What exactly is happening to Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City?

There have been endless resignations from his office, including the police chief, the schools chancellor, and Adams’s top legal advisor. There have been as many as five federal investigations into his administration and campaign. On Wednesday, it was announced that Adams had been indicted in a federal corruption investigation, the first mayor in modern New York City history to be charged with a crime while still in office. And on Thursday morning, federal agents raided the mayor’s home to seize more of his electronics.

The charges would be part of an FBI investigation into whether Adams’ campaign colluded with the Turkish government and various Turkish groups to funnel illegal foreign money into his candidacy. But that won’t be clear until the charges are made public.

The mayor has so far remained stubbornly optimistic about his innocence, releasing a (possibly pre-recorded) video statement Wednesday night that any charges that come out “will be completely false, based on lies.”

In other words, it’s not clear what exactly is on fire, or how much is burning, but there is enough smoke to fill Madison Square Garden.

Adams is still running in the Democratic primary, which will be held in June. But that could change at any moment. And it’s worth noting that he’s the most unpopular New York mayor in the history of Quinnipiac University polls, which go back to the 1990s. While mayors typically rest on their laurels to win reelection, Adams already has at least four Democratic challengers. Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor who resigned three years ago amid a sexual harassment scandal, is even considering a political comeback at Adams’s expense. And leading Democrats, including New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are already calling for him to resign.

But even if FBI agents weren’t targeting his administration, Adams would have a tough time. After all, this is a mayor known for making a lot of confusing statements, holding up strange objects at press conferences, and pursuing unpopular budget cuts while acting very strangely. He lacks, unlike his immediate predecessors, a signature policy achievement that would lift his spirits.

How did we get here? How did Adams, who won a mayoral election in 2021 and briefly looked like a new face for the Democratic Party—a former police captain and son of working-class blacks who called himself the “Biden of Brooklyn”—become the subject of so many federal investigations that he could become New York’s first one-term mayor since the early 1990s?

First, let’s take a look at what happens with these probes.

More will come soon about the federal investigation into Turkey. Agents last year seized electronic devices belonging to Adams and searched the homes of Adams’ top campaign fundraiser Brianna Suggs and Rana Abbasova, the director of protocol for the mayor’s Office of International Affairs, in connection with the case. Suggs is expected to be named in the indictment; Abbasova is said to be cooperating with federal authorities.

Separately, investigators for the Southern District of New York have reportedly been trying to determine whether James Caban, the twin brother of former police chief Edward Caban, profited from his family ties by acting as a consultant to nightclubs that had filed complaints against them and were seeking police help. That particular investigation has already forced the resignation of Edward Caban, who denies any wrongdoing. His tenure was the shortest of any NYPD commissioner in 30 years.

FBI raids also targeted three brothers, two of whom are powerful officials in the Adams administration: Schools Chancellor David Banks, Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Philip Banks, and Terence Banks, a former Metropolitan Transportation Authority employee who now runs Pearl Alliance, a consulting firm. The raids also targeted Sheena Wright, a close Adams ally and the first deputy mayor who lives with David Banks, and Tim Pearson, a scandal-ridden senior adviser to Adams. Reports now indicate that the investigation is focused on the way city contracts are awarded.

Adams brought in Pearson, a former NYPD lieutenant, to lead a new agency that oversees hundreds of migrant contracts and those with security companies. Federal investigators are investigating Saferwatch, a client of Terrence Banks. Saferwatch wanted to sell “panic button” apps for the city’s public schools that could be used in emergencies like fires and active shooters. They lobbied Terence’s brothers, David and Philip.

Meanwhile, the Eastern District of New York is investigating Adams’ travel to — and ties to — China. Agents in February raided the offices of a Queens mall that hosted Adams’ 2021 campaign activities and multiple homes belonging to Winnie Greco, a longtime Adams fundraiser and the director of Asian affairs at City Hall.

Finally news about a fifth investigation broke on September 19, when investigators served subpoenas on the monsignor of a Brooklyn church about possible affairs with Adams’ former chief of staff, an influential lawyer and consultant named Frank Carone. The scope or nature of that investigation is not yet clear, but it is separate from the other federal cases.

What does it mean all of this adding up? Well, for now it’s safe to say that no modern mayor of New York City has been investigated as much. And no one has ever been indicted. Adams’ predecessor, Bill de Blasio, faced his own corruption investigations, but they were fewer and no charges ever came. De Blasio was easily re-elected in 2017.

Adams won’t be going that route. So far, two Democratic senators, Zellnor Myrie and Jessica Ramos, have launched campaigns for 2025. Brad Lander, the current city controller, is also running, and he’s both popular on the progressive left and a leading candidate to unseat Adams. Scott Stringer, Lander’s predecessor, is making another run for mayor after his 2021 campaign imploded amid sexual harassment allegations he vigorously denied. The aforementioned Cuomo is coming up and could be a serious contender if he pulls the trigger. Other challengers could emerge.

Adams isn’t dead yet. But he does have a problem: New York has ranked-choice voting in its primaries. Voters can rank up to five candidates at the ballot box, and Adams barely survived in 2021. He finished well ahead on the first round of voting but nearly lost when the votes for second, third, fourth and fifth place were counted. Ranked-choice voting rewards candidates who are not polarizing and can building coalitions. Adams will find this difficult.

In 2021, voters worried about rising crime turned to the former police captain in a field of flawed Democratic candidates that included Andrew Yang, the storied former presidential candidate who was an early front-runner until various gaffes and missteps sent him plummeting in the polls. Adams faced criticism — it was revealed that he owned a New Jersey apartment and may have lived there while running for Brooklyn Borough President — but it came late in the race, after Yang had taken a beating, Stringer had weathered his scandal and other candidates had failed to consolidate votes.

In the end, Adams still managed to achieve a victory.

New York has had Republican mayors before, but the city’s Democratic lean makes a GOP triumph unlikely unless another billionaire like Michael Bloomberg enters the race and vastly outpaces the competition. The last mayor to lose reelection, David Dinkins, was defeated in a general election by Rudy Giuliani, but that was in 1993, when the city had a much more conservative white ethnic electorate. Adams, the city’s second black mayor, has tried to temper the challenges by touting Dinkins’ legacy — the Rev. Al Sharpton has warned against challenging Adams on those grounds, too — but so far none of the candidates are worried about the optics of running against a black mayor.

They say Adams is too vulnerable. If he stays in the race and runs in the primary next year, 2025 will have some clear echoes of 1977. That year, the beleaguered incumbent governor, Abe Beame, was struggling with the city’s financial crisis and was trying to secure a second term. He was deeply unpopular, and Democrats like Ed Koch, the eventual winner, jumped on him. The runner-up was future New York governor Mario Cuomo. Beame had no real chance. And now Mario’s son, Andrew, could run for mayor. New York has never been boring.