The Rev. Al Sharpton said New York Mayor Eric Adams’s friendliness with President-elect Donald Trump could hurt his chances of winning reelection this year.
Adams’s bipartisan take on immigration reform and friendly relationship with Trump have made headlines in recent months. The mayor, who suffered a string of political setbacks last year, is gearing up for a grueling 2025 reelection campaign.
However, Sharpton, a New York City native, said that “the flirting with Trump is not helpful for him in the black community,” during an interview with Politico published Monday.
“If I was between a rock and a hard place and the only one that could deliver me is Donald Trump, I would be preparing for my bye-bye,” the civil rights leader said.
His comments come after New York City’s major shifts in support for Trump during the 2024 presidential election.
Every one of the city’s five boroughs experienced a shift to the Right. The red wave was the most pronounced in Queens, where Trump increased his voter share by 10 percentage points over his 2020 performance, and the Bronx, where the president-elect made gains of 12 percentage points, per CNN exit polls.
Trump doubled his support among black voters overall across the Empire State compared to 2020, picking up 8 percentage points, according to Associated Press exit polling.
Adams made history when he was elected as New York’s second black mayor in 2021. Sharpton conceded during his interview that Adams “still has a core base” with black voters, referencing the “basically positive” response the mayor received when he served free Christmas Day meals at Sharpton’s Harlem-based National Action Network.
But the reverend expressed belief that some in the black community think Adams “has a hard hill to climb.”
Sharpton’s musings come after the mayor was indicted in September 2024 on federal criminal charges largely surrounding how he conducted his 2021 mayoral campaign.
Steadfastly refusing all accusations of wrongdoing, Adams has suggested in recent months that the government pursued charges because he broke with the Biden administration on illegal immigration.
The mayor has simultaneously embarked on a much warmer relationship with Trump than the two enjoyed during the president-elect’s first term in office. Trump announced in December 2024 that he would “certainly look” at issuing a pardon for Adams after the mayor said he would work with incoming “border czar” Tom Homan to deport some illegal immigrants.
Sharpton’s criticisms of the two men’s friendship come after he has enjoyed a decadeslong relationship with the New York mayor. Adams was even a founding member of the National Action Network in the 1990s. The two are widely seen as allies, showing up to support each other at various initiatives and political causes for years.
The civil rights leader continued to assert that despite “challenges,” Adams still has a path to victory.
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“I think that anybody that counts Eric out is gambling wrong,” Sharpton said. “I would never count him out, but I would say he has some hills to climb.”
A string of candidates, including Zohran Mamdani, Scott Stringer, Brad Lander, and Zellnor Myrie, have thrown their hats in the ring to challenge Adams, while the Empire State’s former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo could emerge as the mayor’s most significant threat.