Adams says he skipped 2025 mayoral race forum because he has no time for 'frivolous stuff'

NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams skipped the first candidate forum of the 2025 mayoral race last weekend because he said he was too busy with work and couldn’t find time for “frivolous stuff,” he said Tuesday.

“Those guys that was in that forum, I don’t know if they have a job that they’re doing, but I got a job to do, I’m running the most difficult city on the globe, New York, and so they have time to do all of this stuff, this frivolous stuff, but I go to move this city forward, I got a job to do,” Adams said at his weekly press conference at City Hall when asked why he missed the Saturday forum.

Referring to the five candidates challenging him in next year’s Democratic mayoral primary — all of whom participated in the forum — Adams added: “Those guys don’t get up until probably 11 a.m.”

The forum, hosted at the Bronx Christian Charismatic Prayer Fellowship by Kirsten John Foy, a civil rights leader and Pentecostal minister, went from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. It marked the unofficial start of the 2025 mayoral race, and constituents, as well as Foy, asked candidates questions about their vision for the city.

Adams had an entry on his public schedule Saturday that overlapped with the forum, a noon 40th anniversary celebration for the St. Lucia American Christian Association. That event was closed to the press, and Adams’ office didn’t immediately return a request for comment Tuesday on why he prioritized the celebration over the candidate forum.

Speaking to the Daily News after Adams’ news conference, Foy called the mayor’s latest comments “flippant.”

“This is still a democracy, not a coronation, and running for office is part of the job, going before the constituents of the city of New York is part of the job, being accountable to them is part of the job and hearing from them on how to do your job better is part of it,” said Foy, whose group, Arc of Justice, endorsed Adams’ opponent, Maya Wiley, in the 2021 mayoral race he ended up winning.

“I don’t know what (Adams) thinks his job is, but he clearly isn’t doing part of it,” Foy continued. “It’s unfortunate that his comments were so flippant. To say the comptroller and the public advocate and two New York State senators, a New York Assemblyman and a former comptroller do not have a job means he is either not being intellectually honest or he’s showing a great deal of fear in opting not to stand next to the other candidates and prove his case.”

Foy was referring to the five candidates who have announced 2025 campaigns against Adams — Comptroller Brad Lander, former Comptroller Scott Stringer, Brooklyn state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, Queens state Sen. Jessica Ramos and Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani — as well as Public Advocate Jumaane Williams.

Williams hasn’t announced a 2025 run. However, amid mounting calls for Adams to resign in the wake of his federal corruption indictment, Williams has taken some steps to prepare for the possibility of a 2025 run, given he would become interim mayor should Adams leave or be removed from office.

“What I have seen over the past few years is we have an accidental mayor who is governing like he had a mandate, and that’s why we’re in the situation we’re in right now, and those kind of comments support that,” Williams told The News at City Hall later in the day when asked about the mayor’s remarks about the forum. The public advocate’s broadside was a reference to the fact that Adams only won the 2021 election by a few thousand votes.

The 2025 mayoral race is expected to become more of a front-and-center focus in city politics after next week’s presidential election.

In a sign of how Adams’ challengers plan to campaign, the five candidates participating in last weekend’s forum focused heavily on blasting the mayor over his indictment, which alleges he took bribes from Turkish government officials in exchange for political favors.

“We have a roving crime scene at City Hall,” Stringer said at the forum.

Adams has pleaded not guilty to the federal charges and is vowing to run for reelection.

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