He’s waiting for an offer he can’t refuse.
Speculation over Mayor Eric Adams’ future grew to a fever pitch Friday as sources revealed that the mayor would be heading to Washington, DC, next week for a White House sit-down over a potential cushy job with President Trump’s administration.
“Eric Adams knows he can’t win [in November] and is exploring his options,” a source close to the mayor told The Post about the meeting.
“The next step would have to be a formal conversation” with the president, the source said.
Adams defiantly insisted Friday afternoon that he was staying in the race amid the swirling chatter that he was considering dropping his likely doomed re-election bid.
“I’m running and I’m going to beat [Zohran] Mamdani,” he said outside Gracie Mansion, referring to the frontrunner socialist Democratic nominee.
The mayor also issued a statement reiterating that “no formal offer had been made” – an assertion confirmed by sources with knowledge of the conversations – but said he’d take up the call to serve, if asked.
The Adams campaign called an emergency meeting – prompting the cancelation of a mayoral event – that lasted more than an hour Friday morning amid the rumors that the Trump administration was putting on the pressure in an attempt to create a one-on-one race between Mamdani and ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Staffers for the campaign and White House had a meeting pencilled in for Monday, but it could be pushed to later in the week due to scheduling. Trump is expected to attend the US Open in Queens on Sunday, and a Yankee game on Thursday, the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
Adams, during his fiery Gracie Mansion remarks, denied he’d be headed to the nation’s capital Monday.
He ripped his rivals, Mamdani and Cuomo, as “spoiled brats” born with silver spoons in their mouths.
“Andrew Cuomo is a snake and a liar. I am in this race, and I’m the only one who can beat Mamdani. Andrew has had a career of pushing black candidates out of races.”
The Post confirmed earlier Friday that Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff — whom Adams met with in Florida earlier this week — was pushing for the president to nominate the mayor as the next ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
The plan’s seriousness remained unclear Friday.
“Does he want to be an ambassador? Sure, but that has to be appointed by the president and the president has not asked him,” the source with knowledge of the White House meeting said, referring to one of the possible gigs being discussed.
Adams has also fielded lucrative offers from influential business leaders, but he’s currently not interested in exploring the private sector, sources said.
The political calculus behind the seemingly outside-the-box deal would have Adams end his independent re-election bid as a way to consolidate Cuomo’s support, giving him a leg up in beating Mamdani in November.
Trump, speaking from the Oval Office, confirmed he views Cuomo as the best candidate to beat Mamdani, whom he disparaged as a “communist.”
“I would say that Cuomo might have a chance of winning if it was one-on-one,” he said. “If it’s not one on one, it’s going to be a hard race.”
The president said Adams is free to do what he wants, and denied offering the mayor an ambassadorship.
“There’s nothing wrong with doing that, but I didn’t do that,” he said.
Whether the job talks would require Adams to simply suspend his campaign or immediately resign his post at City Hall remained unclear.
Adams finishing out his term would be a potential sticking point if the goal is to thwart Mamdani, as the only way the mayor would be taken off November’s ballot under state law is if he steps down and moves out of New York City.
Hizzoner is also wrestling with whether he would want to step away completely and bank his current campaign war chest for a future return to Democratic politics or enter the Trump administration, sources said.
“Going into the Trump administration closes some doors,” the source said. “He would be tied to the Trump administration for better or for worse.”
Leaving City Hall for the White House would be as unprecedented as Trump’s interjection into the city’s mayoral campaign, and could forever define Adams’ already scandal-tinged legacy.
Adams would risk being compared in the history books to famously corrupt former Mayor Jimmy Walker, said Ken Frydman, a former press secretary to Rudy Giuliani and a longtime Democratic operative.
“[Then-Gov. Franklin D.] Roosevelt forced corrupt Mayor Walker to resign on September 1, 1932, two years into his second term,” Frydman said.
“Walker hightailed it to Europe with Betty Compton, his Ziegfeld girlfriend,” Frydman added. “Better than DC.”
It would also be unlikely that Adams — who has a photo of Walker hanging in his City Hall office — accepts a gig he saw as a major step down from leading the nation’s largest city.
“Like all politicians, Eric Adams has an outsize ego,” Frydman said. “He won’t settle for undersecretary or ambassador to a third-world country.”
The mayor’s post-mayoralty plans have long been to open his own international consultancy firm, insiders said.
And he’d consider an ambassadorship so long as it carried the prestige befitting a New York City mayor, they added.
A high-profile role as ambassador to Saudi Arabia could fit the bill, especially as it could lead to well-paying post-government relationships, said a former staffer to Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
“DC is extraordinarily hierarchical, so a big job isn’t a big job unless you have a security detail and those are few and far between,” the staffer said.
“An ambassadorship route is a little easier to execute because there are more options and those have a lot of prestige, especially in powerful and important countries,” the source said.
“I would think that Saudi Arabia is probably really interesting to Eric because the relationship one would make to a gulf state with their voluminous amount of investments and certainly could be very lucrative down the road.”
Sources close to Adams said would view an offer at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development – as Politico reported has been floated – as below his station.
Here’s the latest on Mayor Adams’ mayoral campaign
Another faction of White House insiders would rather Adams stay in the race and effectively secure a win for Mamdani, giving the GOP endless fodder with which to campaign against Democrats in next year’s midterm elections, sources said.
The White House did not return to requests for comment.
The chaos spurred by Trump potentially considering a job for Adams – and his intrusion into New York City’s politics – prompted a harsh smackdown from Gov. Kathy Hochul.
“Contrary to what the president thinks, he’s not a king, he’s not a kingmaker, and he should not be anointing the next mayor of New York City,” Hochul told reporters after an unrelated announcement on Long Island.
Hochul has not said who she is backing in the election, and is among the top state Democrats — including Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries — who have yet to publicly endorse their party’s nominee, Mamdani.
Adams, a Democrat, failed to rebrand himself with voters since launching his independent bid for mayor with his historically low poll numbers dipping even further in single digits, according to the latest surveys.
Cuomo has hovered in the mid-to-high 20s, and while he would seemingly benefit the most from Adams bowing out, it’s anyone’s bet whether those votes would flow to the ex-governor, whose disdain for campaigning has been on full display since entering the race earlier this year.
Mamdani has held a sizable lead since stunning the political world with his upset win in the Democratic primary, but his support has been stagnant now for months with high negatives dogging him ahead of the general election.
After the Queens Assemblyman stunningly walloped Cuomo in the June contest, big biz movers and shakers had appeared poised to consolidate their support around Adams.
But the mayor’s dismal fourth-place standing in the race has prompted one major defection from Adams’ camp of supporters: billionaire Bill Ackman.
Ackman dramatically announced Friday that he will drop his support of Adams and back Cuomo.
“Eric should step aside and not run for reelection,” the hedge fund titan posted on social media. “Eric’s polls have deteriorated substantially since the primary, and it has become increasingly clear that he does not have a chance to beat @ZohranKMamdani.”
– Additional reporting by Steven Nelson, Vaughn Golden, Josh Christenson and Hannah Fierick
