Mayor Adams may be eyeing a White House run if President Biden doesn’t seek a second term, confidantes and City Hall insiders told The Post.
“Eric has told me repeatedly that he thinks that he has a platform to run for national office, for president in 2024. He has said that repeatedly. He thinks New York is a national platform. He thinks the national party has gotten too far to the left and he thinks he has a platform to win,” a person close to the mayor said.
A Brooklyn Democratic elected official who was also frequently in talks with the mayor said Adams was “considering a White House run in 2024 if Biden doesn’t seek re-election,” adding that Adams’ advisor Ingrid Lewis-Martin was “running point” on the issue.
There is growing chatter that the gaffe-prone president — now 79 years old — may call it quits after one term, though he has privately insisted he will seek re-election.
Even a GOP lawmaker broached the topic with Adams.
“I said you really have to consider that you are young enough where you will have a life after the mayoralty and if you solve the crime problem there would be a lot of interest in a big city Democrat, African American with progressive values but who mediated the crime problem in a major city,” he said.
Adams’ Big Apple agenda — including dismantling state bail reform — has been stymied by left-wing party leaders in Albany. Adams has likewise positioned himself as an avowed enemy of the socialist wing.
It remains an open question so far whether Adams will be able to reduce the scourge of city crime, which has continued to soar during his administration. Polls show voters are losing patience.
If Adams did run, he would continue in a long tradition of Big Apple mayors who have sought the nation’s top job, including his three most recent predecessors, Bill de Blasio, Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani.
No NYC mayor has ever gone on to take the nation’s top job.
Mayor Adams himself let slip that the idea was at least on his mind.
During an event at PS 125 in Harlem last Thursday, Adams joked to the crowd if he had been screened early for dyslexia “right now, we would be not saying just ‘Mr. Mayor,’ you’d probably be saying ‘Mr. President.'”
While there is no active campaign or federal fundraising yet, the mayor has spent his first year in office barnstorming the country. Earlier this month he was in Los Angeles glad-handing high rollers at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills. In March he hit a cryptocurrency conference in Miami. That same month he was in Chicago with a press conference with that city’s mayor Lori Lightfoot and promised to make his crusade against gun violence into a national campaign.
“He is one of the best known black elected officials in the country,” said Chris Coffey, Co-CEO of the political consulting shop Tusk Strategies — which backed Adams’ mayoral opponent Andrew Yang. “The play works if Adams makes progress on crime and the president decides not to run. I think he would be crazy not to consider it.”
Adams denied he was thinking of running for president.
“That’s a silly, silly story. I never had a conversation about that and I love being mayor, and you can run the country from New York City,” he told The Post, adding he wasn’t looking at the 2028 election either. “I’m the mayor. That’s all I’m focused on.”
Additional reporting by Steven Vago