Mayor Eric Adams is throwing jabs in the already crowded field for the Democratic primary — but is focusing on a candidate who hasn’t even entered the race: Andrew Cuomo.

“People who are running — they’re going to have to take claim for the stuff that they did when they were holding office,” Adams told Politico in a sitdown interview published Monday.

“Who was there for the original bail reform? Who signed some of these procedures? You’re going to have to answer these questions,” he said, when asked how he would run against the former governor.

Adams told the outlet that he plans to informally kick off his re-election campaign, which has yet to even launch a website, by going on the offensive — and targeting the controversial bail reform signed into law by Cuomo in 2019.

The three-term Democratic governor — who resigned in August 2021 in the face of sexual misconduct claims, which he denies — has long been rumored to be eyeing a political comeback.

Sources have said he could attempt a return to political life by challenging Adams for the Democratic nomination in June, seeing a path to City Hall as Hizzoner fends off a number of corruption probes, low poll numbers and a historic indictment.

Surprising recent polling shows the fallen ex-governor comfortably edging out the mayor in a head-to-head Democratic primary race for City Hall in 2025, with 44% of Democrats surveyed favoring Cuomo to just 24% for Adams. 

In the American Pulse & Research Polling poll, Cuomo also led Adams among all racial groups and women particularly.

Sources have said Cuomo has been uninterested in challenging Adams but would step in if he was forced from office or resigned.

The former governor has been working behind the scenes with his supporters to lobby business interests and try to gain favor in the black and Jewish communities. But so far, Cuomo has yet to join the race, with political pundits saying week after week it could happen any day.

Those in Adams’ camp, though, appear to fear a Cuomo challenge, with the campaign drumming up plans to attack the former gov, despite more than half a dozen challengers already having announced a run in the primary, including city Comptroller Brad Lander, former city Comptroller Scott Stringer, state Sens. Jessica Ramos and Zelnor Myrie and state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani.

“This is all premature,” Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi responded to Adams’ remarks in a statement to Politico.

“But it’s worth noting that in 2023, Mayor Adams dismissed the bail reform debate as a ‘bumper sticker’ slogan, and endorsed Kathy Hochul’s bail reform package,” he said. “Every campaign is an assessment of a candidate’s ability to manage and to match their rhetoric with their performance to improve the lives of New Yorkers and prove they can get things done.”

Adams told reporters at One Police Plaza during a crime stats briefing that he wasn’t blaming bail reform for the city’s troubling recidivism rates, but declined to elaborate on any specific plans his office has to battle the surge in repeat offenders.

“I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize negotiations,” the mayor said, noting that he’s proposed changes during the legislative session in the last two years. However, none of those proposals have ever been made public.

Adams has taken persistent criticism from voters concerned about his administration’s handling of crime in the city — which kicked into overdrive after a horrific killing on an F train last month where a 57-year-old homeless woman was burned alive, allegedly by an illegal Guatemalan immigrant.

In an unrelated press conference Monday, Gov. Kathy Hochul, who also finds herself on the backfoot headed into the new legislative session in Albany, boasted about the changes to bail laws she helped pass, including one that requires judges to consider how likely a violent offender is to reoffend before granting bail.

“The hate crimes, a lot of gun crimes, were not covered. Judges were limited to only considering the least restrictive means on whether someone is going to hold someone … I took that right out, that made no sense,” she told reporters.

“I put in all kinds of criteria for a judge to have to consider, which basically amounts to dangerousness.”