MAYORS IN NEW YORK are usually inaugurated on the steps of City Hall, where they deliver an uplifting speech laying out their vision for the city. Sometimes those visions are successful: Rudy Giuliani, elected on the back of a decades-long crime wave, vowed to make the city safer, and he did. Michael Bloomberg, elected after the attacks of September 11th 2001, said lower Manhattan must be rebuilt. Today, it is thriving. But David Dinkins never quite managed to be a mayor for all New Yorkers, which may be impossible. Nor did the outgoing mayor, Bill de Blasio, meaningfully reduce economic inequality.
Eric Adams, who will take over from Mr de Blasio on January 1st, planned to hold his inauguration in Flatbush, a working-class neighbourhood in Brooklyn—a nod to both the outer-borough coalition that propelled him into office and to his own upbringing in Brooklyn and Queens. But Omicron put paid to those plans; as cases spiked in New York, Mr Adams cancelled his own celebration. “I don’t need an inauguration,” he explained. “I just need a mattress and a floor…We don’t want to put people in danger.” That may be the easiest decision he makes for years to come.
Mr Adams inherits a reeling city. The economic fallout on New York from the September 11th attacks was largely confined to lower Manhattan; the pandemic, by contrast, has shuttered businesses across all five boroughs. New York lost 630,000 jobs in 2020 and has an unemployment rate, 9%, that is more than double the national average. Tourists are staying away. The city has 100,000 fewer restaurant jobs than it did in early 2020, and hotel occupancy rates hover around 50%, compared with 90% before the pandemic.
Subway ridership is only just over half its pre-pandemic levels. Only 28% of Manhattan’s office workers are at their desks on any given day, and just 8% come in every day. Midtown is dead. Employment is unlikely to return to pre-pandemic levels until at least 2024. James Parrott of the New School’s Centre for New York City Affairs expects that double-digit unemployment rates for the city’s African-American and Latino populations could last even longer.
Fortunately, Mr Adams has a better relationship with the city’s businesses than did his predecessor, though that is a low bar. Stephen Scherr, the chief financial officer of Goldman Sachs, is on the incoming mayor’s transition team, which includes 700 people, compared with Mr de Blasio’s team of 60 in 2013. Mr Adams has also created a corporate council of advisers, including executives from the finance, real-estate, hospitality and tech sectors—all focused on encouraging workers to get back to their desks and not leave New York for warmer, lower-tax climes. Mr Adams has grand plans to turn the city into a cybersecurity hub. He also wants to attract cryptocurrency businesses, and has suggested he might be paid in bitcoin.
He also ran on public safety, distinguishing him from his wealthy, liberal Democratic rivals, and boosting his popularity in the city’s higher-crime areas. Overall, New York is far less safe than it was before the pandemic, with murders up 50% and non-fatal shootings double what they were two years ago. Unusually, Mr Adams paired that campaign with one for police reform. A former officer himself, he often found himself in trouble while in uniform for his vocal criticism of the department. He protested against police brutality on the same streets he patrolled. His pick for top cop, Keechant Sewell, came from outside the department’s rank-and-file; she was chief of detectives for Nassau County, on Long Island, and will be the city’s first female commissioner.
Reforming the world’s biggest police force while also making the city safer will be a difficult task. Already he has enraged progressives by vowing to restore the city’s plainclothes anti-crime units, which were notorious for stopping and searching non-white people with inadequate pretexts. Hawk Newsome, a vocal Black Lives Matter activist, warned, “there will be riots, there will be fire and there will be bloodshed” if those units return.
Mr Adams also vowed to restore solitary confinement in the city’s jails. If he successfully walks the tightrope he has strung for himself, the city will be better for it. Unlike his predecessor, he has good relations with the state’s governor, Kathy Hochul, which will help with funding and reduce turf wars (Mr de Blasio and Andrew Cuomo, who resigned in disgrace, famously loathed each other).
To show support for the city’s all-important hospitality industry, Mr Adams intends to hit the town every night. New York has not had a true carousing mayor since Jimmy Walker in the 1920s, who was a fixture at speakeasies and boxing matches. Like Ed Koch, who headed the city during when it was broke in the 1970s and 80s, Mr Adams seems to love being around ordinary New Yorkers. He drew crowds of enthusiastic supporters during the campaign, many of whom shared concerns about crime or stories of economic hardship.
Unlike his two predecessors, Mr Adams is personally familiar with such stories. He talks of carrying his clothes to school in a rubbish bag, afraid his family would be evicted. He has a learning disability, and was beaten by police when he was 15 years old. He joined the police force before serving in the state legislature and as Brooklyn’s borough president. Once a Republican, he now considers himself a liberal.
During the campaign, it was unclear where he actually lived: in his office in Brooklyn’s Borough Hall, in a basement apartment he owned in the borough or in New Jersey, where his partner lives. One morning after a late night, he was filmed driving on the sidewalk. And he can be prickly and defensive. Questioned over his decision to restore solitary confinement, he sputtered, “I wore a bulletproof vest for 22 years and protected the people of this city. When you do that, then you have the right to question me.” None of this bothered voters too much. “His quirks are what make him a beloved figure,” says Michael Hendrix of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think-tank.
Mr Adams had better get used to tough questions. In a democracy, people can challenge or be openly rude to elected officials anytime they like. When Mr Koch walked the streets, he would ask people, “How’m I doin’?” New Yorkers, not known for their restraint, told him. ■
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