Eric Adams’ indictment has come at the worst time for Democrats

Just hours before New York City mayor Eric Adams was hit with a federal indictment, a split within the New York Democratic Party had already began.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the democratic socialist congresswoman from the Bronx and Queens, called on Adams to resign. “I do not see how Mayor Adams can continue governing New York City,” she wrote on Twitter. “The flood of resignations and vacancies are threatening gov function. Nonstop investigations will make it impossible to recruit and retain a qualified administration.For the good of the city, he should resign.”

But shortly thereafer, a reporter from a New York station asked House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries asked about Ocasio-Cortez’s claims during a press conference.

“Eric Adams is working as hard as he can to be the best mayor possible and meet the needs of the residents of New York City,” Jeffries said in response. “We need Eric Adams to be successful as mayor, because he is the mayor at this moment in time.”

That evening, after the final votes in the House before the election were cast, the indictment dropped.

Adams’ indictment includes five charges of wire fraud, bribery, conspiracy, and solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national. Adams has denied any wrongdoing. And while this may seem like a New York story, the truth is that its ramifications extend across the country.

In fact, Adams served as a thorn in the side of the Biden administration because of his repeated criticisms of the president’s immigration policy. Donald Trump even hinted that might be the reason for Adams’s indictment (there is, of course, no evidence to support such a claim.)

“I watched about a year ago when [Adams] talked about how the illegal migrants are hurting our city and the federal government should pay us and we shouldn’t have to take them, and I said ‘You know what, he’ll be indicted within the year’ and I was exactly right,” Trump said during a press conference in New York on Thursday.

New York remains an overwhelmingly Democratic state and despite Trump holding rallies in Long Island and in the Bronx, he has zero chance of winning there. But if Kamala Harris is to have any chance of passing her agenda, Democrats know that they will need to flip seats in the Empire State and get an overwhelming win. And the Adams indictment is just the latest black eye that might prevent them from doing so.

In 2022, during the midterm election, Democrats hoped to flip some Republican seats that had voted for President Joe Biden in 2020. Some Republicans decided to retire and there seemed like a good chance, even in what was shaping up to be a bad year for Democrats.

That didn’t happen. Rather, Governor Kathy Hochul, who had replaced disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo, severely underperformed in her campaign against then-congressman Lee Zeldin. Voters in Long Island and the Hudson Valley concerned about crime in New York City voted for Republicans.

Given the fact that Republicans only control 220 seats to the Democrats 212, that small margin has to sting. During a forum held by Politico during last month’s Democratic National Convention, former House speaker Nancy Pelosi specifically faulted Hochul.

“Five seats in New York,” she noted. “Well, I think it related to the gubernatorial race.”

Jeffries — Pelosi’s successor as Democratic leader, who is usually not nearly as candid — said in his Thursday press conference: “We have important races all across the country, and certainly there are several in New York, which include Long Island, Hudson Valley and in central New York.”

Democrats feel fairly confident that they can win those seats. The non-partisan Cook Political Report lists three of them as a toss-up and one of them — New York’s 22nd district held by Representative Brandon Williams — as leaning Democratic.

The fact that Democrats flipped New York’s 3rd district as soon as the House expelled the disgraced George Santos may have given them reason to feel confident they could pull off a victory. But a scandal in New York City so close to the election threatens that. It gives Republicans in places like Long Island and Westchester who commute into the city another bludgeoning tool to say that Democrats are corrupt and they need to be elected to serve as a check on Harris, should she take the White House.

Republicans are already trying to tie Harris to Adams, despite his criticisms of the Biden administration. The fact that Adams, a former police officer, also represented a tough-on-crime type of Democrat will make it harder for those Republican attacks to land — after all, many of them have simultaneously been attempting to claim that Harris would “defund the police”.

Nevertheless, the fallout from the Adams scandal could hurt Democrats — especially by dividing them at a vulnerable moment. And it might require them to scour other states like California, Arizona or Nebraska for pickup opportunities to give Harris a Democratic majority. If they wind up in the minority, they will likely blame Adams.