NYC Mayor Adams backs Max Rose in tight Staten congressional race against Rep. Nicole Malliotakis

Mayor Adams endorsed fellow Democrat Max Rose on Friday in Rose’s bid to represent Staten Island and part of southern Brooklyn in Congress.

Rose is challenging Republican incumbent Rep. Nicole Malliotakis to represent the 11th congressional district, which covers Brooklyn neighborhoods Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst, and all of Staten Island.

“I’m going to endorse Max,” Adams said Friday morning during an unrelated City Hall press conference. The mayor did not elaborate more than that on the decision.

Rose, who represented the district before being unseated by Malliotakis in 2020, is viewed as an underdog in the race and is trailing his GOP rival by 6%, according to a poll conducted by Sienna College that was released Thursday.

In their first contest in 2020, Rose lost to Malliotakis by 6 percentage points.

In a written statement Rose put out after Adams revealed his support, the Democrat pointed to Adams’ focus on public safety as a key upside to receiving Hizzoner’s nod. Malliotakis has focused much of her campaign on public safety and inflation.

“I am honored to have the mayor’s endorsement. Mayor Adams’ number one priority is to make NYC safe and affordable again,” Rose said. “We share that commitment and I look forward to working with him to make it a reality.”

Malliotakis has honed in on spiking crime stats and kitchen table economics as reasons to keep her in office. In recent remarks, she contended that the district’s voters are most worried about “skyrocketing inflation, high gas prices and out-of-control crime” and she blamed Democrats for all of it.

“I will fight to reverse their damage,” she said. “Max Rose will just help them make things worse.”

Meanwhile, Rose, a 35-year old combat veteran, has focused much of his attention on her stance — and silence — on abortion.

Malliotakis, who is 41 and served in the state Assembly before joining Congress, has been reticent on the issue since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade earlier this year. Rose has accused her in campaign literature of failing to own up to her “extreme abortion record.”

“No matter how much she lies and hides, Nicole can’t escape the simple fact that she’s an anti-abortion extremist who voted to let states ban abortion even in the case of rape, incest and when the mother’s life is at risk,” he said in a recent statement. “That’s her record.”