NEW YORK — When Eric Adams was elected mayor of New York in 2021, the former police captain pledged to combat crime and lead the nation’s largest city out of the devastation of the pandemic.

Three years later, he has steered the city into an unprecedented corruption scandal that not only threatens his own political future, but also could reverberate in November’s election.

The indictment unsealed Thursday makes Adams, 64, the first mayor of New York to face criminal charges. Prosecutors accuse Adams of seeking illegal campaign contributions and abusing his power as mayor in return for donations.

The allegations mark a stunning blow for a politician who rose from humble roots in Brooklyn to achieve a goal he sought for decades — and, in the process, became only the second Black man to serve as New York’s mayor.

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Adams (D) has denied any wrongdoing and called the charges against him “entirely false.” At a news conference Thursday, he asked New Yorkers to “hear our defense before making any judgments” and pledged to carry on with his work.

“I’m the mayor of the city of New York,” he said. “My day-to-day will not change. I will continue to do the job for 8.3 million New Yorkers that I was elected to do.”

The accusations form one of several investigations underway involving members of the Adams administration. In recent weeks, the city’s top lawyer, the police commissioner, the chancellor of New York’s public schools and the health commissioner have resigned or announced their departures.

The chaos now engulfing City Hall stands in stark contrast to when Adams took office in early 2022, promising to restore the city’s swagger and offering a model of centrist Democratic politics focused on law and order that he urged others in the party to follow. He has called himself the “Biden of Brooklyn.”

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While Adams has achieved one of his primary goals — homicides and major crimes are down in New York — his popularity has plummeted. He clashed with left-leaning Democrats over police tactics and changes to bail laws. An influx of migrants overwhelmed shelters and ballooned the city’s budget. At the same time, Adams’s personnel choices raised alarm bells: He appointed a longtime friend as the deputy mayor for public safety and his building commissioner was later charged with bribery.

But the news of Adams’s indictment sent a shock wave through New York politics.

“This is a sad day for New York,” said city council member Shekar Krishnan, who represents a district in Queens and is one of a chorus of Democrats calling on Adams to resign. “I do not think he can effectively lead this city.”

Even before this week’s bombshell, Adams was facing a bruising primary fight on his path to reelection next year, with several Democratic challengers lining up to try to unseat him. Now there are signs that the steadfast support that Adams enjoyed from the Black community may be cracking as well.

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The Rev. Al Sharpton, who baptized Adams earlier this year, did not appear alongside other Black clergy with the mayor at a news conference Thursday and told the New York Times that he hadn’t decided whether to continue to support him. “It’s not going to be an easy decision, and everybody may not be happy,” Sharpton said.

In his first campaign for mayor, Adams made use of his compelling biography. Adams was born in Brooklyn and his mother worked as a housekeeper. The family was so poor, Adams said, that he regularly brought a bag of clothes to school in case they were suddenly evicted. He struggled with a learning disorder. At age 15, he was beaten in police custody, an event that he said sparked a desire to change the system from within.

Adams spent more than 20 years with the New York City Transit Police and the New York Police Department, rising to the rank of captain. Then he set his sights on politics: He was elected to the state Senate and went on to become Brooklyn’s first Black borough president before launching his bid for mayor.

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Adams presented his own journey as inspiration and encouragement for New Yorkers, often repeating what became a refrain: “Dyslexic, arrested, rejected. Now, I'm elected.”

As he ascended the rungs of New York politics, Adams retained a chameleon-like quality that made his politics hard to pin down. Meanwhile, his unorthodox behavior and penchant for telling stories that could not always be corroborated sometimes raised eyebrows. He also had several prior run-ins with investigators, who examined his role in the awarding of a casino contract in Queens as a state senator and a potential conflict of interest in a nonprofit he founded as borough president. No charges were filed in either instance.

In 2021, Adams launched his run for mayor, a job he had been eyeing since the 1990s. He bucked calls from activists to “defund the police” and pledged to reduce crime with more policing, not less. That platform helped cement a sprawling coalition that brought together Black voters in Brooklyn and Queens and more-conservative voters in Staten Island. Adams emerged with a narrow victory in the Democratic primary that often serves as the de facto mayoral contest in this heavily blue city.

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As mayor, he continued to cut a curious profile. He shuttled between Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence, an apartment in Brooklyn and his partner’s place in New Jersey. He was an evangelist for a plant-based diet but sometimes cheated. He had an outer-borough political base yet regularly frequented exclusive clubs in Manhattan. He supported LGBTQ+ rights but hired three people at City Hall who didn’t.

“Many Black Americans have a friend or relative like Eric Adams,” Christina Greer, a political science professor at Fordham University, wrote in a New York Times op-ed a month after Adams took office. “... He is offering a new model for how Black leadership can operate in a predominantly white political system — leadership that is simultaneously progressive, moderate and conservative.”

Adams’s tenure as mayor has been marked by a crisis he did not foresee: the influx of more than 200,000 migrants traveling from states such as Texas, some of them drawn by New York’s unique right-to-shelter provisions. Adams publicly criticized the White House, and Republicans seized on the remarks. President Joe Biden has not spoken substantively to Adams in nearly two years, Politico reported.

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The first signs that Adams could face legal troubles emerged late last year, when federal agents raided the home of a campaign aide and briefly seized the mayor’s electronic devices.

Political observers struggled to find a parallel in recent times for the situation Adams faces. In the 1980s, New York Mayor Ed Koch’s bid for reelection was derailed by a corruption scandal involving members of his administration. But Koch himself was never charged, making it a weak comparison, said Jerry Skurnik, a political consultant who worked in the Koch administration. It’s like “comparing World War II to the fighting in Grenada,” he said.

Despite the current turmoil, Adams — for now — appears to still have the backing of some of the city’s Black elected officials, said Chris Coffey, a Democratic strategist. “That wall of support” appeared in place for now, Coffey said.

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David Paterson, the former governor of New York and a longtime friend of Adams, said he believes that Adams can continue to function effectively as mayor but cautioned that he knows from personal experience how difficult it is to be under federal investigation. (Paterson was not charged with any crime during a 2010 probe.)

“It took a toll on me, physically and even emotionally,” said Paterson (D), who was New York’s first Black governor. “You don’t want to be channeling rage … you want to stay calm and just say, ‘Look, I understand that these prosecutors have to do their job.’”

Black New Yorkers have a “healthy and appropriate skepticism of law enforcement and the media,” added Basil Smikle, a former director of the New York State Democratic Party. Still, Smikle said he wasn’t sure Adams would be able to resist the pressure to resign.

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“I think he can make it through the end of the year while everyone’s paying attention” to the presidential election, Smikle said. Beyond that point, however, he didn’t know.

Several of the officials who are expected to challenge Adams in the Democratic primary called on Adams to resign, including Zellnor Myrie, a Black state senator from Brooklyn.

At a time when New Yorkers can’t afford housing or child care, “we need a leader that is solely focused on solving these problems,” Myrie said. “Instead, we have a mayor that is under the weight of a federal indictment.” Myrie said the situation was particularly distressing for Black New Yorkers “who put their faith and confidence in the second Black mayor in the city’s history.”

Others echoed that sentiment. There is a long and proud legacy of Black political power in New York, said Michael Blake, a former member of the state Assembly from the Bronx who served as vice chair of the Democratic National Committee. “We will not be having the demonstration of how to run with ethics and class based upon Eric Adams,” Blake said.

Several Democratic members of Congress from New York also called on Adams to resign, together with two Democratic candidates for Congress who are locked in competitive races with Republicans in their districts.

There were also powerful exceptions. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement that the “charges are serious, and the legal process should now play out speedily and fairly.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) called it a “serious and sober moment” and said a jury would ultimately render a verdict.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), who has the statutory power to remove Adams from office, told reporters Thursday that she was reviewing the charges.

Adams’s future will now play out in the court of public opinion or in front of a jury. The New York City Charter, which sets out the procedures for what happens when a mayor resigns or is disabled, does not address the situation in which New York finds itself, where a sitting mayor is criminally indicted, Susan Lerner, head of Common Cause New York, a civic advocacy group, said in a statement.

“We are in uncharted waters,” Lerner said.

Paybarah reported from Washington and Slater from Williamstown, Mass. Maegan Vazquez in Washington contributed to this report.