The strange tale of Eric Adams’ largest reelection campaign contract

NEW YORK — A month before he pulled the plug on his doomed reelection bid, former New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ campaign paid a virtually unknown Texas company $500,000 for “digital consulting.”

The contract, it turns out, was supposed to be even larger. It involved a menu of services, including video production, help securing endorsements and a digital get-out-the-vote plan focused on absentee voters in Florida — an idea that even Adams’ 2025 campaign manager, Eugene Noh, described as “a little wacky.”

“It’s difficult to say if this would have been just a bullshit bill of goods, or if some crappy or good version of this would’ve happened,” Noh told POLITICO earlier this week, noting that most of the company’s services never came to fruition since Adams ended his campaign a few weeks after the contract was signed.

Despite the short-lived nature of the deal with Fairfax Digital LLC, Adams’ campaign paid the company two installments of $250,000 that amounted to the largest political expenditures the former mayor issued during his time in City Hall, public records show.

Prior to the Adams gig, Fairfax had no record of political consulting, but it was initially in line to net $1 million as part of the contract signed on Aug. 8, 2025, according to a copy of the deal obtained by POLITICO through a Freedom of Information Law request.

In exchange for the hefty payoff, the Wichita Falls, Texas-based firm would develop an “omnichannel digital strategy” for Adams to flood social media and other platforms with content highlighting the former mayor’s “achievements, which have been woefully ignored and neglected in the press,” the paperwork says.

Spearheading the well-heeled operation were Jordan McGraw, the musician son of conservative television personality Dr. Phil, and Hank Fortener, a music industry manager who represents the Jonas Brothers, the records show.

McGraw’s role in the entity was first reported by NBC4</u>","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/exclusive-transparency-questions-about-adams-campaign-spending/6445332/","_id":"0000019e-7392-dc36-a1fe-77fe4eb00007","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"0000019e-7392-dc36-a1fe-77fe4eb00008","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>first reported by NBC4 in January. But the specifics about Fairfax’s promised services as well as the involvement of Fortener have not been previously reported. Neither McGraw nor Fortener — who signed the Adams campaign contract identifying himself as Fairfax’s “manager” — appear to have had any prior political experience before hooking up with Adams. McGraw and Fortener did not return multiple requests for comment.

Trip Yang, a longtime Democratic strategist who has worked on several campaigns in New York, said he has never before heard of a vendor being paid that handsomely for a job of that nature.

“If something feels off in this industry, it almost always is, and this feels off,” Yang said. “In no universe should you ever pay a firm $500,000 or $1 million for this type of work on this short of a timeline. That does not pass the smell test at all.”

Why exactly Adams’ campaign committed to paying Fairfax so much money within that timeframe remains unclear. It’s also not entirely clear how his political operation was first connected to McGraw and Fortener or why it turned to them for campaign help despite their apparent lack of experience.

The revelations about Fairfax come on the heels of a litany of scandals that consumed Adams’ mayoralty and continue to dog him. Just last month, the government watchdog Citizens Union called on the Manhattan district attorney’s office</u>","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/20/nyregion/adams-bragg-corruption-prosecute.html","_id":"0000019e-7392-dc36-a1fe-77fe4eb00009","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"0000019e-7392-dc36-a1fe-77fe4eb0000a","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>called on the Manhattan district attorney’s office to prosecute Adams based on the corruption charges federal authorities brought in 2024 before they scuttled their own case at the behest of President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice.

One of the most immediately pressing challenges for Adams is the fact that he remains nearly $4.5 million in debt from the federal investigation he faced while in office. Public filings show his legal defense trust — the vehicle he has used to defray legal costs connected to the probe — hasn’t received a single donation since December 2024. At some point, he will likely need to fundraise for the trust to resolve his debts.

While he was still running for reelection, Adams raised money for his campaign from influencers supportive of Trump. McGraw’s TV celebrity father is also known to be close with allies of the president, including Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s “border czar.”

A spokesperson for Adams, who ended his bid for a second term on Sept. 28, 2025, didn’t answer detailed questions about the Fairfax contract. But when asked why Adams’ campaign paid Fairfax such an unusually large sum, the spokesperson, Todd Shapiro, noted the former mayor prioritized spending on digital consultants for his 2025 campaign over television ads.

“We spent millions on TV the last time,” Shapiro said of Adams’ successful 2021 mayoral campaign. “We made the decision we won’t do that this campaign so we actually scaled down our media outreach budget.”

While much of Fairfax’s planned work for Team Adams never happened, McGraw and Fortener came to them with big projects in mind, the paperwork obtained by POLITICO shows.

According to the contract, they were prepared to deploy an army of as many as 200 employees working on various Adams-boosting initiatives.

They intended to secure “influencer and celebrity collaborations and endorsements” and embark on several unconventional digital get-out-the-vote efforts — including an initiative called “Focus on Florida” aimed at convincing voters residing part-time in the Sunshine State to return to New York to cast ballots for Adams, the records show.

They would build a “Brand Bible” for Adams that would be a “real world campaign pillar” for the mayor’s communications strategy and deploy a videographer to “shadow the mayor making sure we have an accurate representation of the mayor and can deliver as much relatable content as possible.”

There would even be a cybersecurity expert tasked with monitoring Adams’ social media accounts “to ensure we are not being targeted by people trying to gain access to post damaging counter-content,” according to the contract terms.

Despite all the lofty talk, Noh, the former Adams campaign manager, acknowledged McGraw and Fortener’s work was limited.

“They were doing a lot of the social media work and digital work. That’s pretty much all they did,” he said.

Noh said he did not know how Fortener and McGraw came into the Adams fold. He described Fortener as “the operator” of the company “who did all the things while Jordan was acting more like the owner.”

“Perhaps the campaign overpaid for that, but it wasn’t my call to bring them on,” Noh said. “I definitely would have wanted to do it in-house and cheaper.”

At the same time as he was working on the Fairfax project, McGraw was shooting a documentary about the NYPD under Adams as part of a city government contract.

The documentary, entitled “Behind the Badge,” became the subject of legal dispute as Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration filed a lawsuit in January to block its release on the grounds that the faces of undercover police officers were visible in several clips. The footage, if released, would pose “an imminent threat” to the officers’ lives and safety, the lawsuit said.

In late March, the suit was settled after McGraw agreed to provide “rough cuts” of all the episodes to the NYPD — footage the department would be able to edit for security purposes.

While the settlement cleared the way for the documentary to air, McGraw has yet to announce a release date. Originally, it was expected to air</u>","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/21/nyregion/new-york-city-police-reality-show-dr-phil.html","_id":"0000019e-7392-dc36-a1fe-77fe4eb10000","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"0000019e-7392-dc36-a1fe-77fe4eb10001","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>expected to air via MeritTV, Dr. Phil’s production company. MeritTV, however, filed for bankruptcy last summer.

المصدر: Politico