New year, new Mayor. Mayor Eric Adams began this year by riding the subway to City Hall. That’s a good start. Optics matter. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio fancied himself a “man of the people” except that he would take half the morning traveling to and from Gracie Mansion to the Brooklyn Y for his work out – mind you, in a $65,000 Hybrid SUV – an oxymoron, and certainly not a vehicle that any average man or woman “of the people” is able to afford, let alone the average New Yorker. Comical really. Former Mayor Mike Bloomberg, a man of considerable self-made wealth, insisted on taking the subway to City Hall and to related meetings a majority of the time. The optics: the subway is not only safe, it’s convenient and good enough for me. Mayor Adams knows this. He was a former police officer. He knows that the only way New York City is to recover, is to ensure its denizens feel safe. He has his work cut out for him. How else are you going to persuade office workers to come back to the office? Working from home is not sustainable, unless of course you work for a dystopian tech company whose products and services are marketed to companies as a benefit. I digress.
With a crowded field of candidates for the Democratic primary for mayoral hopefuls, with the “woke” ranked choice voting, a system which is seen to disenfranchise voters, and a system of which Jason Snead, Executive Director of the Honest Elections Project, said, “It just makes the process more complex. It does not do anything to improve voter turnout or bolster voter confidence in the elections, and it is truly an unnecessary reform”, New York City was fortunate to have Eric Adams prevail to become the Democratic nominee. Perhaps Eric Adams doesn’t bring the gravitas, seasoning and experience as former NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly did; but he is a solid second. It’s enough for him to appeal to pragmatic moderates and republicans like myself. Curtis Sliwa, despite his success on fighting crime, simply doesn’t appeal to democrats and progressives, hence the outcome of the recent mayoral election.
What’s promising is that Mayor Adams made it clear that he is not kowtowing to mob justice nor to the uber-woke crowd…for now. I’m sure he knows that once you go woke, you go broke, as the saying goes. And New York is broke. And it’s not the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn or Staten Island that will lead in New York City’s recovery, it’s the Island of Manhattan. Manhattan will lead Gotham’s recovery provided Mayor Adams gets tough on crime and respects and honors New York’s finest. Another promising act is that Mayor Adams publicly acknowledged former Detective Frank Serpico– who, back in the 1970’s worked tirelessly to expose police corruption—as his inspiration. It’s my hope that Mayor Adams and his back-to-basics approach will start to lead this great city to its very much needed recovery.
