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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, filling in for Brian today. Now we turn to the New York City mayor's race, which has truly heated up this week. After Wednesday's decision dropping all federal corruption charges against Eric Adams, the mayor made a major announcement about his reelection campaign, but it came with a twist. Adams says he's going to bypass the June Democratic primary and run as an independent in November. Does this increase chances of keeping his seat at City hall despite that 20% approval rating? We'll get to that.

Yesterday, candidates running in the Democratic primary submitted their petitions to get on the ballot this June, passing one of the major hurdles in this race. Also yesterday, nine candidates sat down to take questions from Reverend Al Sharpton and other prominent panelists at a mayoral forum hosted by the National Action Network. It was the first time both Mayor Eric Adams and former Governor Andrew Cuomo attended a forum this campaign season. We'll look at that duel between these two executives as well. Is the progressives looking to come in from behind?

Speaking of those progressives, Adams isn't the only one considering a run outside one of the two major parties in November. Over the weekend, the Working Families Party announced their endorsements in the mayoral primary. City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, Comptroller Brad Lander, Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, and State Senator Zellnor Myrie all got the nod, but could one of them run as the candidate in November if none of them rise to the top in June?

My guest to talk through all of this and more is Veterans City Hall Press Corps reporter Sally Goldenberg. She is Politico New York's senior New York editor. She scored an exclusive sit down with Mayor Adams on Wednesday, breaking the news about his plan to run as an independent for mayor. Sally, I told you yesterday, I am so thrilled you are here. You are the person I wanted to be talking about this incredibly wild race with. I feel like we're going to need our own show.

Sally Goldenberg: Yes, thank you.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, we want you to be part of this conversation, too. A few weeks ago, we released the results of our thoroughly unscientific poll for our newsletter readers, the first picks for mayor in the Democratic primary. Just a quick recap of the top choices. Coming in first among our listeners was Comptroller Brad Lander with 33% of your votes. Next was former Governor Andrew Cuomo with 18%, Assemblymember Mandani with 13%, and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams with 12.3%. Skipping through most of the pack, we have current Mayor Eric Adams at just 1.2%.

Listeners, we can continue our unscientific poll on air now. Who is your top pick for the Democratic primary so far? What are the issues motivating that choice? Come November, there may be five candidates on the ballot, a Democrat, a Republican, Eric Adams, party of one, and a candidate from the Working Families Party, plus attorney Jim Walden, who has always pledged to run as an independent. Do you appreciate having more options? They won't be ranked choice, or do you have concerns about vote splitting? Is there a candidate you'd like to see run on the Working Families Party ticket?

Call us with all of your thoughts. The number is 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Sally, whew, I know, there's a lot of wind up there, but let's start with this big news. Eric Adams announced yesterday that he is running as an independent in November. You got the exclusive. Tell me a little bit about how that happened. Where did you do it? Were you at City Hall? How was the conversation?

Sally Goldenberg: We were at Gracie Mansion. It was just the two of us, which I thought was interesting. There wasn't a press staffer there, which I think speaks to the flux the mayor is in. He doesn't really have a ton of staff right now on his campaign because most consultants in New York are used to working for Democrats and that's part of their brand. Not only is he not running as a Democrat, but he's done a fairly full embrace, tacitly, sometimes overtly, other times, of President Donald Trump.

I think he's reconvening a team that is okay with that and whose businesses, I guess, they feel won't be hurt by that. It was interesting. Usually when you're interviewing a principal of the stature of the mayor, there's a staffer there to cut in, but it was just the two of us. It was at Gracie Mansion. It's interesting how it came together. We had all heard that he wasn't going to run as a Democrat. He skipped some key union forums. He wasn't staffing up. He didn't have a website. I had just been talking to his team for a while now about an interview, and it was getting out. "eople from other campaigns were really amping up the speculation that he would not be in the primary.

I think his team was waiting for the judge to sign off on the dismissal of the charges before they made an announcement. Whether this is coincidence or not, that judge's decision came one day before the petitions were due for the Democratic primary. There really wasn't very much time for this announcement.

Brigid Bergin: That was one of the things everyone had been talking about. Where are his petitions? Nobody was seeing his petitions on the street. As you and I, I'm sure both saw, there were some petitions filed with his name on them with the Board of Elections, but a source there told me they were not filed by his campaign.

Sally Goldenberg: Yes.

Brigid Bergin: They were filed by this rogue actor who always runs for judge.

Sally Goldenberg: Yes, exactly. That was a telltale sign, too. We had reporters in parts of the city where if you were actually gathering petitions for Eric Adams, you would go in central Brooklyn and Southeast Queens, Harlem, and nobody could find any.

Brigid Bergin: I want to play a little bit of his video, but before that, I'm curious what his mood was like. He has been standoffish with reporters increasingly, I think, as of late. You were talking to him in this moment where this unbelievable weight was lifted off his shoulders. I feel like he must have been beaming.

Sally Goldenberg: The interview was Monday, so it hadn't happened.

Brigid Bergin: Fascinating.

Sally Goldenberg: It was two days before the judge ordered the case dismissed or dismissed the case. He was, I would describe him as somewhat defiant and upset about the charges, which I think he's indicated in press conferences as well. He's pretty ticked off about the charges. He maintains his innocence. He's got a lot of theories about. He expounded on that this week with the "deep state" conspiracy theories about the Department of Justice. He feels he was wronged. I think he knew this was a likely outcome two days later.

He was pretty fired up about that. He was very happy to talk about Andrew Cuomo and to really spar with him. It was a one way sparring because it was a one way interview. He was a little more buttoned up-- not buttoned up, but a little bit more reticent to talk about the Trump dynamic in the race. I thought it was interesting. I asked him about three or four times, what's keeping him registered as a Democrat? If you listen to him, there's just not that much there that he's saying either in terms of rhetoric or style or substance, that would indicate somebody who wants to be part of the Democratic Party. If he's not running on the line, which is the reason to be a Democrat in New York, because of the enrollment advantage.

I was curious, "Why are you still a Democrat? You don't seem to be a Democrat anymore." I found that an interesting part of the interview because he didn't really have a clear answer. He said, "There are good people in the party, but actually there's good people in every party." He didn't really want to defend Democrats or-- not even defend, but feel connected to them.

Brigid Bergin: Which feels like it tracks with what he has said certainly in the last year. Let's play a clip from the video that followed your story of the mayor himself announcing his plan to run as an independent.

Mayor Eric Adams: I know that the accusations leveled against me may have shaken your confidence in me and that you may rightly have questions about my conduct. Let me be clear, although the charges against me were false, I trusted people I should not have and I regret that, but the issues I face are nothing compared to yours. Rising costs, public safety concerns, deep concerns about the future. All the candidates in this race would tell you that they have solutions to all that. You should hear them out, but you should also ask them where they were and what they did over the last four years to address those concerns before they were running for mayor.

Brigid Bergin: Slipping in, a little dig there at his competition, did you get a sense, Sally, in that conversation about how he arrived at this decision? He has chalked it up to just, "There's not enough time for me to mount a sustainable primary campaign," but it feels like more strategic than that.

Sally Goldenberg: Yes. He did say that. He led with that rationale, that he doesn't have enough time. He said his numbers need to be improved. Obviously they do. The last public poll showed him at an approval rating of 20%, which is really, really abysmal for an incumbent to run on. He needs matching funds. I think he's short about $4 million in public matching funds. He's been denied that. He said he's going to fight for it. He even mentioned going to court to fight for it now that the case is over because the denial was tied to the case. He presented it as a runway. He called it a seven month runway to really fix his standing with the public, regain the trust, get the money.

As I said earlier, he doesn't really have a connection politically or emotionally to the Democratic Party. I asked him that, and he did say-- He used the word duality. He said it is both. His staffer Frank Carone said in a subsequent interview it's really just more strategic. He needs the time, he needs the money. I do think we've seen a real departure of the mayor from the Democratic Party. I think it's both. I think they think being an independent suits him better. There's an increase in independents in New York city. There's about 1.1 million registered independents. It's still a third of the number of registered Democrats, but it's more than it had been.

The Democratic Party brand is on the descent nationally, and I think they're counting on that trickling down. I think strategically they are hope-- I think they're going to fight against Andrew Cuomo, the front runner, but they're hoping that the Democratic Socialist candidate, Zohran Mamdani, who's doing well in the polls and with fundraising, is going to be the candidate. They view that, I believe, as their best option. They didn't quite say that exactly, but what I sussed out was that that's the race they're hoping for.

Brigid Bergin: A listener texts a question that I think we can both answer very quickly, which is, "Can you please talk about how ranked choice voting might affect the November election? I've heard people say that the only reason the moderate," this person wrote DINO, Democrat In Name Only, "Adams one last time is because of ranked choice. Could it enable another win by him this November in spite of his incredibly low approval ratings?"

Sally Goldenberg: There's only ranked choice in the primary.

Brigid Bergin: There is no real impact of ranked choice voting in the general, but that, to me, is part of what makes the general so wild. We are going back to ye olde days of 2013 when as you and I sweated through that primary, watching the de Blasio family leap for joy in the West Indian Day parade, which was before the primary election, because we had a September primary, and then just that short window right up into the general election. This is also, this attempt to run for the mayor as an independent, he is not the first person who has ever done this.

I thought his video was so striking, because clearly whoever advised him wanted to draw a parallel to another person who had done that. I'm going to play that clip for us in just a moment. First, this is WNYC FM HD in AM New York, WNJT FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, WNJO 90.3 Toms River. This is New York and New Jersey Public Radio. Live streaming at WNYC.org.

I am speaking with Sally Goldenberg, senior New York editor at Politico. We are talking about this wild and crazy mayor's race, which just got that much more interesting yesterday with the announcement from Mayor Adams that he is running as an independent, which Sally broke the news, followed by a video from the mayor himself. The mayor's video was echoing a similar video from John Lindsay in 1969. I want to play a clip of what Lindsay said and then the parallel from what Adam said.

John Lindsay: I guessed wrong on the weather before the city's biggest snowfall last winter, and that was a mistake. I put 6,000 more cops on the streets and that was no mistake. The school strike went on too long and we all made some mistakes, but I brought 225,000 new jobs to this town, and that was no mistake.

Brigid Bergin: Then here's Adam's video just yesterday.

Mayor Eric Adams: As Mayor Lindsay said when he successfully ran as an independent candidate for mayor, "I have made mistakes." I am saying to you, my fellow New Yorkers, so did I. It was not a mistake to invest more in housing than any other mayor. It wasn't a mistake to put a cop on every train. It wasn't a mistake to increase the value of housing vouchers and earn income tax credit to the highest levels ever. It wasn't a mistake to put politics aside, defy my party when needed, and speak with the voice of working New Yorkers. Ultimately, it'll be up to you who runs this city for the next four years. As someone who has always fought for you and who is accountable to only you, I hope I can earn your vote.

Brigid Bergin: Sally, neither you nor I were around to cover that Lindsay campaign, but we definitely have listeners who will remember it. What do you make of the parallel there? Did you get a sense when you spoke to Adams he's really ready to enumerate those mistakes he's made?

Sally Goldenberg: Not really, no. No, not really. I think he wants to lean into the parts of the record he's proud of. He had Some contrition in the video and it was somewhat vague. I got the sense from the video that he feels he had lapses in judgment around some of the people that he put around him. Which is a fair assumption considering six of them resigned amid scandal.

Brigid Bergin: Some of them are still under criminal investigation.

Sally Goldenberg: Yes, his closest aide of many, many years is still under criminal investigation with the Manhattan DA. That's exactly right. Those other cases with the Southern District are just in the ether with, I don't know, four or five other people. I think that's what he was referring to. No, it wasn't a ton of contrition. He describes that he was constrained by his lawyers. He said he was like a racehorse being held back. He's a bombastic person and that's a big part of his political style. I think he's very anxious to talk about his record. I think he's very anxious to talk about his opponents records.

In terms of the independent line, it's quite hard to do these days. Mike Bloomberg spent on the order of over $100 million to win in 2009 against a Democrat. I think he won by under five points. He had incumbent advantage and was relatively popular. Democrats just really are the dominant voters in this city. That's a huge hurdle for the mayor to overcome. There's also a-- now he's not running as a Democrat, but because he has affiliated himself sometimes by choice and sometimes not with the Trump administration, that's going to hurt him even if he's not running on the Republican line because Trump's popularity is very low in New York City.

Higher than it was four years ago and eight years ago, but still quite low. He lost by almost 40 points in New York City last year. That, I imagine, will hurt Eric Adams certainly if his opponents do their job. If his Democratic opponent does their job, they should remind voters of his relationship with Trump. That said, as I mentioned earlier, there is this rise in independent voters that he's going to try to tap into. I wouldn't count him out completely. He's right about that. There is a rise in people registering without a party, and there's dissatisfaction with the partisan system. The problem with that is there's also high dissatisfaction with incumbents, and he is the incumbent. He'll say he's an outsider, but at the moment he's the insider.

Brigid Bergin: Right. Although as his strategy is leaning into this new runway of time who knows what will happen? Who knows what situation will give him an opportunity to reshape that narrative? I'm wondering what you think of this notion that we could have potentially five candidates in a general. If you had a candidate like an Andrew Cuomo as the Democratic nominee, but then you had a Working Families Party candidate who could potentially peel off some of the further left voters from that segment.

I had someone present-- a council source who got their theory from a Board of Elections source that laid out a scenario for me where the Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa could potentially eke in there, because what we're talking about is a candidate that just needs to win with a plurality. How do you see that playing out?

Sally Goldenberg: Yes, it's interesting. It's so hard to predict. Usually, the winner of the Democratic primary wins the election. Always subtract Mike Bloomberg from the usual because he had just an ungodly amount of money. Typically, the Democrat wins. If Andrew Cuomo is the Democratic nominee, and I don't know if he will be. Obviously, the polls and a number of other signifiers are making it seem like he will be, but there's still time. If it is Andrew Cuomo, his negatives are significantly higher than the negatives of anyone else in the Democratic Party primary, save Mayor Adams. There will be an opportunity for his opponents to really go after him.

They're not doing it with paid media yet in the primary. I suspect they will start, but certainly that will continue throughout the general. I don't know that he will be as strong come November as he is right now if his opponents do their job. That's up to them. Jim Walden, who isn't particularly well known, has a lot of money. He's, I think, got over 1 million in the bank right now. He's obviously going to save it until he's actually in the public consciousness after the Democratic primary. I doubt he would be a frontrunner, but he'll be a factor. Curtis Sliwa is likely to be the Republican nominee, and he'll get some percentage.

They said Donald Trump won 30% of the vote in November. I suspect that's a loyal Republican vote that goes to Curtis Sliwa or a large majority. Then you have the Working Families Party saying if the candidate is Andrew Cuomo, they are very likely to run a candidate of their own. I don't know who that person would be, but presumably it would be somebody who can energize voters on the left and who don't support Cuomo or Adams.

Then you have a mayor whose approval rating is low and has all the problems I laid out and you laid out, but who does have this advantage where every time he speaks, a press corps will follow him and cover him. He does have some pretty innate campaigning skills. Say what you will about all of the other things about him, but he's a very charismatic campaigner, and he'll get what we call in the business earned media.

If he does a press conference through the role as mayor about adding more cops or building more housing or jobs being up or tourism being up, whatever it is, and during that press conference, he takes a dig at his opponents for passing bail reform and saying that hurt crime in the city, that will get covered. He doesn't have to buy an ad just because he's the mayor. We cover it when he makes news. I have no idea how it would shake out, but every candidate in that race will be important to watch. There's no throwaway.

Brigid Bergin: Not at all. I want to invite one of our listeners on, Bernard in Brooklyn. Hey, Bernard, how are you?

Bernard: Hey. Thanks very much. Thanks you both for your excellent work over the years. Actually, some of the points I was going to make have already been made, so I'll be very brief. As you mentioned, we're stuck again this year with this system with these closed primaries and million independent voters can't participate and candidates can bypass the primaries entirely. I hope in the coming weeks-- I respectfully suggest [unintelligible 00:22:32] talk to election experts about how things are handled in other cities.

We're really playing with fire. The Democratic Party, which I gather has favored this partisan primary system, might get bit in the rear here with Curtis Sliwa, heaven help us, becoming our next mayor with 32% of the vote or something. I would respectfully suggest that you have election experts on from other cities. There are many models out there, but one of which is there's an open primary where the only way to get in the general election is to go through the primary, be one of the top candidates, then maybe two or three candidates move on to the general, which might use ranked choice voting or might have a requirement that you have to get at least 50% of the vote in the general to win the election. That's my thought, is that we're really-- maybe we don't understand how much of an outlier our system is now.

Brigid Bergin: Bernard, thank you so much for that. I've had this conversation with Bernard before, because part of what the issue he raises is something that New York City used to have a system to address. We used to have runoffs, where you needed, at least in the primary, to have secured a certain amount of the vote in order to win. Now we have this general election where, as Bernard underscored, as we've been talking about, there is the potential for a candidate to win with 20% plus 1 of the vote, assuming other candidates each take their share. Any reaction to that, Sally?

Sally Goldenberg: I think Bernard alluded to this, because it is a partisan town, it's a self fulfilling prophecy where the parties really do try to block open primaries because it weakens them. Now, the county parties, you've written about this over the years, they are substantially weaker than they were when there were the really classic party bosses, but they still exist. They're still beholden to this party system. I think Bloomberg at one point tried, and I believe put in some of his own resources to do away with closed primaries and it was unsuccessful.

There does have to be a groundswell of support. It does seem like now may be the time for someone to try it given that there is a rise in independence. Those presumably are the people who don't want to. Conceivably, if there was an open primary system, you would see fewer people enrolled in parties. I think people enroll because that's the way to get your vote to matter. Because most of the time if you're voting in the Democratic primary, that's the last relevant vote that you're taking.

Brigid Bergin: Sally, I'm curious what your take on how the mayor's decision to run in this race as an independent, skipping the primary is affecting the current frontrunner of that Democratic primary, former Governor Andrew Cuomo. There was so much anticipation about when he would get into that race, and he timed it pretty exactly to have a relatively short amount of time from when he entered the race, was officially running, was taking the slings and arrows from his competitors leading up to the primary election itself.

Now, it looks like whatever slow summer people might have imagined, that country house that you might have rented, if you're in the New York City press corps, you might want to get your deposit back because you're going to be busy because this race is going to go all summer, right?

Sally Goldenberg: Yes, absolutely. I think in the immediate, I'm sure Cuomo thinks it's good for him. I don't believe he would be running in this race if Eric Adams were a strong Democratic incumbent. They have the same base, outer borough, working class and middle class, Black and Hispanic voters, Orthodox Jews. They both appeal to the business class. They're very similar politically. I don't think Cuomo would be in this race if Adams were a strong contender. He saw that he wasn't and he saw an opening.

I think in the immediate, in the Democratic primary, I would assume it helps him. Adams numbers were so low that I'm not actually sure that there's that much for him to gain. I think he had pretty well scooped up or vacuumed up the support that Adams was getting. What it does is it gives Adams a lot more time to try to win those voters back, the moderate voters, the more independent minded voters. Neither of them is going to be the first choice for left of center voters, most likely.

It does give Adams more time after the primary to try to really compete on that turf with Cuomo. It gives him the motivation to attack Cuomo from a different point of view than others. Everyone else is attacking Cuomo for being too close to Trump. Adams will attack Cuomo for doing bail reform and things that might not play well in a Democratic primary, but might gin up the New York Post editorial board. Not that it ever needs ginning up. It gives him another opponent and one who's really ready to spar with him.

Brigid Bergin: We mentioned the National Action Network forum, and I want to play a little bit of tape from that event. We heard Council Speaker Adrienne Adams really in a forceful tone, come out swinging against the mayor at that forum. I want to play a little bit of that.

Speaker Adrienne Adams: I'm very glad that he's okay. I do want to say that. Very glad that Eric is okay. [applause] There came a time where I noticed that not one, not two, not three, but four deputy mayors decided to resign at the same time. That was beyond a red flag for me. For me, that was tantamount to the brains walking out of a computer.

Brigid Bergin: Some pretty harsh words there from City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams. A lot of Adam's opponents have charged that his getting those charges dropped was a quid pro quo with Trump. I want to play a little of the mayor responding to Reverend Sharpton's question about that and whether or not he'd stand up for New Yorkers against the White House.

Mayor Eric Adams: I'm going to fight any White House that is not going to benefit our city, including the previous one that cost us $7 billion for dealing the migrant and asylum seeker crisis that should not have came over our back.

Brigid Bergin: Sally, what I think is so interesting about those two clips you hear from Speaker Adams, just a tease of the kinds of attacks that he will no doubt face by any opponent going into that general election about the tumultuous turn in his administration and, of course, how close he appears to be with the Trump administration. Then you start to hear how he'll respond, which I don't know how strong the response comes across. I'm curious about your take.

Sally Goldenberg: I think what was interesting about Speaker Adams' response is that she has been very critical of him throughout her tenure as speaker, after being close to him in the very beginning. Now I think she feels she needs to do that more forcefully so that people know that she has a backbone, that she's tough, but he's not her immediate opponent. Her immediate opponent right now is Andrew Cuomo and others, but now she has to really focus her attention. She has criticized Cuomo's handling of COVID and other things, but that's really her first order of business, because if Cuomo is ranked number one, she's out of the game. She's got to really channel that energy to the front runner in the Democratic primary.

I think what she's saying and what I've heard her say in other clips and other interviews, and this is her message, among other messages, but this is one she settled on, and I think it's authentic, is that she doesn't bring drama and chaos and a big ego. There's obviously a lot of drama and chaos in the Adams administration, and there was drama and chaos in Cuomo's administration in Albany. Both of them will say they were unfairly targeted. They're entitled to say that, of course, but it would be undeniable that either of them didn't have a lot of-- just a ton of chaos around them in government.

I think that was some of what she was saying when she talked about the deputy mayors walking out. She said that many times. Just no drama with me, just governance. With Mayor Adams, what you hear, this is what I heard in my interview with him over and over, just really not a desire to distance himself from the Trump White House. He resorted a few times when I asked him to saying, "I'm not going to just make these like ad hominem attacks." I said, "That's not really the question, though."

He doesn't seem to want to criticize him. The case is over. Trump can't bring the charges back. His Department of Justice can't. I'm left with the assumption that Adams is more angry at aspects or factions of the Democratic Party, given what he's been through in the last few years and his own personal politics, than he is with Trump. I don't expect that to change.

Brigid Bergin: I think striking in his statement the day that the charges were dropped was holding up a copy of Kash Patel's book, Government Gangsters, recommending everyone read it. Kash Patel, of course, the new head of the FBI, who has a lot of, I think grudges might be one way to describe it against people who are part of so called permanent government. I think it also stands in such contrast to some of the other candidates in the Democratic primary.

Certainly, we saw Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani take a much different stance against the Trump administration. That viral clip of him standing up against border czar Tom Homan when he was in Albany, certainly a much different choice for voters if that's something that is on their radar, helping to make decision in this primary. Sally, I told them we were going to need our whole show just for ourselves, but unfortunately, we only have this amount of time. I want to thank you so much for joining me. My guest has been Sally Goldenberg, senior New York editor at Politico. Thank you so much for coming in.

Sally Goldenberg: Thank you.

Brigid Bergin: Really appreciate it.

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