As Adrienne Adams officially kicked off her mayoral campaign on Saturday, she urged potential voters at a rally in Jamaica, Queens, to view her as an alternative to the city’s two most recognizable candidates, Mayor Eric Adams and former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.
But many of her supporters see her candidacy as something else: an opportunity for Democrats to elect a qualified Black woman to lead the country’s largest city, less than a year after the bruising loss of Kamala Harris, the first Black woman to lead a major party presidential ticket.
Wearing a pink pantsuit, Ms. Adams entered to cheers at the Rochdale Village Shopping Center in southeast Queens and danced with supporters as “I’m Coming Out” by Diana Ross played.
“No drama, no scandal, no nonsense, just competence and integrity,” Ms. Adams said at the rally, summing up her candidacy.
Ms. Adams, the City Council speaker and a Queens native, faces a tough path to the mayor’s office amid a crowded primary field and her own considerable fund-raising lag. But to the city’s most steadfast Democratic voting bloc, Black women, Ms. Adams’s candidacy represents more than a litany of messaging and policy promises.
If elected, Ms. Adams would be the first woman of color to become mayor of New York City. So far, one other woman in the June 24 primary is vying for the job — Jessica Ramos, a Queens-based state senator who, if elected, would also be the city’s first Latino mayor.
Ms. Adams enters the race with roughly $200,000 in her campaign account, well behind the other candidates, who have been fund-raising for several months. She will need to quickly raise enough money to meet the threshold for matching funds. She will also need to rush to garner signatures before the city’s April 3 deadline for securing a place on the ballot.
But her allies say she may have a powerful lifeline in the city’s influential network of politically engaged Black women. Several prominent Black female Democrats, including Letitia James, the state attorney general, are supporting her campaign.
Ms. James, who made calls to influential labor and civic leaders and elected officials to gauge interest in Ms. Adams’s candidacy, said she was inspired to do so after hearing her speak at Albany Caucus Weekend.
The crowd broke out into a chant of “Run, Adrienne, run!”
“I could feel it,” Ms. James said. “Especially in the aftermath of the loss of Kamala Harris.”
Shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, a group of Black women in New York City who had worked to elect Ms. Harris and were mourning her defeat began channeling their energy into assembling a wish list of Black women who could run for mayor.
They wanted Ms. James to run. They noted, however, that she had begun collaborating with attorneys general from across the country to file lawsuits against the Trump administration’s policies, including the mass firing of federal employees and the freezing of billions in congressionally approved payments to states, and did not want to take her away from that work.
Another person the women considered was Jennifer Jones Austin, the chief executive of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies. In an interview, Ms. Jones Austin celebrated Ms. Adams’s entrance into the race, but added a word of caution about the pragmatism of Black voters.
Most of the city’s Black female voters will consider candidates’ policies and electability over their demographics in deciding whom to vote for, she said. Still, pointing to the unsuccessful campaigns of Ms. Harris and Maya Wiley, the president and chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights who ran in 2021 to be the city’s first Black woman mayor, there remains an active base for Ms. Adams to court, Ms. Jones Austin said.
“I don’t think that because in both instances the women did not ultimately prevail means that Black women are disconnected, disenchanted or now apathetic in any way,” said Ms. Jones Austin, who is remaining neutral in the primary.
Three other Black women have run for mayor of New York City before Ms. Adams, including Ms. Wiley; C. Virginia Fields, a former Manhattan borough president; and Dianne Morales, a nonprofit executive who identifies as Afro-Latina.
Yet, in many ways, Ms. Adams finds herself in a situation similar to that of Ms. Harris. She was drafted into the race as an alternative to Mr. Adams and Mr. Cuomo, both of whom, like Mr. Trump, have a history of ethical issues and allegations of sexual misconduct, which both men have denied.
That point was driven home by Althea Stevens, a councilwoman from the Bronx who referred to Ms. Harris’s defeat in her speech at Ms. Adams’s campaign launch.
“The last time a Black woman ran a couple of months ago, we didn’t listen, and now we are dealing with the consequences,” Ms. Stevens said.
A recent Quinnipiac poll found Mr. Cuomo leading with 31 percent of support from Democratic voters and Mr. Adams far behind in second with 11 percent. Ms. Adams, who is not related to the mayor, trailed with 4 percent, but the poll was taken last week before she entered the race, and she was still polling above some candidates who had been running for months. Ms. Ramos also had 4 percent.
Ms. Adams has a record of standing up to the mayor on the budget and even leading the Council to override two of his vetoes on public safety bills, the first time that had been done in two decades. She has notably dropped her last name from her campaign literature, making it just “Adrienne, Democrat for NYC Mayor.”
“I plan to build a winning coalition by appealing to New Yorkers who want a city government that has restored trust and effectiveness for every single community,” Ms. Adams said in an interview.
Black women have often been hailed as the “backbone” of the Democratic Party, a nod to their long track record of supporting Democratic candidates en masse. More than nine in 10 Black female voters cast a ballot for Ms. Harris in November and Black women make up a larger portion of the city’s Black Democratic base.
Ms. Adams, as a representative of that group and a product of Spelman College, a historically Black women’s college in Atlanta, could have an inside track to galvanizing their support.
She has focused her tenure as speaker on issues such as maternal health, restoring budget cuts to libraries, community mental health and college access, and has cultivated a natural base of support, said Yvette Buckner, a Democratic strategist and co-chairwoman of the New Majority NYC, a group dedicated to electing women to the City Council.
“She understood the assignment,” Ms. Buckner said.
But Mr. Cuomo also understands the importance of Black women voters. Since he announced his candidacy last weekend, he has rolled out a steady stream of endorsements from Black women elected officials. Hours before Ms. Adams’s campaign kickoff, he announced that another Black councilwoman from Brooklyn had endorsed him.
For Black women in New York who are still feeling the sting of Ms. Harris’s loss, Ms. Adams’s entry into the mayoral race could be reinvigorating. Mr. Trump has interjected himself into the city’s affairs, seeking to cancel congestion pricing and calling for the dismissal of the federal corruption charges against Mr. Adams.
“We do think that this is a time where our leadership is needed,” said Waikinya Clanton, founder of Black Women for Kamala Harris. “Especially at the local level.”
