With the mayoral election just a few weeks away, many of Eric Adams’ longtime supporters in New York City’s Chinese community are still weighing their options after the mayor abruptly suspended his reelection campaign last Sunday. Several of them told Documented that of the current candidates, Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic frontrunner, would be their least preferred choice if they decide to cast their votes for another candidate in November.
Adams ended his bid after months of dismal poll numbers, a string of corruption scandals involving his administration, and dwindling campaign funds. While he has not endorsed another candidate, in his withdrawal video, Adams issued a thinly veiled warning about Mamdani and what he described as “growing extremism” in politics. He also removed a scripted attack against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent.
A survey of nearly 700 readers by the Chinese-language daily newspaper World Journal on Sept. 28 found that after Adams’ withdrawal, 62% said they would back Cuomo, 20% favored Sliwa, and 17% supported Mamdani.
Despite suspending his campaign, Adams’ name will still appear on the November ballot because the deadline to update ballots — May 30, 2025 — has passed.
Adams, who has built a nearly two-decade political career, fought hard to stay in the race, even after grappling with a federal corruption probe and facing strong challengers, he repeatedly insisted he would not drop out of the race. “I’m running for reelection, and I’m going to tell New Yorkers every day why I believe I should be the mayor of the city of New York in 2026,” said Adams at a press conference in early September after days of speculation that he may drop out of the race.
Adams held campaign events in July across the city’s three major Chinese communities, Manhattan’s Chinatown, Flushing, and 8th Ave in Sunset Park, where he continued to draw support from some Chinese community leaders. He kept up outreach in those neighborhoods throughout his campaign, even holding campaign events in all three neighborhoods in July — only to see his polling numbers slide into single digits by September. They described Adams as a moderate mayor who listened to Chinese community members’ concerns, and dismissed corruption allegations as unproven, citing his experience, his perceived record on public safety, and his consistent outreach to the Chinese-American community.
For many of these supporters, Adams’ withdrawal felt disappointing but not surprising. About one week before the announcement, his campaign quietly paused events, sparking speculation that an exit was near.
Justin Yu, district leader in Manhattan’s Chinatown and a fixture at Adams’ rallies, said the campaign had privately signaled that the mayor might drop out. “Adams is kind-hearted and values his supporters, so he couldn’t say it directly,” Yu wrote in a statement shared with Documented, noting that he immediately took down a planned promotional campaign board for Eric Adams in Chinatown after receiving the message.
Yu called Adams “one of the mayors most connected to the Asian community” in his five decades in New York, citing his willingness to hear residents’ concerns on proposed homeless shelters in Chinatown and the redesign of Kimlau Square, a critical access point to the neighborhood.
Yu believes that Adams was undone by a divided team and an uncooperative bureaucracy — not because of the corruption scandals swirling around his administration. The much-publicized incident involving Adams’ former aide Winnie Greco handing a potato chip bag filled with cash to a reporter, he said, was simply “a tempest in a teapot.” Instead, Yu blamed the Campaign Finance Board’s refusal to grant matching funds for Adam’s weak campaign. “Without food and supplies, an army cannot move forward,” he wrote in the statement.
While Yu remains undecided, he stressed he won’t sit out the election. “Adams’ supporters will not be absent in November.”
Others are already shifting. Xiangmei Li, a Flushing resident and community leader among people from Northeastern China who attended Adams’s Flushing re-election campaign in July, said she now plans to vote for Cuomo. She initially supported Adams for his moderate stance and said she views Mamdani as “too radical,” fearing his policies on police and his relationship with Jewish community would destabilize public safety. She also dismissed Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa’s chances in a heavily Democratic city. “So for me, Cuomo is the most reasonable choice,” she said in Mandarin.
In South Brooklyn, where recent elections have seen “red shifts,” some Chinese voters are split between Cuomo and the Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, who refused to quit the race even after Trump suggested he drop out. Sliwa’s longtime supporter Lina Chen, a community activist in South Brooklyn who is against a proposed homeless shelter in Sheepshead Bay — one of the issues most important to New York City’s Chinese community — argued that Democrats have failed the community on issues like public safety and education, pointing to the recent victories of Republicans Lester Chang and Steve Chan. She noted Sliwa’s pledge to appoint Chinese American senator Steve Chan as deputy mayor if elected. “That would give our community real influence,” she said in Mandarin.
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Bingxin Zheng, an active Chinese community member in Brooklyn who once protested against Adams at an Adams rally in Brooklyn, said he is urging fellow supporters to back Sliwa. “We don’t really know Cuomo, he rarely comes to our community. But Sliwa has always stood with us on the homeless shelter issue,” he said in Mandarin.
Still, many see Cuomo as the safer bet. Brooklyn Chinese community leader Dixon Mai, who supported Adams at a rally in Brooklyn this July, said he would reluctantly back Cuomo after considering the candidates’ viability. “To be honest, voting for Sliwa is a waste of ballots,” he said, acknowledging that he disliked Cuomo but saw him as the only viable alternative to Mamdani. “Cuomo isn’t great, I mean, bail reform happened under his watch. But at least he’s better than a socialist,” Mai said in Mandarin.
As of publication, neither Adams’ reelection campaign nor the mayor’s press office provided comments on the feedback from Chinese supporters or on whom he might advise them to support.
