Photo: Barry Williams/New York Daily New/TNS/Getty Images
On her first day as a candidate for mayor, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams signaled she’s not necessarily going to play nice with the seven men already competing for the Democratic nomination.
“There are people that have truths that have yet to be told,” she said, somewhat ominously, when I asked if she believed any of her rivals had issues that should disqualify them as candidates. “I am not here to judge anyone, but I am here to make sure that all that sexual misconduct and all of that is not a thing that we carry into the future, but something that we will look upon the past not to repeat,” she told me.
That was an unmistakable reference to the three candidates for mayor — ex-governor Andrew Cuomo, Mayor Eric Adams, and ex-comptroller Scott Stringer — who have been sued in civil court for sexual harassment or sexual assault in recent years. All three strenuously deny the allegations, and Cuomo and Stringer have countersued their accusers for defamation, leaving voters with a batch of incomplete court cases to sort through.
The speaker’s rationale for running — she plans to campaign simply as Adrienne to avoid being confused with the mayor — is that the city is in dire straits.
“City Hall has been shaken. We have a president in Washington right now that is just spewing chaos all over the nation. New York has a target on its back. I cannot sit back and do nothing about it,” she told me.
On a policy level, she is promising a straightforward expansion of affordable housing stock, building on legislation she shepherded through the council that makes it easier to get projects zoned and financed. She also plans to approach public safety at the precinct level, building trust between cops and communities, and is committed to dramatically expanding services and facilities for homeless and mentally ill New Yorkers.
Politically, Adrienne’s arrival is the surest sign yet that Eric Adams is losing the battle for Black voters, who supplied his base and margin of victory in 2021. Back then, Adams had the support of 43 percent of Black voters in the closing days of the Democratic primary — by far the strongest backing of any ethnic or racial group for any candidate that year. It helped that the other Black hopefuls in the crowded field that year — Maya Wiley, Ray McGuire, and Diane Morales — were first-time candidates struggling to build name recognition.
Four years later, Eric Adams faces a much tougher situation. Two of his Black challengers, state senator Zellnor Myrie and Adrienne Adams — are experienced campaigners, and so is Cuomo, an ex-governor who has always been popular with Black voters. Other Black political leaders, embarrassed by Adams’s legal problems and exhausted by the unprecedented level of resignations of top commissioners and City Hall aides, are actively seeking alternatives, despite pointed, dismissive references by Adams to Black critics as “Negroes.” (“Are you stupid?” he spat at his enemies at a recent Black History Month commemoration.)
But it’s not just political leaders who are done with supporting Adams. The latest Quinnipiac University poll shows that 60 percent of Black voters disapprove of his performance, while 24 percent approve.
That high level of discontent is echoed by Myrie, who represents Adams’s former district in Brooklyn and is now running against the mayor. “There is a particular sensitivity Black New Yorkers have watching Eric Adams be embarrassed on national television by Trump’s border czar,” Myrie told the New York Times, referring to a disastrous Fox News appearance in which Tom Holman, the Trump official leading the mass-deportation effrontery, openly threatened Adams that he would show up at City Hall and “be up his butt” if the city did not cooperate on immigration matters. The interview, said Myrie, caused “shame that the second Black mayor in our city’s history can so obviously be played for a fool for the country to see, disappointment in his lack of integrity in this moment and pain knowing how far back this sets Black leadership.”
Another crack in the dam came when former state comptroller H. Carl McCall, who in the 1990s became the first Black candidate ever elected statewide, publicly came out for Cuomo.
“I’ve never heard from Eric since I endorsed him almost four years ago. But he simply is not up to the job now,” McCall told me. “He’s in trouble, and he’s trying to stay out of jail, and he’s made this terrible agreement with the president. We don’t even know what the agreement is, but we do know that the president is going to enforce the agreement.”
McCall also dismissed the argument that his contentious 2002 primary fight against Cuomo contained racial overtones.
“Andrew might not make as many friends as we would like to see, but he gets things done,” said McCall. “I was in a position where I could dispel this idea that because Andrew Cuomo ran against me, that Black folks shouldn’t support him. I wanted to take that silly race issue off the table. That should not be what we look at. We should look at what kind of leadership do we need now [and] who can provide that leadership.”
Another ex-supporter of Adams, former Bronx borough president Ruben Diaz Jr., has switched to Cuomo as well. Multiple Black members of the State Legislature, including state Senator Jamal Bailey and Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte-Hermelyn, who double as Democratic chairs of the Bronx and Brooklyn, respectively, are said to be eyeing a switch to Cuomo.
A key power broker, Representative Gregory Meeks, who doubles as chair of the Queens Democratic Party, is a longtime backer of Adrienne Adams who may swing the county organization behind her. (“He has always supported everything that I do,” Adrienne told me.) Attorney General Letitia James, a powerful ally, is also helping to line up endorsements and donations.
A successful run by Adrienne would make history twice over. She would become the city’s first woman mayor and also break the pattern of every council speaker in the city’s modern history running for higher office and falling short. Ex-speaker Peter Vallone ran unsuccessful races for governor and mayor, Gifford Miller and Christine Quinn, ran for mayor, Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito tried for public advocate and for congress, and Cory Johnson lost a bid for comptroller.
“We want to make sure that we are talking to those voters that may not necessarily know the work of the council, may not necessarily know who Adrienne Adams is,” she said. “Our campaign is Adrienne for the people because that is the philosophy that I live by. I am a wife, mother, grandmother, the first to be those things [as speaker]. And I expect to expand all of that when I win this race.”
