New York

For a Democrat, the New York City mayor has a lot of friends in common with the former president.

Connections to former President Donald Trump permeate Mayor Eric Adams' 2025 reelection campaign. | Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

By Joe Anuta and Jeff Coltin

11/01/2024 04:08 PM EDT

Updated: 11/01/2024 05:10 PM EDT

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NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Eric Adams says he has not been in contact with former President Donald Trump. But the embattled Democrat has access to a rich network of common friends and allies who do have entrée in the former president’s orbit.

Adams and the Republican have long inhabited overlapping worlds in New York City’s political scene. Adams has dined, formed alliances with and even hired local gadflies, entertainers and business interests who are close to Trump, including a radio host who spoke at his recent Madison Square Garden rally.

Those connections — and the mayor’s growing alignment with Trump over their shared troubles with the Department of Justice — have been enough to unnerve Adams’ fellow Democrats, who worry the mayor may be laying the groundwork for a presidential pardon should he be convicted of federal corruption charges.

“You probably should have just remained a Republican if you wanted to be a MAGA for Trump,” New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, a fellow Democrat, said of Adams, referring to the several years the mayor spent as a card-carrying member of the GOP.

Adams returned to the Democratic Party in 2002 — billing his foray across the aisle as a protest against party leadership — but has maintained an affinity for figures in the city’s Republican firmament.

Conservative radio host Sid Rosenberg, for example, was among the speakers at last weekend’s Trump rally in Madison Square Garden. The media personality has long boasted of his relationship with the mayor — the two have supped together on multiple occasions, sometimes with Rosenberg’s wife — and Adams was once a fixture on Rosenberg’s morning talk show.

“We all agree that it’s in the mayor’s best interest to buddy up to Donald Trump if, in fact, this thing gets worse,” Rosenberg said, referring to both the bribery charges against Adams and a president’s ability to issue a pardon or swap out a federal prosecutor. “And people do think that it’s gonna get worse for the mayor.”

The emcee had a falling out with Adams over the city’s response to pro-Palestinian demonstrators on university campuses this spring, which Rosenberg thought was not aggressive enough, he told POLITICO in an interview. He now believes Adams has failed more generally as a mayor. But if there were ever an occasion to serve as a conduit between the two native New Yorkers, Rosenberg would still be game.

“Would I sit down with Trump and Adams? Of course I would,” he said. “In a heartbeat.”

Indeed, New York Democrats have........

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