Not long after he celebrated his first 100 days as mayor this spring, Eric Adams was poolside in Beverly Hills, California, already thinking about the future.
In a crisp blue suit and fuchsia tie, Mr. Adams spoke to a crowd of vegans about his adherence to a plant-based diet at a mid-century event hosted by Naren Shankar, a Hollywood showrunner and producer of “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. “
However, the underlying motivation was about another passion: raising money for his re-election campaign in 2025.
Even as Mr. Adams has struggled to tackle a series of pressing challenges in New York, he has launched an unusually early fundraiser to secure a second term, a feat no black New York City mayor has done. has achieved.
The fundraisers coincide with the efforts of Mr. Adams to build a national profile. In March, the mayor held an event in Chicago at the home of Desirée Rogers, the former White House social secretary for President Barack Obama, attended by Robert Blackwell Jr., an entrepreneur and ally of Obama.
Sometime this summer, Charles Phillips, the managing partner of Recognize, a technology investment firm, plans to hold a fundraiser for Mr. Adams — likely “in the east” in the Hamptons, he said in an interview.
The mayor’s team hopes he will have his fundraising top up by the end of the summer, according to a Democratic adviser who was briefed on the campaign’s plans. A $2 million loot, combined with the city’s generous matching fund program, could allow him to meet the $7.9 million spending cap for the 2025 mayoral election. Collecting a massive war chest could fend off potential competitors and take advantage of what’s left of the mayor’s honeymoon, when he’s still relatively popular and donors are eager to get his attention.
“You want to raise money as a show of strength,” said Chris Coffey, a chief executive of Tusk Strategies and a manager of Andrew Yang’s mayoral campaign. “You don’t want to spend your senior year doing fundraisers.”
There is little precedent for such an early push. Bill de Blasio, in his first year as mayor, focused on raising money for state Senate candidates and for the Campaign for One New York, a nonprofit that supported his agenda — both of which became part of federal and state investigations. to his fundraising. Michael R. Bloomberg didn’t have to deal with fundraising; he used his own fortune to run for a second term, then used his personal philanthropy to gain support to overturn the term limits in 2008, spending a record $102 million on a third term.
There are also political risks to Mr. Adams’ fundraising strategy, which could potentially leave him as an absentee leader who unnecessarily focuses on politics.
When the mayor was in Beverly Hills, the risk level for coronavirus cases had just increased in New York City, raising new concerns about the city’s economic recovery. Federal officials considered a takeover of the troubled Rikers Island Prison in response to the increasing violence and deaths of inmates there. A police officer was stabbed in Brooklyn by a man with a 16-inch knife.
And when his return flight from California was abruptly cancelled, Mr. Adams canceled most of his events for the day, including a city hall rally to put pressure on the state legislature to extend mayoralty over city schools.
Mr Adams has already seen his approval rating plummet as he faces mounting pressure to tackle rising crime and an affordable housing crisis. Only 29 percent of New Yorkers said his performance was good or excellent, and 56 percent said the city was going in the wrong direction, according to a recent poll by NY1 and Siena College.
Mr. Adams defended his poll numbers, arguing that New Yorkers were hard graders and that many had given him a “reasonable” grade, which he considered a C grade.
“Listen, a C isn’t an A, but a C isn’t an F,” Mr Adams told reporters.
The mayor has proven to be a prolific fundraiser. He raised more than $9 million in the Democratic primaries and general election last year and another $10 million in matching funds. Mr. Adams spent much of last summer traveling to the Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard to recruit wealthy donors who championed his form of centrism, attending as many as five fundraisers a day.
Mr. Adams, a former state senator and president of the Brooklyn Municipality, has at times tested the limits of campaign finance and ethical laws. He was investigated for his role in supporting a bidder of a video lottery terminal for the Aqueduct Racetrack and criticized for taking money from developers who lobbied him to support critical zoning changes.
As mayoral candidate, Mr. Adams raised money from a wide variety of donors, including real estate developers, billionaires, cannabis investors, hedge fund managers, Republicans and New York workers. He raised more than $2.8 million from donors outside of New York City, and a super PAC supporting his campaign raised about $7 million.
Now as mayor, Mr. Adams once again embraced fundraising with vigor. On June 3, after giving an opening address in Queens, Mr. Adams attended a fundraiser at a construction company’s office in Midtown Manhattan, hosted by Bravo Group President Ehab Shehata. During the mid-work day event, Mr. Adams told the crowd that the city could only recover if crime rates fell and that he was the man for the job, according to a person who attended the event.
Mr Shehata did not respond to requests for comment. But he’s not the only local administrator who likes to please the mayor.
Marc Holliday, chief executive of SL Green Realty Corp., which co-owns the new One Vanderbilt skyscraper near Grand Central Terminal, reached out to fellow real estate executives in April on behalf of Mr. Adams for 2025. The tower has been home to at least two mayoral appearances, including the Wells Fargo product launch in April, where the mayor partied with model and actress Cara Delevingne, earning him a spread on the gossip pages.
“At a time when NYC needed it most, Eric stepped into the mayoralty and quickly became the face and driving force of New York’s recovery,” wrote Mr. Holliday in an email. “Anything you can do is much appreciated.”
The first public disclosures for the 2025 mayoral race are expected next month and will provide a clearer picture of the donors Adams relies on.
Barry Gosin, the chief executive officer of Newmark Group, a commercial real estate company, is organizing a fundraiser for Mr. Adams on Wednesday on the fifth floor of a skyscraper near Grand Central Terminal. Participants are requested to donate between $400 and $2,000 each.
“This is an opportunity to support a great, authentic mayor,” said Mr Gosin. “He’s working his ass off, and I think the things he does are the things that need to be done. But that is my opinion.”
The Chicago fundraiser was attended by Mr. Blackwell, the leader of a table tennis company that donated $400 to Mr. Adams’ campaign for mayor last year. It was co-hosted by Ms. Rogers and Carol Adams, the former president of the DuSable Museum of African American History.
“Going to the office takes money — expensive city, expensive advertising market,” said Mr. Phillips. “And you have to tell your story before someone else does.”
Another May fundraiser at the Kimberly Hotel in Midtown Manhattan was attended by Taj Gibson, the New York Knicks forward, and Jean Shafiroff, a regular on the charity circuit who attended a soiree for Mr. Adams in the Hamptons.
“We have to give him a chance,” she said. “I love what he stands for. It’s really not fair to judge someone after three months.”
