Mayor Eric Adams is entering his third year in office, although he says it feels longer than that.
“I know it’s hard to believe because being mayor is like dog years: every day is a multiple number of years,” he said at a recent town hall in Corona, Queens, as he rattled off his administration’s highlights.
The list included projects to build more housing, private sector job growth, and a reduction in three major crime categories over the last two years — homicides, shootings and rapes — although overall crime is up since Adams took office.
But Adams has also been hounded by a number of issues, like corruption probes into his 2021 campaign, and a continued asylum-seeker crisis that he has blamed for a widening budget gap.
That deficit has forced him to slash spending at every city agency, with more cuts expected in January.
The asylum seeker crisis — with more than 120,000 people arriving in the city over the last year and a half — has been the year’s low point, Adams said in a recent television interview. The cost of providing temporary shelter and other relief services to the new influx “really put a bump in the road of our recovery effort in the city,” he said on WPIX-11.
The Adams administration is still in a court battle over the decades-old right to shelter law, which they argue shouldn’t apply to the surge of newcomers — while many migrants have been sleeping on sidewalks and cots all over the city.
“New York is a very hard city to manage and I think people hopefully will know that,” Keith Wright, the head of the Manhattan Democratic party who has known the mayor for around 40 years, told THE CITY.
“He’s an absolute expert on how to compartmentalize. He won’t let whatever person or other kinds of distractions stop him from doing his job.”
Friends in Low Places
The mayor’s ability to compartmentalize has been tested this year.
In July, six men — including a friend and former NYPD officer with the mayor — were indicted over an alleged straw donor scheme to donate money and gain influence with Adams.
A month later, THE CITY highlighted a cluster of apparent straw donations centered around a supermarket in Flushing, Queens.
In September, Adams’ buildings commissioner and longtime political ally Eric Ulrich was indicted on bribery charges by the Manhattan district attorney.
Then, on Nov. 2, the FBI raided the Brooklyn home of the Adams campaign’s top fundraiser, Brianna Suggs, causing the mayor to abruptly cancel meetings in Washington to talk about funding for the migrant crisis: His plane took off to return to New York almost as soon as it landed in D.C.
Days later, the FBI seized the mayor’s phones following an event at NYU as federal investigators probe alleged links from the government of Turkey to his 2021 campaign.
THE CITY has reported on fundraisers and possible help Adams gave to Turkish nationals to expedite a building opening, although Adams has not been accused of any wrongdoing, and no one from his campaign has been charged with any crime. But the aura of potential corruption, on top of other issues, has hurt him among New Yorkers — as potential challengers are beginning to circle their wagons.
Earlier this month, a Quinnipiac University poll pinned Adams with the lowest approval rating — 28% — of any mayor since they started asking in 1996.
Voters were concerned about crime, public schools, homelessness, and the city’s budget cuts, and 54% said they didn’t find Adams to be honest and trustworthy.
Most polled New Yorkers, or 62%, agreed with the mayor’s frequent statement that the migrants could destroy the city, and Adams has used the poll to continue to direct his anger towards Washington, D.C.
“Everyone is angry right now, I’m angry — that’s why I’m going down to DC,” Adams told THE CITY earlier this month, before flying to the nation’s capital.
Those budget cuts have had polling and legal consequences.
Two of the city’s top unions, both of which endorsed Adams’ 2021 run — District Council 37 and the United Federation of Teachers, sued the city this month over the budget cuts, putting damper on a year of labor wins for the administration as Adams settled nearly all of the city’s labor contracts.
The mayor said last week that he understood why the labor organizations sued, noting, “from time to time friends disagree. And sometimes it ends up in a boardroom and sometimes it ends up in a courtroom.”
Potential challengers for a June 2025 primary have seized on his bad headlines, although most are taking a “wait and see” approach on Adams’ political future..
“Somebody should, maybe it’ll be me,” Queens State Sen. Jessica Ramos told THE CITY last month when asked about running for mayor. And City Councilmember Diana Ayala, who represents parts of The Bronx and upper Manhattan, said “Why not?”
Accentuate the Positive
Last year, Adams gave himself “a solid B+” on his first year in office, after being elected on a platform focused primarily on public safety and the city’s bounce-back from the pandemic. That message has continued to resonate with many New Yorkers, in spite of recent polling.
At the recent town hall in Corona, the bulk of the questions were core to the mayor’s biggest issues, particularly crime. It was his 20th such event, where he brought his top officials, from deputy mayors to commissioners, to hear from residents.
Gaston Cortez, the vice president of the Corona Plaza Street Vendors Association, thanked the mayor for his help with returning vendors to the plaza but also asked for more marketplaces or vendor spots.
Adams struck a balance, saying he wanted to help but didn’t want to hurt brick-and-mortar shops, and connected Cortez with a Department of Transportation official.
After the town hall, people lined up to take photos with the mayor, including Vince Laucella, who was grateful the mayor came to his neighborhood. He said all New Yorkers could find some common ground to help Adams, and the city, succeed.
“We can’t play into the division that the politicians are playing, we need to come together,” he said.
But budget cuts could continue to lower his popularity, and threaten his role as the working-class mayor. November’s modified budget slashed programs and initiatives at nearly every agency, including killing Sunday service at libraries and ending a job-training program at the Parks Department.
At the town hall, Tanya, who declined to give her last name, asked the mayor how these budget cuts could affect all of the plans he announced at the start of the meeting. His response was to ask her if she traveled down to Washington D.C. to ask for more federal help.
“I felt like it was a little bit of a joke, a little, like a little schtick or whatever,” she told THE CITY afterward. “I’m just hoping he heard me, I just want to be heard.”
At an end-of-year press conference at City Hall last week, the mayor kept his list of accomplishments to two key issues.
“Jobs are up, crime is down,” he repeated, the words flashing on screens and signs in the rotunda. Earlier in the week the mayor joined other city leaders to officially break ground on new construction at Willets Point, where 2,500 affordable apartments and a soccer stadium will anchor a new neighborhood in Queens – one of the largest housing and development projects in the city over the last few decades.
Adams was encouraged by the city’s economy and efforts to bounce back from the pandemic, and from smaller wins like starting to containerize trash. He did not seem deterred by the challenges; instead, emboldened by them.
“I’ve stayed on one focus throughout my life: stay focused, no distractions and grind,” he said.
“And I think that New Yorkers are feeling this pain, the budget cuts, they’re feeling the uncertainty,” he said.
“People say, listen, Eric, we know you’re trying. We know who you are. We know what you’re looking to try to do. We need to push forward.”