'Get away with everything': New Yorkers share feelings about Mayor Eric Adams
New Yorkers don't shy away from sharing how they really feel about their mayor.
After the U.S. Department of Justice issued a memorandum saying they would not prosecute New York City Mayor Eric Adams for federal corruption charges for now, something he confirmed at a Tuesday press briefing, city residents continued to say they didn’t trust the incumbent mayor to continue in his role. It’s something New Yorkers have said for months in polling.
Adams, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, is in his first term and faces re-election. In recent polls, just over a quarter of Democratic primary voters held a favorable view of Adams, and only 10% of them would vote for him again. A whopping 58% of respondents had an unfavorable view of Adams in the Emerson College Polling/PIX11/The Hill survey taken in early February.
This polling indicates he has a steep fight ahead, and New Yorkers don’t plan to give him a lending hand, something that became abundantly apparent after his Tuesday address.
And even though Adams said he wanted to put his federal corruption case behind him and work to rebuild trust with his constituents, New Yorkers are nothing if not honest about how they feel: They don’t believe him.
“New Yorkers demand leadership that’s accountable to them"
Comptroller Brad Lander, a Democratic candidate for mayor, said Tuesday the federal corruption charges against Adams were warranted, though New Yorkers can render their judgment in the Democratic primary in June. But in the meantime, he said, the decision by the Department of Justice leaves Adams and, by extension, New York City federal funding, beholden to the Trump administration.
“When the president harms or threatens New York City, the mayor will be unable to fight back,” Lander said outside of the David Dinkins Manhattan Municipal Building Tuesday following Adams' address. “Because he clearly cares about staying out of prison more than he cares about the well-being of New Yorkers.”
Lander said this extends to New York being threatened with service cuts or cuts to school and hospital funding.
“New Yorkers demand leadership that’s accountable to them and not to President Trump,” he said.
The day before, Adams was seen gathering city commissioners at the municipal building. He reportedly instructed them not to criticize Trump, and not to interfere with immigration enforcement. Paste BN previously reported on city hospitals issuing guidance to doctors and health professionals that staff said appeared to give immigration agents a green light to enter facilities to target people in the country illegally.
In New York City schools, attendance dropped after Trump’s inauguration due to threats of immigration enforcement, according to Naveed Hasan, a member of the city Public Schools Panel for Educational Policy, which oversees the city school district. With 900,000 students, the school district is the largest in the U.S. It has received about 50,000 students who newly arrived in New York City, which has helped increase enrollment after years of decline that has affected education budgets.
The school system is governed by the mayor, which Hasan believes to be a concern, as Adams has signaled a willingness to help with immigration enforcement.
“It's a city of immigrants,” he told Paste BN. “Having someone from outside telling us that this is not American is unacceptable.”
“Regular people couldn’t do that”
Just steps from City Hall, Maria Perez, an asylum seeker from Venezuela who has been in New York for a year, stood with her three children facing the Brooklyn Bridge on Tuesday morning. They had just gone to immigration court after she received a deportation order. She pulled her children out of school in case they could get separated.
She was thankful for the city, despite threats of immigration enforcement.
“It has been a privilege to have shelter, to have stability for our children,” Perez said, citing housing, transportation and health care as the most important for her family. “I know they helped us a lot.”
After leaving jury duty, Carol Jones, 75, walked through City Hall Park, minutes before Adams would address New Yorkers.
The Manhattan resident didn't vote for Adams and said he wasn’t doing his job to run the city. Both he and Trump were corrupt, she said, citing the president’s felony conviction in Manhattan criminal court.
“They get away with everything,” she said. “Regular people couldn’t do that.”
Looking to the upcoming election, she said she didn't plan to vote.
“Just because you’re mayor doesn’t mean you’re above the law"
“Just because you’re mayor doesn’t mean you’re above the law, you can say that about the president, too,” said Alan Mukamal, 61, a software engineer who biked in the freezing cold with his friend Rich Miller from Brooklyn to Federal Plaza, in lower Manhattan. The two stood admiring a statue, “Triumph of the Human Spirit,” near the federal courthouse before continuing on their bike ride.
Miller, 66, an energy policy consultant, said he found it weird Adams couldn’t be prosecuted until after the election, according to the justice department memo.
“It’s almost like saying, ‘Go ahead, it’s OK to abuse some laws related to campaign contributions between now and the election,’” he said. “You’ll just have to deal with it afterward.”
That being said, the two thought the city was being managed well, not by the mayor, but by his deputy mayors, who are mostly women.
“I’m actually glad that they have not abandoned the ship during this time to make sure the city continues to run well,” Miller said. He later added of the female deputy mayors: “Maybe he should let one of them run.”
Both didn’t plan to vote for Adams for re-election.