Eric Adams Hints to Business Leaders He Is Open to Quitting Mayor’s Race

At a closed-door meeting on Wednesday hosted by a prominent New York City business group, Mayor Eric Adams opened the door to abandoning his re-election bid if he does not think he can win, according to five people who attended.

Mr. Adams has publicly insisted that he plans to stay in the race. But in his remarks to the business group, the Association for a Better New York, he acknowledged an openness to leaving the contest.

All five attendees recalled him saying that the election would not really be determined until the race’s final weeks. And three of the roughly two dozen attendees recalled Mr. Adams saying his love for New York City outweighed his dislike for Andrew M. Cuomo, the former governor now running for mayor, whose chances would be helped if Mr. Adams were to bow out. (Mr. Adams recently called him a “snake.”)

Mr. Adams said that he believed Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee and front-runner in recent polling, would be a risk to the city and suggested that he did not want to play a role in electing him by staying in the race if he had no chance of winning, two of those people said.

Mr. Adams said he would conduct his own private poll to help determine his decision. He sounded conflicted, several attendees said, and he indicated that, for now, he intended to roll up his sleeves and continue campaigning. He made no firm commitments to drop out and has a history of reversing himself.

Mr. Adams’s remarks was first reported by NBC New York.

Todd Shapiro, a spokesman for the Adams campaign, said the mayor never “alluded to leaving the race” during the session, held in Midtown Manhattan, though he confirmed other aspects of the meeting.

“He clearly indicated that he will be spending resources to get his message out and will then look at his own independent poll to make a decision,” Mr. Shapiro said. “Nothing he said should give any indication that he has abandoned the race.”

A spokesman for the association declined to comment on the meeting, noting it was an off-the-record gathering.

The fate of Mr. Adams’s languishing re-election campaign has become a fixation for New York City’s political and business classes, as the mayor’s race enters its final eight weeks. Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, holds a formidable lead over his rivals, with Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat running on an independent ballot line, consistently in second place. The Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, who founded the Guardian Angels, regularly ranks third, followed by Mr. Adams, the Democratic incumbent who is also running on a third-party ballot line.

Business leaders in New York and advisers to President Trump have been looking for ways to defeat Mr. Mamdani, possibly by finding jobs for Mr. Adams and Mr. Sliwa to clear the field for Mr. Cuomo.

Mr. Sliwa has been adamant that he has no intention of leaving the race.

“No, no, no. A thousand times no,” Mr. Sliwa said on Tuesday during an interview at the New York Times headquarters. “I can’t be bought. I can’t be leased. I can’t be rented. I am not corruptible.”

Mr. Adams has been more equivocal. He has told allies he is seriously entertaining job offers, and he has avoided commenting directly on a New York Times report that advisers to Mr. Trump had been crafting a plan to have the president nominate him as ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Those discussions appear to have faded.

Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.