candidate in the last mayoral election – and he lost handily to Eric Adams. But this one is shaping up to be quite different, with Adams running as an independent candidate in the general election that also features lefty Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani. 

New York is a deep blue city (at least in recent years) where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 7 to 1. For his part, Sliwa has projected confidence about his odds this time around, pointing to the fact that President Donald Trump won 30% of the vote in New York City last November – the highest share of the vote for a Republican presidential nominee since George H.W. Bush in 1988. (Though that was more so driven by the votes Democrats lost than the votes Trump gained.) And Sliwa has noted he hasn’t been endorsed by President Donald Trump, saying, “the Trump candidate is Eric Adams.” But many of the topics Sliwa focuses on – like crime, people leaving the city, and the city’s sheltering and care of migrants – have been hot-button issues throughout Adams’ administration, giving him plenty of campaign talking points. 

As the city’s moderates and conservatives panic about Mamdani’s candidacy, Sliwa has faced some pressure to drop out of the race to give the other candidates a chance to beat the socialist Democratic nominee. In response to that pressure, he has repeated some version of “over my dead body.” And he has some credibility when he says that – in 1992, he survived a shooting assassination attempt widely attributed to the notorious Gambino crime family.

Further reading: 
‘The Trump candidate is Eric Adams’: Curtis Sliwa sizes up the mayoral race
Episode 6: An interview with Curtis Sliwa
Sliwa gets clean sweep from Republican Party chairs, who still say they won’t give Adams the ballot line
Wait a second, is Curtis Sliwa making sense?

Andrew Cuomo

Ex-governor of New York

His ideological stance in brief: Pro-Israel moderate who promises to keep the Democratic Party from falling off the left edge of the map. 

Major endorsements: Unclear since he lost the Democratic primary.

Fundraising: $8.2 million raised so far, including public matching funds. He has an estimated $2.8 million in the bank, as of June 9. Cuomo’s allies also launched a political action committee that has raised another $25 million and spent $22 million. His campaign was initially denied matching funds on April 15, then docked about $1.3 million for coordinating with the super PAC.

Where’s home? He’s a Queens boy, but currently registered to vote in Midtown East.

What is he running on? He says New York City is in crisis. He was governor for a decade, passing marriage equality, paid family leave, gun control laws and building things like the Second Avenue Subway and revamping the city’s airports. 

What’s holding him back? He got trounced in the Democratic primary by a millennial upstart. Also, Cuomo negative starter pack: sexual harassment allegations, handling of COVID-19 in nursing homes and previous vindictiveness toward New York City leaders.

What’s his deal: Cuomo used to be the most powerful elected official in the state. In throwing his hat in the ring for New York City mayor, he was aiming for what some have suggested would, to him, amount to a consolation prize. (He said as much.) It was clear that he expected to glide into City Hall after locking up support the old-fashioned way – by strong-arming unions, county Democratic leaders and elected officials into backing him while his allies spent millions of dollars on ads and mailers attacking his main opponent. The former governor miscalculated, to say the least. 

Cuomo petitioned and will appear on the ballot in November on the “Fight and Deliver” ballot line. Now he’s deciding whether to actually try to mount an independent campaign or to cut his losses and stay out of it after failing to secure the Democratic nomination. It’s surely an agonizing choice four years after he resigned as governor in 2021. 

The two-and-a-half-term governor’s fall from grace came swiftly that year. After serving as Democratic beacon at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and the tail end of Trump’s first term, Cuomo was engulfed in a series of scandals, including multiple allegations of sexual harassment, scrutiny of his handling of COVID-19 in nursing homes and his $5 million book deal. Cuomo – and in large part his allies – have spent plenty of energy in the past four years fighting that narrative, including by frequently criticizing state Attorney General Letitia James and Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has amounted to much more than just his interim replacement in Albany.

Polls showed that the divisive – but unquestionably talented – politician had a lead among Black voters and Jewish voters, which bore out on election day. Both constituencies have historically been essential to citywide victory. But after his defeat, he’s losing labor and business support to his rivals, and most New Yorkers seem to be moving on. 

Further reading:
Pro-Cuomo PAC responsible for nearly half of all outside spending across all NYC primary elections this year
FAQ: The Justice Department investigation into Andrew CuomoMayor Cuomo and Gov. Hochul? It would be weird.
WFP on Andrew Cuomo in general elex: ‘Likelihood he earns the Party’s support is close to none.’
Can Andrew Cuomo bounce back?
Why do Black voters currently seem to prefer Andrew Cuomo over Eric Adams?