As Adams Tries to Run on His Record, Scandals Keep Swirling Around Him

New York|As Adams Tries to Run on His Record, Scandals Keep Swirling Around Him

As he mounts a long-shot campaign for a second term, Mayor Eric Adams of New York City likes to say that once the true story of his administration’s successes is told, he will prevail.

But it took 14 hours this week to underscore just how dangerously his desired narrative about falling crime and housing production has spun out of his control — precisely when he needs voters to give him a second chance.

It began Wednesday evening when Mr. Adams was forced to distance himself from Winnie Greco, a campaign volunteer and former adviser, after she gave a journalist a wad of cash tucked in a bag of sour cream and onion potato chips. Then, on Thursday morning, the Manhattan district attorney unveiled a raft of new bribery charges targeting Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Mr. Adams’s former chief adviser and a confidante so close Mr. Adams has called her his sister.

Mr. Adams, who is running for re-election on a law-and-order platform, was not himself accused of wrongdoing in either matter. But the revelations dealt another blow to his already tenuous re-election prospects, and are all but certain to increase pressure on him from donors and his rivals to suspend his campaign.

“It’s like nothing I have ever seen before,” said Christine Quinn, the former speaker of the New York City Council.

“Prior to potato-chip-gate and today’s indictments of Ingrid, I didn’t think the mayor had any chance of getting re-elected,” she added. “Now, if there’s an ability to get a negative number of votes, that’s where he’ll end up.”