The city’s largest public employees union has endorsed City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams for mayor — giving her late-entry primary campaign a significant boost.
The support of District Council 37’s more than 150,000 members and 89,000 retirees breaks the trend of other labor heavy hitters who’ve mostly backed former governor Andrew Cuomo.
It’s also a significant blow to Mayor Eric Adams, whose endorsement from the union proved crucial to his success in the 2021 race, and which he rewarded by agreeing to what DC 37 leadership has described as a strong collective bargaining agreement two years later.
The union made its Democratic primary endorsement official in a press conference on Wednesday alongside New York Attorney General Letitia James, CWA Local 1180, which represents communications professionals, and UNITE HERE Local 100, which covers the food-service industry. The three unions jointly represent more than a quarter-million active workers and retirees.
The endorsements from James and the union are not a surprise: Both the AG and DC 37 had reportedly urged Speaker Adams behind closed doors to throw herself into the mayoral primary as a foe to Cuomo.
James even reportedly helped lead a chant of “Run, Adrienne, run!” during a Black and Latino Caucus event in Albany in February.
In remarks delivered at DC 37’s Lower Manhattan headquarters on Wednesday, leaders from the three unions described the Council speaker as a scandal-free pragmatist who would stand up for women, immigrants and workers. And Henry Garrido, DC 37’s executive director, said the incumbent mayor had lost his members’ trust in light of his corruption scandal.
“You do have to give credit where credit is due,” Garrido said of Eric Adams. “He gave us compressed schedules, he did remote work, all of that is true. But we can’t ignore the situation that he’s in, and we have the opportunity to elect the next mayor who also supports those principles, but doesn’t have the issues that we know and we have seen with the current incumbent and the Trump administration.”
And DC 37 for the first time endorsed a ranked choice slate that also includes state lawmakers Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani (D-Queens) in second place and State Sen. Zellnor Myrie (D-Brooklyn) in third. Neither appeared at the Lower Manhattan announcement.
Wednesday’s event was all about Speaker Adams, who Garrido described as someone “who has been there for us, not in words but in deeds.”
The attorney general more forcefully made her case for her, saying that as “every aspect of our life is under attack,” it is the speaker who can “protect the rule of law and our democracy.”
“She knows what’s at risk. Everything, my friends, is at risk,” said James.
Union endorsements are highly coveted by political campaigns because of their ability to reach large swaths of voters — by speaking directly to their membership and by providing an army of volunteers to push people to the polls — and because of their considerable financial resources.
Public sector unions have even more at stake in the election, because they will have to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement with whomever occupies City Hall next year.
Garrido’s remarks about the incumbent mayor reflected the conflicting emotions rank and file members and union leaders had privately shared in recent weeks: that they felt indebted to Eric Adams because he’d helped deliver a strong contract, but felt that ultimately his legal woes were impossible to ignore.
Union members had previously told THE CITY they believed he should resign, and the mayor — a no-show — was the laughingstock of the union’s candidates’ forum in February.
New York State Attorney General Letitia James, flanked by CWA Local 1180 President Gloria Middleton, endorses Speaker Adrienne Adams for mayor, April 23, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Meanwhile there is no love lost between the three unions and Cuomo, who was slammed for his role in creating the controversial pension reform known as Tier 6, which slashed benefits for new hires and increased the retirement age for public employees.
“Tier 6 sucks!” shouted a CWA Local 1180 member on one of the occasions the subject came up at Wednesday’s endorsement announcement.
And Speaker Adams, addressing union members at the event, repeatedly slammed the governor for what she described as his failed leadership during the pandemic.
“You know about this person who is trying to reinvent himself, is trying to walk through and masquerade as something else other than the one we saw him for — because we lived it,” she said. “We lived under the thumb, not of the Superman of COVID, but the one who kept PPE and life-saving vaccines away from communities of color.”
“Y’all better tell that story,” she added.
The Democratic primary on June 24 is currently seemingly a two-way race between Cuomo and Mamdani, who are both leading in the polls and in fundraising for now; but Cuomo still holds a double-digit lead over Mamdani in the most recent polls, 45% to 22%. However, much could change in the remaining weeks of the campaign.
The endorsement from the three unions gives the speaker a considerable boost and elevates a campaign that is currently polling at 4%.
So far Cuomo’s been the choice of labor, landing endorsements from major unions like 32BJ SEIU, the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, IBEW Local 3, and the New York District Council of Carpenters. The former governor was also recently endorsed by two DC 37 locals representing EMS workers, in a break from central leadership.
Garrido did not directly respond to questions about whether or not his union would endorse Cuomo should he win the Democratic primary.
“If the governor gets elected, then we’ll deal with him. But until then, we’re going to elect Adrienne Adams as mayor of New York City.”
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