Member Newsletter
When New York Mayor Eric Adams was elected in 2021, I told a number of people that I thought he’d either be a great mayor or end up getting indicted for something. A baseball player who bats .500 is a god. So I’m feeling reasonably good about this prediction. I tried to see whether I’d written this down somewhere. Back in December 2021 I wrote on Twitter that “I think there’s a lot about Adams that is really what the city needs. Most of the things. But also concerned that he’ll get indicted for something.” A month later I explained the basis of my largely misguided bullishness on Adams. “For clarity, I’m not cheering anything from the last three days. I think a mayor rooted in the politics of the city’s black middle class (which is Adams’ base) is better for the city today than rooted in the politics of liberals in Manhattan and Brooklyn.”
This general point I still believe.
Recently I have had a few people ask me why the ongoing Adams probe — which has extended to numerous members of his administration — hadn’t garnered more attention. Obviously each raid and police action has been reported in the New York City press, which heavily overlaps with the national press. So it certainly wasn’t being ignored. But it was true that the billowing smoke emanating from the investigation or what actually seemed to be multiple different investigations didn’t seem to be generating the kind of momentum or low-grade feeding frenzy that major criminal investigations, especially by federal law enforcement, often do. The best answer I can think of is the feeling I had back when Adams was first elected: it just didn’t seem that surprising. Dog bites man, as old-time journalists say. What’s the news? Of course he’s being investigated. Least surprising thing ever.
The other part of the equation is that I don’t get the sense that Adams has any cheering section. A politician usually has haters and a cheering section. Press dynamics over a big scandal or the other rises and falls of a major politician play out in the interplay between those groups. But Adams doesn’t seem to have enough of a cheering section for enough people to care. He certainly has opponents and even haters. But even they don’t really seem to care that much. When Andrew Cuomo’s governorship was spiraling toward his eventual resignation, the drama had an almost operatic, Shakespearean dimension. All his nemeses, all the players he’d crossed, were suddenly rounding on him at his moment of greatest vulnerability. With Adams, I don’t get the sense that people care enough to get that wound up about any of it.