By Nayaba Arinde
Editor-at-Large
At Our Time Press deadline, news broke that federal judge Dale Ho has dismissed corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams with prejudice, meaning they cannot be revisited.
An elated Adams said, “My fellow New Yorkers, today finally marks the end of this chapter…As you have heard, this case, the judge has dismissed it with prejudice, making it clear that it never can be brought back.”
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams said, “Let’s be clear: this wasn’t an exoneration. Instead of fighting for his innocence in court, the mayor relied on power and privilege to avoid accountability…He’s refused to stand up to Trump, and now we have to ask: Was it fear of the president, or was it agreement?”
Meanwhile, a grassroots D.R.E.A.M. movement is not what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or mayoral candidates Eric Adams or Andrew Cuomo ever had in mind.
The United Auto Workers (UAW) and a grassroots political action committee came up with the acronym D.R.E.A.M.–“Don’t Rank Eric or Andrew for Mayor.”
Brandon Mancilla, the director of UAW Region 9A, stated that under Mayor Adams, “We’ve seen a lot of cuts, a lot of misplaced priorities, taking a knee to whatever Donald Trump wants, essentially just not running the city.”
Mancilla said that during the UAW strike at upstate General Motors auto plants, then-Governor Cuomo “never made an appearance at any of their picket lines.”
Praising their “working-class agenda,” last December, UAW Region 9A endorsed Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, state Sen. Jessica Ramos, and City Comptroller Brad Lander, telling their union rank-and-file not to rank Adams nor the former governor. But, even as Cuomo was surging at 41% in the polls, the union said, “We are telling our membership to leave both Eric Adams and Andrew Cuomo unranked and off our ballots.”
The remaining declared candidates include City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and former Assembly Member Michael Blake.
With a reported $8 million in his campaign coffers, Zohan Mandami is in second place to Cuomo.
“I am interested in cross-endorsements as we get closer to Election Day because we must turn the page on this failed leadership, and we must utilize every single tool at our disposal to ensure that all of our supporters understand that where they have five options, they should use them, and that none of them should be Eric Adams or Andrew Cuomo,” he told The Intelligencer.
Brooklyn State Senator Zellnor Myrie said, “I’m excited about what ranked-choice voting provides for voters. I think it gives people the opportunity to express their preferences in a way that they might not have had in the past.”
Speaking to Dahved Levy on WBLS a few days ago, Adams slammed “those bogus charges that my attorney has fought and even the current Department of Justice has pointed out how problematic they are.”
He asked instead that “People don’t look at the last 15 months. Look at the last 40- plus years…from the reforms I fought for in the Police Department, to what I did as a senator, as borough president… mayor. Look at my legacy.”
Calling Cuomo “New York’s #1 Nepo Baby,” the UAW declared that he “jerked New Yorkers around for years as our governor. Now he’s running for mayor to punch his ticket back to the big time, after sexual harassment and corruption scandals drove him out of office in disgrace. In office, Andrew has treated subways, schools, and even our bodies as his personal playthings. To this day, he’s paying private lawyers with taxpayer money to fight his legal cases. Just imagine what he would do as our mayor.”
As for Adams, the UAW continued, “Whether it’s gutting schools and libraries to hire more of his buddies in blue or violating the law for Trump to stay out of jail…Let’s make him a one-term mayor.
“To end the Adams nightmare and prevent a Cuomo catastrophe, you have to DREAM: Don’t Rank Eric or Andrew for Mayor.”
But Queens Congressman Greg Meeks said, “We need a person who can communicate the Democratic Party’s issues and stand and tell the truth. We have seen him do this before. The last person that Washington, DC wants to see become mayor of the City of New York is Andrew Cuomo.”
The Guardian called Zohan Kwame Mandami “The socialist millennial and first South Asian man in the state assembly.”
The Ugandan-born, New York City-raised mayoral candidate said, “This campaign is for every person who believes in the dignity of their neighbors and that the government’s job is to actually make our lives better.”
Asked if he is actually currently campaigning, the Mayor said, “It just happens that my mayoral duties is being present in the public, is meeting you in the street.”
Last week, Adams said that he didn’t want to “put New Yorkers through this see-saw,” regarding the five-count indictment he noted, “I agree with the independent observer who stated that this case should be dismissed. I said I did nothing wrong.”
However, he added, “I cannot apologize to New Yorkers enough for having to go through this. And I’m hoping that they saw, in spite of what I was going through, that they were my north star and I continued to deliver for the city.”
Spokesman Rich Azzopardi said that in response to D.R.E.A.M., the Cuomo campaign is focusing on the point that, “Our city is in crisis – a crisis of affordability, of quality of life and of leadership, and in this race, Governor Cuomo, and Governor Cuomo alone, is the only proven, tested leader to tackle these issues head on and who voters know can get the job done.”
New York City politicking may be a microcosm of the political theater nationwide. On Monday through to Tuesday, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker spoke on the Senate floor for 25 hours and four minutes to protest the 71 days of constitutional havoc he said the President Donald Trump and his DOGE head Elon Musk is upending the nation with.