A few early thoughts on what’s shaping up to be New York City’s first truly competitive race for City Hall against an incumbent since 1993, not just coincidentally the last and only other time New York City had a Black mayor:
It’s wild that there are already two Democratic challengers to Eric Adams in former controller and 2021 mayoral candidate Scott Stringer and state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, who won his seat by upsetting an incumbent and Adams protégé.
Other party members are likely to jump in soon, with the general election once again looking like an afterthought — which says a lot about how many New Yorkers are effectively disenfranchised in the city and state’s increasingly complex and incoherent electoral systems, but that’s a topic for another week.
The city’s primary may seem like a long way off as this summer begins and the presidential election grinds on but time is already tight for prospective rivals who need to raise cash and assemble a coalition for a credible run against a well-funded incumbent, albeit one facing two separate federal investigations related to his fundraising.
The feds will have to either proceed or cut bait in the cases they’re trying to make against Adams soon to avoid even the appearance of interfering in the city’s election.
The prosecutors who begrudgingly let then-Mayor Bill de Blasio off the legal hook while publicly scolding him for violating the spirit of campaign laws announced that in March of his 2017 reelection year but the city’s primary was in September then.
The primary is in June now, which means prosecutors only have until about the end of the year even as the courts keep raising the bar on public corruption charges.
Amid headline after headline about sleaze and self-dealing inside the Adams administration, the question is if the Justice Department brings a criminal case against him based on any of that, and how strong that case appears if they do — and also whether Justice will be answering to President Biden or President Trump in 2025.
(In the event that Adams is charged, that would upend the mayoral race, let alone if he’s unable to complete his term in which case Public Advocate Jumaane Williams would act as mayor.)
Those answers will do a lot to shape the race here as it comes into public focus next year.
In the meantime, Adams has a record-low approval rating that’s steadily declined over his two and a half years in office.
Many of the same primary voters who effectively made him mayor not even three years ago don’t think he’s been up to the job.
That would be less of a political concern for an incumbent who’s a tough, talented and battle-tested campaigner if not for the city’s new ranked-choice primary system — which Adams has expressed skepticism about for years — that means multiple challengers don’t really cancel each other out the way they previously did.
A poll of likely voters last month had 61% of Democrats saying they’d vote for someone else against just 20% who’d vote for Adams. He’s down 38-47 among Black voters.
Overall, just 15% of likely voters said “things in New York City are headed in the right direction,” while 68% said “they are on the wrong track.”
It can’t help those numbers, or Adams’ feeble “jobs up, crime down” messaging — which may be the best he can do given his lack of a clear vision or tangible accomplishments — to have one of his police chiefs who wouldn’t even show up to testify before the City Council do a TV segment with Dr. Phil: “Migrant Crime Wave is Bringing New York to Its Knees.”
It’s not normal for a mayor’s team to make the media rounds on shows about how bad things supposedly are here, never mind the numbers.
The tragedy of Eric Adams may be that his talents and network that got him into City Hall haven’t served him or the city well since he’s been there.
Leaning on his own biography while talking about how bad things here supposedly are helped to get him elected but it hasn’t helped him govern or manage with clarity and purpose.
The candidates hoping to replace him need to do better. There’s no training for a job this big and complex, but one of the people running against Adams well might end up being the mayor in 18 months.
If they want to succeed where he’s struggled, now’s the time to work on defining and articulating a vision and plans for managing and running this vast city and tangibly improving the lives of its people.
Siegel ([email protected]) is an editor at The City, a host of the FAQ NYC podcast and a columnist for the Daily News.