Bogus signatures of support for political campaigns ‘part of the business,’ Mayor Adams says

Mayor Eric Adams downplayed the discovery of forged and fraudulently obtained signatures on petitions his campaign submitted to get on the ballot for re-election, saying on Friday that “this is part of the business.”

Adams spoke hours after Gothamist published an investigation that raised questions about how signatures were collected in his effort to get enough support to run for re-election as an independent.

“Everyone that knows about petitioning is well aware that you even have some of your opponents who come and do tricks, you know, to try to sabotage your campaign. They would put dead people’s names on. They would do all of these tricks. Everyone knows that,” Adams said.

Gothamist’s investigation found the supposed signatures of at least three dead people on Adams’ petitions. More than 50 people said their signatures were forged or that they were misled into signing a petition they did not know was for Adams. The campaign said it’s now conducting a review of the nearly 50,000 signatures Adams gathered to run on either the “EndAntisemitism” or “Safe&Affordable” ballot lines.

Adams said his campaign intentionally gathered well in excess of the required 7,500 signatures to get on the ballot.

“You know that when you’re out on the street with volunteers. They sign the signatures, you know those things happen because of the number of volunteers you have,” Adams said.

“This is part of the business. That’s why you get more than enough.”

He suggested that an examination of other campaigns’ petitions would uncover similar issues.

“Go look at everyone. They always look at Eric,” Adams said.

Adams was the only candidate in the mayor’s race to hire an out-of-state firm for signature-gathering. The owner of one firm hired by the campaign, Trent Pool, was mentioned in a lawsuit last year after a subcontractor he hired was found to have folded petitions to mislead people into signing in support of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent presidential campaign.

One of Adams’ opponents in the upcoming general election, Democratic Party nominee Zohran Mamdani, emphasized that his campaign had relied on volunteers to gather signatures for the primary.

“We cannot ask ourselves why New Yorkers are losing faith in democracy when the very New Yorkers are being shown forgeries of their own signatures in an attempt to get the mayor back on the ballot. It is a betrayal of trust and an example of the very kind of politics that New Yorkers are eager to move beyond,” Mamdani said Friday.

Representatives for fellow independent candidates Jim Walden and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo as well as GOP nominee Curtis Sliwa all declined comment.