NEW YORK — When New York City Mayor Eric Adams was elected four years ago, he cast himself as the future of the Democratic Party. Now, as he prepares to leave office as the first one-term mayor since David Dinkins, it’s clear just how wrong he was.
Adams — perhaps the most eccentric executive to ever sleep at Gracie Mansion, to the extent he actually slept there — is more welcome in the folds of the GOP than in national Democratic circles. His job approval ratings require sonar to locate. He was indicted in a five-count federal bribery case only to be rescued by President Donald Trump. And much of his inner circle has been forced from office by scandal and law enforcement investigations.
Ironically, through all that, the cop-turned-mayor did help chart a path for national Democrats hoping to win back the House: New York City voters turned so thoroughly against him that the traditional benefits of incumbency vanished, leaving behind the ideal conditions for a previously unknown state legislator named Zohran Mamdani to triumph in November on a platform of affordability Democrats used to great effect this year.
Much has been said about Mamdani’s winning coalition anchored by energized young voters. But by different metrics, Adams’ was historic as well: Black and Latino communities along with moderate white and Jewish voters in the outer boroughs vaulted him into office without the vote-rich (and in many cases money-rich) areas of Manhattan and Brownstone Brooklyn that have long played a crucial role in picking citywide leaders.
Therein lies the tragedy of Adams: Not only will some of his very real wins be forever entangled with the chaos of his tenure, but in leaving City Hall after just four years, he will be taking with him Black political power — long sought and now, after Dinkins, twice preempted — that could be increasingly difficult to win back in the years to come.
“It took 30 years-plus to get another Black mayor in a city that is over one-third Black,” said Al Sharpton, a leading voice in Democratic circles and an old hand at reading ebbs and flows in the city’s political currents. “And because this is something personal to us, that is why many of us gave Adams the benefit of the doubt all the way through — and why we now feel personally hurt.”
The rise of Adams
Once upon a time, during the era of peak swagger, Adams had reason to be confident.
Throughout the 2021 mayoral race, he proved himself an authentic communicator — a son of the city he sought to lead after two mayors from out of town. Speaking in front of working-class voters, Adams would recall colorful vignettes, some clearly untrue, about his upbringing in a low-income household, raised by an overworked mother he lionized. Because he was a candidate that understood adversity, the pitch went, he would know best how to root it out if he were put in charge of the city’s nearly $100 billion budget.
He was also just lucky.
At the time, Democrats, some of whom had just a year earlier pushed police reform spurred by the murder of George Floyd, found themselves grasping for a credible message on public safety. Some of those voters who had taken to the streets by the tens of thousands to protest overly aggressive policing had packed up their things and moved to a new spot on the electoral map, spooked by a pandemic-induced spike in crime.
The moment suited a charismatic former NYPD captain turned state lawmaker who happened to be rounding out his second term as Brooklyn borough president.
Running on a message of public safety, Adams eked out the city’s first ranked-choice Democratic primary by 1 point before running up the numbers in the general. With his working-class coalition, he vanquished a field of disorganized progressives, a well-regarded technocrat and, in the process, piqued the interest of President Joe Biden.
The newly elected mayor went on national television to herald a new era of practical Democratic politics. Biden flew to New York City for a joint press conference about guns. Adams was added to a list of national surrogates for the commander-in-chief’s reelection campaign.
It was all going so well. And then the first bus arrived.
Eight months into Adams’ term, a coach of asylum-seekers sent by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott pulled into the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the hellish transit hub in Midtown Manhattan through which hundreds of thousands more migrants would eventually pass. The logistics of housing, feeding and educating new arrivals and their children became a slow-motion crisis that would end up costing the city more than $7 billion by the end of Adams’ term while straining its already tattered social safety net to the breaking point.
Adams is one of the most unpredictable public speakers in American politics. He might weave together an extended metaphor about Betsy Ross at a crypto conference, jarringly invoke 9/11 or recall the lengthy commute required to visit a Queens-based “shorty” from one of his past lives. (The Daily Show released a helpful compendium of Adams’ greatest hits.) But on April 19, 2023, fed up with the increasing burden of the migrant influx on municipal government, he uttered the most consequential sentence of his young mayoralty.
“The president and the White House have failed New York City on this issue,” Adams said at a City Hall press conference.
The fallout was swift. Immigration was a sensitive issue for national Democrats ahead of a presidential election year, and Biden didn’t need Adams, a fellow party member, to keep poking at it. Yet poke he did in the hopes of shaking loose some federal cash, spurring Washington to spread out the flow of migrants or, at the very least, grant them work permits.
While Adams’ frustration was understandable — Team Biden ended up doing little for the city and Adams was getting criticized from both the left and the right — the idea that he could organize mayors across the country to muscle the president demonstrated a gross GPS miscalculation that would route him deep into the national political wilderness. (Adams, who once said the voice of God told him he’d become mayor on Jan. 1, 2022, often refers to his God Positioning System to describe the Almighty’s role in his decision-making.)
The migrant crisis would dominate headlines through the end of 2023 before the next overarching issue — a disaster of Adams’ own creation — would go on to cast a pall over City Hall until the bitter end, permanently altering his legacy.
The feds
In the early hours of Nov. 2, 2023, FBI agents fanned out across New York City like they were auditioning for a Martin Scorsese film. Hauling away cardboard evidence boxes, they hit the home of Adams’ chief campaign fundraiser, who was only 25 years old, and raided a Brooklyn construction company owned by a Turkish-born donor to Adams’ campaign. Several evenings later, in another showdown worthy of the silver screen, federal gumshoes stopped Adams on a lower Manhattan sidewalk, separated him from his security detail, and seized several of his electronic devices.
Over the course of the next year, largely through episodic stories in The New York Times, the mayor’s sheep, as he sometimes called his constituents, would learn what their shepherd had done to trigger such scrutiny.
The feds were eyeing Adams for accepting illicit campaign donations from Turkish nationals and, after winning the primary in 2021, inquiring about approvals for an under-construction, Turkish-owned skyscraper in Midtown. Making calls to prod city government into action is a routine part of being a New York elected official. But prosecutors suspected Adams had done so in exchange for accepting nearly a decade’s worth of travel perks offered by people close to Ankara — allegations the mayor has forcefully denied.
The steady drip of reporting would have been brutal enough on its own. But the stain of corruption bled into Adams’ inner circle, its seepage measured in FBI raids, phone seizures and resignations that stand as a lasting testament to the mayor’s sometimes poor personnel judgment and his sense of loyalty to problematic actors that even friends and allies found frustrating.
Adams’ closest confidant — his rock, the Lioness of City Hall — was indicted twice by the Manhattan district attorney. In one case, Ingrid Lewis-Martin was accused of a favor-trading scheme that included a potential Chick-fil-A franchise. The other probe also ensnared the mayor’s political protege — a former state legislator named Jesse Hamilton whom Adams gave a plum city job — and outlined an alleged bribery case remarkable for both its breadth and the sometimes small-potato payoffs. Both Lewis-Martin and Hamilton have denied wrongdoing.
“We are imperfect, but we are not thieves,” Lewis-Martin said following her first indictment, appearing on a live radio show hosted by her defense attorney. “We have not done anything illegal to the magnitude or scale that requires the federal government and the DA’s office to investigate us.”
Another foundational character in the Adams cinematic universe, Winnie Greco, had two of her homes in the Bronx raided by the FBI. After being pushed out of city service and resurfacing as a volunteer on Adams’ doomed reelection bid, she sparked yet another investigation after handing a City Hall reporter a bag of potato chips stuffed with $300.
Adams’ own indictment — a five-count bribery case — finally landed in September 2024, making him the first sitting mayor to be charged with a felony and earning him the sympathy of Trump, who saw in Adams a fellow victim of a politicized justice system.
Shortly afterward, Trump was elected to his second term. And with talk of a potential pardon, Adams began to seem a little MAGA curious.
He started praising Elon Musk. He visited Trump in Florida. He rushed down in the middle of the night for Trump’s inauguration and told the press corps that, as a policy, he would never criticize the president in public. Months later, the mayor held a press conference at Gracie Mansion where he waved around a copy of “Government Gangsters,” a book by FBI Director Kash Patel that warns of a liberal “deep state” within the federal government.
Adams had logic to back up his actions: It was beneficial to have a direct line to the White House. The president held great power over New York City. And it was obviously better to work with him than needlessly antagonize him. At the same time, city government retained its bread-and-butter liberal programming, and the Law Department went on to sue the White House several times over lost federal funding.
But Adams’ self-preservation — he was facing up to 45 years in prison — was always humming in the background. And sure enough, Trump delivered.
The Justice Department’s successful push to toss Adams’ case was so unusual it sparked a revolt at DOJ, with several high-profile resignations both in New York and Washington, and led the judge in the case to posit that some sort of bargain — dismissal in exchange for more cooperation from Adams on immigration enforcement — appeared to be afoot. Adams fiercely denied any quid pro quo.
He had long claimed the feds ginned up the case against him in retaliation for his criticisms of Biden. But some inconvenient facts belie that thinking: The federal probe began in 2021, well before he began throwing tomatoes at the White House. And Danielle Sassoon, who became the lead prosecutor on the case before she resigned in protest, is a longtime Republican who was appointed to her role as interim U.S. attorney by Trump.
The end of Adams’ legal troubles begat the inglorious end of his term. He dropped out of the Democratic primary, saying that the party had shifted away from his values. He mounted an anemic general election bid as an independent, starved for cash by a city election board, before dropping that as well. He then endorsed a bitter rival — former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo — in hopes of stopping Mamdani, the young democratic socialist who would go on to win.
In the final weeks of his term, Adams seemed to go out of his way to reinforce damning tropes of his administration. An executive who long had an affinity for nebulously justified travel, the mayor jetted off on a series of trips across the globe and, in one case, returned with just hours to spare before control of the city would have passed to another official under a provision in the City Charter.
For some of Adams’ supporters, his chaotic turn at City Hall smarts in a specific way.
“He was this incredible retail politician. He liked to be out and meet voters and be in the street and be very engaging, and it’s something I think voters were really attracted to,” said Basil Smikle Jr., a political expert who formerly ran the New York State Democratic Party. “When I talk to voters about Eric Adams now, the word they always use is disappointed. He is only the second African American mayor, and he is a Black mayor at a time when the community feels very threatened by the policies coming out of Washington.”
Black politicians occupy other powerful positions in local government. But Smikle Jr. fears changing demographics will make it hard to elect another Black mayor so closely aligned with the politics of the Democratic Party’s most loyal voting bloc.
Black New Yorkers have been fleeing the city for years as traditional centers of Black power in Manhattan and Brooklyn gentrify. And, as the election of Mamdani suggests, the future for Democrats lies with a younger demographic who care little for traditional party infrastructure.
“This hasn’t only changed New York politics; it has changed the politics of southern states like North Carolina and Georgia,” Smikle Jr. said. “And there is something to be said about the larger movement and migration of Black voters and how that has changed the country’s politics.”
Adams' wins
For all of Adams’ troubles, he was able to achieve several major initiatives while in office despite forming few advantageous bonds with fellow Democrats, even those with whom he would seem to share a natural kinship.
Even though he was a former state legislator, the mayor had frosty relationships with leaders of the state Assembly and Senate, and he failed to ease longstanding tensions with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — all of whom are, like Adams, Black Democrats at the height of political power in New York.
After a disastrous attempt to meddle in the race for City Council speaker, Adams would go on to have an increasingly antagonistic relationship with the body and its leader, Adrienne Adams (no relation), despite the two sharing a base of Black, middle-class voters in southeast Queens and even attending the same high school.
His allies, on the other hand, included U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat, a handful of state legislators and a smattering of City Council members that included Republicans and conservative Democrats. But it was Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul that became his most important governing partner.
Their alliance, which Adams and Hochul maintained with remarkable discipline and few exceptions — the mayor’s opposition to 2019 state criminal justice reforms and the governor’s work to help stabilize a city government beset by corruption allegations being two — was mutually beneficial. For Hochul, keeping Adams’ base of Black voters in good stead would help insulate her against a reelection challenge. And Adams gained a powerful champion for several major initiatives he won in Albany — changes to criminal justice laws, a real estate tax break and asylum-seeker funding, among them — allowing him to largely circumvent the more adversarial Legislature and paper over his team’s sometimes lackluster intergovernmental work in the Capitol.
Those victories are part of a collection of major wins Adams can credibly claim as he leaves office, even as he appears self aware that his legacy will remain mixed.
“Talk about the first mayor being indicted. But damn it, don't miss the other firsts that this mayor has been able to accomplish,” he said at a recent press briefing. “Have it all come together. Because that's how you record history.”
Adams’ success in containerizing most garbage fundamentally changed the landscape of the city.
City Hall’s efforts to shepherd a massive, citywide rezoning called the City of Yes through the City Council is a crowning achievement of the last four years. The plan is expected to create 80,000 new homes, though Adams’ claim of being the most pro-housing administration in history requires some creative math. Housing groups have similarly lauded the mayor’s move to streamline the approval process for affordable housing.
His education department changed how children learn to read, with test scores climbing as a result.
Through an increase in the earned income tax credit, an elimination of income taxes for low-income New Yorkers, health and child care vouchers and an expansion in discounted subway cards, among other initiatives, Team Adams estimates they have returned $30 billion into the pockets of struggling residents.
And Adams brought a new level of diversity to City Hall. He appointed five deputy mayors — all women, and four of them women of color — though three would go on to resign amid concerns about Adams’ work with the Trump administration and another would be pushed out amid a federal investigation. More broadly, Adams plugged Black and brown experts into top jobs that had more often been held by white staffers.
“Overall, the drama around the administration overwhelmed the dramatic improvements to the city made by the administration,” said Evan Thies, a longtime adviser to Adams who helped craft the successful 2021 campaign. “I truly do think that those improvements, those investments and policies put in place by the Adams administration over four short years — not to mention the heroic work that saved lives during the migrant crisis — will be much appreciated by New Yorkers in the future.”
Criminal crackdown
But Adams’ success with his signature campaign issue is not as clear cut.
The seven major crimes tracked by the NYPD, which include murder, rape, robbery and felony assault, are around 20 percent higher than when Adams took office, driven by a number of factors including auto theft and felony assaults.
And lower-level crimes, which include non-felonies and misdemeanors, are still dramatically higher than pre-pandemic levels.
But overall, the seven major felonies tracked by the NYPD plateaued in his second year before beginning to decline.
And certain public safety metrics, including those tracking the most dangerous crimes, have markedly improved: Shootings, murder and transit crime are at or near historic lows.
Because crime statistics are driven by a complex mix of local, national and even global forces, it was always a risky thing for Adams to stake his name on. But to the extent local government plays a role, a lingering question remains as the mayor prepares to leave office: Could crime have dropped more if the mayor had run a less chaotic NYPD?
Most mayors retain a police commissioner through the entirety of their first term. Adams had four. His first commissioner, Keechant Sewell, resigned after being undermined by mayoral allies. His second, Edward Caban, was forced from office after his phones were seized as part of a federal investigation. And Adams’ third police commissioner, interim leader Tom Donlon, is now suing the city, claiming the NYPD was run as a criminal enterprise.
Another Adams ally, Jeffrey Maddrey, who largely ran the day-to-day operations of the department, was forced to resign after accusations that he traded sex for overtime. And two top public safety appointees and longtime friends of the mayor — one, an electromagnet for bad headlines — both resigned amid federal probes.
Stability at the NYPD has come, finally, in the form of Jessica Tisch, an heiress of a billionaire family who has made her name as a hard-nosed civil servant. She was responsible for the containerization effort and has been asked by Mamdani to remain at the NYPD.
As Adams reflects on his time in office, he has admitted he trusted some people he should not have. More often, he has lashed out at the press and the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, which was responsible for many of the probes that hollowed out Adams’ senior staff.
For some who worked with the mayor, the chaos those probes caused is a continuing source of frustration: For all the intrigue, federal prosecutors brought no indictments other than their case against Adams, leaving many of the mayor’s appointees frozen in headlines as targets of an investigation with no resolution.
Adams will, of course, also be long remembered for his eccentricities.
There was the video of him searching a child’s bedroom for contraband. The mystery over his living situation and his plant-based diet. His secret office. His nights out at Zero Bond, Osteria la Baia and other parts unknown. He said crystals under Manhattan gave the city its special energy and that Gracie Mansion was haunted by friendly ghosts. The man had his city-issued SUV outfitted with a closet. He dressed sharply. He flirted with older women at town halls (and they with him).
The mayor was, by most accounts, also a pleasant boss to work for throughout the tribulations of his term. And many of those who served think history will reflect more kindly on Adams’ turn running the nation’s largest city.
An Adams adviser, who was granted anonymity to speak frankly about the administration, recalled the first senior staff meeting in City Hall. Covid protocols were still in place. Everybody was in masks. The city’s economic outlook, its future as the global nexus of finance and its prospects for job growth was in doubt.
Today, few of those uncertainties exist.
“We all are the frog in the boiling water. For those of us who live here, the improvement has been gradual,” this person said. “No mayor deserves full credit for this. But you certainly have to give some. And this mayor is probably going to get less than his fair share.”
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