Who is Eric Adams?: some facts about the mysterious mayor of New York

He came as mayor”swagger“. He was an enthusiastic participant in New York nightlife, hanging out in nightclubs until the early hours of the morning and holding morning meetings at City Hall.

He was a self-proclaimed vegan, a fan of fish and barely slept. When he did, no one really knew where. He had an apartment in Brooklyn, an official residence at Gracie Mansion on the Upper East Side, and a girlfriend in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

Since Eric Adams took office on New Year’s Eve 2021, He promised to be a mayor like New Yorkers had never seen.

“I’m like broccoli. Now you’ll hate me, but then you’ll love me” he said on one occasion.

Adams was both a constant public presence and an unknown figure: quick with incomprehensible quotes, increasingly exasperated by journalists, riding a wave of bravado and bravado in a city facing multiple crises.

He disrupted some of the city’s political boundaries: a Democrat who beefed up the police department and clashed with a more liberal city council. A street kid who made good friends with the merchants and surrounded himself with loyalists.

It all came crashing down Thursday, when a federal investigation that had dogged the mayor for nearly a year culminated in indictments.

Adams, who was a police officerhe promised to bring order to the city and often saw salvation in technology: He defended a police robot that briefly patrolled the Times Square subway station. Although crime has fallen during his tenure, some episodes of random violence have left many New Yorkers feeling unsafe.

When a flood of immigrants arrived in 2023, flooding the city’s shelter system, the mayor declared that the immigrants would “destroy New York”. And he added: “I can’t see the end of it..

He found another enemy in the city’s vermin, who declared war on the rats. It sponsored the National Urban Rat Summit, appointed a rat czar and declared a Day of Rat Action in its Harlem Rat Mitigation Zone, one of four such zones. But he also avoided a $300 fine for infesting his Brooklyn apartment.

Like many mayors before him, he seemed to take no criticism. When his grades plummeted a few months into his tenure, he responded only, “A pass isn’t an A, but a pass isn’t a fail.”

However, he was haunted by dissatisfaction. Faced with a budget deficit that he attributed to the migration crisis and exaggerated its effects, he made unpopular budget cuts to the police, schools and libraries.

The stories and questions multiplied. Did you live in New York or in the New Jersey apartment you owned with your partner Tracey Collins? A Florida woman accused him of sexual assault in 1993 when he was a member of the New York Police Department, an allegation he denied.

In other respects it was impossible to pigeonhole.

“I’m not a traditional mayor,” he said pointlessly. Appearing at a guayabera press conference, he promised multiple New York immigrant groups: “When I wear your clothes, I’m saying I’m going to work for you as mayor.”

But he was usually seen in expensive, perfectly tailored suits, with dazzling cufflinks or a pin-collared shirt secured with tiny studs, a tiny metallic sheen.

Then there were the aphorisms, the most famous of which he often repeated: “All those who hate me become my waiters when I sit at the table of success.”

There was more:

“Municipal presidents do not die, but multiply.”

“I have a swagger.

Voters never knew where he would appear.

I was in Washington Heights cuddling a chihuahua; he was at a Midtown nightclub, sitting in a booth next to rapper French Montana; He was at a party hosted by a bank and was shaking his head as model Cara Delevingne danced next to him.

Adams defined himself as “mayor of hip hop” and insisted that going out was part of his job. “This is a nightlife city. I have to try the product. “I have to get out,” he said on the late-night talk show. And he added: “We used to be the best place in the world. “We are very boring now.

He was once called New York’s most famous vegan — and likened cheese to heroin — but later clarified that he was just trying to stick to a plant-based diet. He called anyone who questioned him about eating fish or meat the “food police”.

He never stopped defending his hometown, even as he held flag-raising ceremonies in honor of one country after another.

“New York is the Tel Aviv of the United States”he said. He also said that they were American Athens, American Istanbul, American Kiev, American Seoul and American Zagreb.

“Everybody who moved to Florida, come back to New York because New York is where you want to be,” he said.

New York’s most unpredictable mayor said Thursday morning that nothing that’s happening is impossible or unpredictable.

“We’re not surprised. We expected it,” Adams said quietly at a news conference as more than two dozen supporters nodded in agreement around him.

It’s the day many New Yorkers have been waiting for after months of research. It is possible that even Adams foresaw this. In March, he attempted to write his own legacy on the Breakfast Club radio show.

“When he hangs up his gloves,” Adams said, “people are going to say, ‘Listen, he was a real bald eared brother who did whatever he needed to do as mayor of New York.’

© The New York Times 2024.