In a typical New York City election year, the mayoral race is effectively over by the June primary — when the Democratic nominee is chosen, essentially anointing the mayor-elect in this deep blue city.
But 2025 is hardly a typical political season.
Mayor Eric Adams, once a registered Republican, has hinted at switching parties for his reelection while aligning himself with President-elect Donald Trump. And a big name in New York politics, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, is making moves to join the race, but is mum on how or when.
There are a lot of unknowns heading into 2025, but we know this for sure: The roadmap for when candidates must legally get on the ballot, and how they can jump into the race as an independent or with a third party.
Here are the options for candidates looking to join the fray, and when they have to decide:
Option one: Running in the June primary with a party
Deadline: Early April
Right now, Comptroller Brad Lander, former Comptroller Scott Stringer, State senators Zellnor Myrie and Jessica Ramos and Assemblymembers Michael Blake and Zohran Mamdani are among candidates who have declared that they are running for mayor in 2025, and many have publicly registered fundraising efforts to do so.
But no one is officially in the running for the June 24 primary until the city Board of Elections certifies the primary ballot in early May.
Before that happens, between February 25 and April 3, candidates have to gather signatures from voters in order to qualify for the June ballot line. This is a tough process known as petitioning in which campaign staffers and volunteers hit the streets to collect enough signatures to meet the threshold to get on the ballot.
Election attorney Sarah Steiner says city rules mandate mayoral candidates have 3,750 signatures, and state rules say 7,500 — and though it’s pretty likely the smaller number would stand up in court, she always opts for the bigger figure.
“ I always tell my clients to go by the state numbers, to be safe,” she said.
If Adams or Cuomo run with a major party, they’ll have to petition to get on the ballot like everyone else — and we’ll know if they successfully got on the ballot by early May.
In New York, there are only four parties with ballot lines: the Democrats, Republicans, Working Families Party and Conservative Party (more on those last two below).
The vast majority of races in New York are run via this standard pathway: petitioning, winning a spot on the ballot with one of the four ballot line parties, running in the primary and — if successful — going on to run in the November election.
Option two: Running as an independent
Deadline: Late May
If any candidate wants to skip the primary altogether and throw their hat in the ring as an independent — as former Mayor Michael Bloomberg did in 2009 — they still have to petition to get on the November ballot.
The independent petitioning process happens between April 15 and May 27, according to the state political calendar. Since those dates fall before the June primary, any independent candidate who is going that route will not yet know the result of the primary election before they must move forward with getting on the ballot.
That means that if Cuomo (or anyone) takes the independent route, they can’t wait until after the June primary to jump in the race as an independent. They’ll have to petition before knowing who comes out on top in June.
Hypothetically, someone like Cuomo could also petition to get on the ballot as both a candidate in the June primary and as an independent candidate for November — so if he lost in the June primary, he’d still have another bite at the apple for the general election.
Running as an independent means creating your own party-like group for the ballot, said Jerry Goldfeder, veteran election attorney and director of the Fordham Law School’s Voting Rights and Democracy Project.
“ When you petition independently, you make up a name like the ‘Safe City Party,’ or the ‘No New Taxes Party,’ or whatever. And you run as an independent,” he said. “That’s not a political party, it’s an independent entity — small ‘i.’”
In the last mayoral election in 2021, a handful of candidates ran this way, including entrepreneur Fernando Mateo with the Save Our City Party and surgeon Raja Flores with the Humanity United Party. They won 1,870 and 2,387 votes respectively in the November election that year.
Option three: Switching parties, or Wilson-Pakula rules
Deadline: Feb. 14, or April
Let’s say Mayor Adams wanted to run on the Republican Party line in the June primary, but right now he’s a registered Democrat. How could he do that?
The simplest way is to switch parties by February 14, which is the deadline by which any voters needs to switch their party before the June primary this year. (Want to switch parties before that deadline? Here’s how.)
But he wouldn’t legally need to do that to run as a Republican — because a candidate doesn’t necessarily need to be a member of the party to run on their ballot line. That’s because of the obscure Wilson-Pakula rule that authorizes a candidate to run with a party different from their own.
To get permission under Wilson-Pikula, all five leaders of the involved county parties in New York City (one from each borough) have to give their blessing. If they all agree, the candidate can run with a different party than their own, e.g. a Republican running on the Democratic line.
This hasn’t happened since 2009 when then-Mayor Bloomberg ran as a Republican when he was registered as an independent.
Whether the local GOP leaders would ever embrace the reelection-seeking Adams with a Wilson-Pakula authorization remains to be seen.
“ I don’t pretend to know what the thinking of the political party leaders in the Republican Party are, but they may decide that it’s a benefit to them,” said Goldfeder.
Weighed in Steiner: “It’s a longshot.”
Even if a candidate got a Wilson-Pikula authorization to run, they would still need to petition to get on that ballot line the same as any other candidate would — which means following the same deadline for gathering signatures between February and April.
Option four: Running with a third party in November
Deadline: Between Primary Day and mid-September
There are two other parties in New York with a ballot line besides the Democrats and Republicans: the Working Families Party and Conservative Party. (Other former third parties in New York, including the Liberal and Independence parties, have since lost their ballot-line status.)
In rare instances, if its primary is not contested, the Working Families Party has in the past put a placeholder candidate on its line for a primary, then moved that person off the line afterwards. That’s what happened in the 2013 mayoral race, when a WFP loyalist stood in as a placeholder during the primary, then ran for a Supreme Court justice position, which disqualified him for the mayoral race. At that point, then-Public Advocate Bill de Blasio took his position on the ballot line for November, in addition to running as a Democrat.
That’s allowed because New York allows fusion voting, which means that one candidate can run across multiple party lines.
This hypothetical switcheroo would happen after the June primary, but before the certification of the November ballot, which according to the state political calendar takes place on Sept. 11.
Experts said any mayoral candidate trying a run on one of the minor party lines would have to have the full backing and support of the WFP, or Conservative Party, likely months before the switch happened
At least for Cuomo, his past warfare to disarm the progressive third party means that particular option for him is a non-starter, said Steiner.
“ The idea that the Working Families Party is going to put Cuomo on their ballot line is laughable,” she said.
