Mayor Eric Adams did the right thing, and a very hard thing, in dropping his re-election bid Sunday; we expect he’ll devote his final months in office to some crucial final services to the public as New York City’s chief executive.

With competing in November off the table, he’s liberated to do what he’s always done best: Stand up as the voice of principled, moderate Democrats — a true progressive who can call out the destructive extremism of the frontrunner, Zohran Mamdani.

Adams will go down in history as a far better mayor than his recent poll ratings suggest: He took over with the city still in lockdown, and led us out of COVID and back into economic growth — then got hit with a migrant crisis made in Washington.

Made by a national administration that saw him as uppity for calling out the madness, and moved to destroy him because of it.

Yes, he left himself vulnerable to that lawfare, with unwise choices of top staff and advisers; it took him years too long to build the strong team he should’ve had on Day One.

Yet he still managed vital changes — new housing policies that will pay off for a generation or more; a crucial reorientation of city reading instruction toward proven methods; a necessary shift to confronting serious mental illness rather than enabling it; restoring the NYPD’s emphasis on neighborhood safety first.

Last month saw the fewest city shootings since modern records began in 1993, continuing a months-long trend with six of the seven major felony categories seeing marked declines this year.

The NYPD has undone the COVID era crime spike and continued to make further progress — despite being handicapped by the no-bail law and other demented state “reforms” as well as crime-coddling judges and prosecutors.

New York Post Editorial Board