This week's big conspiracy theory — at least until the next one — involves incumbent New York City Mayor Eric Adams quietly disappearing to Florida on "personal" business, but perhaps to meet with Trump administration officials to discuss dropping out of the race.
"Mayor Adams is in Florida for the day attending to a personal matter. He will return [Tuesday] evening," the mayor's office told Politico's Jeff Coltin earlier in the day. A campaign spokesman told Coltin that the trip is "personal, and not campaign related and he’s not fundraising."
In other words, Adams isn't saying anything and his office wouldn't say much more than that. But if I were the tinfoil hat type, this is where I'd add, "I question the timing."
But we do know for sure that candidate Jim Walden, a local lawyer whose campaign the New York Times Tuesday described as "a long-shot," did just drop out.
“In a choice between values and ambitions, values must win,” Walden said during his brief announcement. “For months I have been steadfast in my view that, unless there is a one-on-one race in November, a Trojan horse will take control of City Hall."
The Trojan horse (of course, of course) is frontrunner and got-dam Communist Zohran Mamdani. I don't understand why Walden called Mamdani a Trojan horse, because Mamdani has to the best of my knowledge, never backed down from any of the radical views he's expressed over the years.
Walden was never a serious contender, and as he put it yesterday, "It doesn’t make sense for me to continue to push to surge, only to take votes away from another candidate or other candidates who are going to need it."
"For those still trailing in the polls by month’s end, I implore each to consider how history will judge them if they allow vanity or stubborn ambition to usher in Mr. Mamdani," Walden added.
Adams, if he isn't already, needs to seriously consider heeding Walden's advice.
The most recent poll I can find showed that "the socialist candidate would lose 41%-52% in a head-to-head battle against ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo and face a much tighter 45%-42% race if incumbent Mayor Eric Adams were his only opponent," the New York Post reported. Republican nominee and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa apparently didn't show well enough to bother asking about a one-on-one matchup against Mamdani.
"In a full slate, Mamdani was projected to run away with 42% of voters," the Post continued, and "In that scenario, Cuomo would only net 26%, while Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa would take 17%, Adams 9%."
"It's telling that Mamdani hasn't scrubbed his social media history," I wrote in a PJ Media column last month. "It's telling because he's telling New Yorkers exactly who he is — but in recent polling, he still wins a plurality of the vote in what amounts to a four-candidate race."
If Adams were to drop out, it would still be a three-candidate race, with Sliwa and Cuomo splitting the non-Communist vote.
Maybe Cuomo and Sliwa (and Adams, if he's staying in) should take Glenn Reynolds's advice and draw straws to see which one of the three of them stays in the race. Otherwise, it looks increasingly like New Yorkers have somehow saddled themselves with a choice between a 33-year-old red diaper baby and Granny Killer Cuomo — with the big edge going to the Commie.
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