Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Not long after a federal ruling dismissed criminal charges against him, a visibly relieved Mayor Eric Adams summoned the press to the entrance of Gracie Mansion where he thanked two people — his $2000-an-hour celebrity lawyer, Alex Spiro, and Jesus Christ — for steering him out of a case that could have sent Adams to prison for decades. The very next day, Adams dropped out of the June primary for mayor, vowing to run as an independent in November against whichever Democrat wins.
“As I’ve said all along, this case should have never been brought,” insisted Hizzoner. Tellingly, the mayor neither thanked nor mentioned Judge Dale Ho, the man whose 78-page ruling actually dismissed United States vs. Eric Adams. Ho strongly condemns the Trump administration’s Department of Justice for arguing that the case should be dropped without any reference to Adams’s guilt or innocence, but because the mayor would be useful in implementing Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Adams will surely continue telling audiences that he was the innocent victim of politically motivated prosecutors, although Ho explicitly found the opposite, writing that “everything here smacks of a bargain: dismissal of the Indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions.”
The mayor will also likely continue spreading the fiction that he has been fully exonerated, which is far from true: Trump’s Justice Department — over the objections of half a dozen prosecutors who resigned in protest — simply chose not to assess evidence of Adam’s guilt or innocence. In plain English, Ho concluded that the place to deal with the actions of Adams and/or the Trump administration is the voting booth, not the courtroom. So it falls to New Yorkers to insist that our leaders rise to a higher standard than “I was never convicted.”
Parents spend years teaching their children lessons about character by stressing how important it is to be hardworking and dependable, always tell the truth, protect the less fortunate, and own up to one’s mistakes even when the results are likely to cause embarrassment or ridicule.
Maybe this should be the year we adopt the same standard for politicians — and apply them in the mayoral race.
Adams’s legal ordeal has vanished just in time for the beauty-contest phase of the race, with most candidates attending a string of forums, debate, and question-and-answer sessions. Many of the events are theme-based, focused discussions of the issues most important to the host, such as housing, education, public safety, environmental justice, and the like.
But nowhere do we directly grill the candidates about questions of character that voters need answered before Election Day. I, for one, would love to get answers to questions like: Are you an honest person? Are you a man or woman of your word? Have you ever made an unpopular decision under difficult circumstances? Do you respond with sympathy and kindness to people in need? Is public service a calling, or are you chasing the perks, privileges, and paychecks of high office?
“I did nothing wrong,” Mayor Adams says frequently about the years of free, undisclosed air travel and luxury accommodations he accepted from businessmen with ties to foreign governments, the conduct that led to his indictment. Does that mean you did everything right, Mr. Mayor? And should we expect more of the same if you get re-elected?
Similar questions should be put to Adams’s competitor, ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo, who in the past made quasi-apologetic statements about the various women who claim he harassed them, but now falls back on the basement-level standard of never having been charged or convicted. Exhaustive reporting of the original damning Attorney General’s report on Cuomo makes clear that the 11 women who accused Cuomo of harassment had varying levels of credibility; voters can make up their own minds about the veracity or the different accounts.
But the harassment accusations aren’t the only terrible behavior Cuomo has been accused of over the years. We have credible reports of him screaming and cursing at some officials, threatening others, and creating a toxic workplace. His difficult but defensible actions in the early days of the pandemic were followed by so many evasive and contradictory statements that Cuomo currently stands accused of making false statements to Congress. Are voters supposed to ignore this?
An additional set of ethical questions comes up when it comes to corruption questions that dogged the Cuomo administration, from the Moreland Commission that he created and then abruptly shut down to the Buffalo Billions bid-rigging case that, incredibly, is still kicking around the courts, with former SUNY Polytechnic President Alain Kaloyeros fighting against the prospect of a second trial after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his original conviction. There are plenty of questions out there, but Cuomo, carefully limiting his appearances, skipping forums, and generally avoiding situations in which questions might be asked.
“At least for now, Cuomo is running for public office mostly away from the public,” Newsday notes. “His events are barely announced or unannounced entirely, the guest lists curated, encounters otherwise by happenstance, and security tight.” But that won’t last forever, and it shouldn’t. Voters have not just the right but the obligation to get answers about the past actions of Cuomo, Adams, and all other candidates — and to draw conclusions about the character of the people who want to lead us.
New Yorkers generally don’t pass judgement on the personal lives of our neighbors; it’s considered gauche. But the same tolerant, mind-your-own-business attitude that enables 8 million of us to live in close proximity is guaranteed to backfire if we elevate officeholders who turn out to be careless, cowardly, or corrupt. The Biblical admonition to “judge not, lest you be judged” should not be watered down into a childish “live and let live” apathy when it comes to the grown-up business of giving our fellow citizens the awesome powers of government that are literally, matters of life and death.
The recent Trump administration national security leak, exposed by Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, is a perfect case in point, as the novelist and Marine Corps veteran Phil Klay argued in a New York Times op-ed. “As the Trump administration has responded with a mixture of denials, brush-offs, lies and vitriolic attacks on Mr. Goldberg, I’ve found myself worrying less about the leak and more about the character of the people in charge of our nation’s defense,” Klay writes. “The breach is serious, but security breaches can be plugged. Men and women who have shown themselves to have no character, though, can never be trusted. Not with national security, not with anything.”
New Yorkers have seen the downside of a mayor who has tolerated, benefited from, and occasionally created red-flag ethical problems, including nepotism; telling tall tales about his past that in at least one case included enlisting city workers to support an elaborate lie; elevating and supporting aides accused of misconduct; failing to make mandatory disclosures of personal gifts; and multiple instances of receiving illegal campaign donations. Adams tends to wave away these problems by pronouncing himself “perfectly imperfect,” a self-exoneration that avoids the hard truth New Yorkers now face: how do we make sure the leader of our city doesn’t need the threat of prosecutors and investigators to behave like a decent person?
