Former police officer from a modest family, second African-American mayor in the history of New York, Eric Adams promised renewal and “style”: less than three years after his election, his mandate only hangs on wire after his indictment for corruption.
The 64-year-old Democrat was indicted by federal prosecutors in Manhattan in a vast case of illegal campaign financing and corruption linked to Turkey. He was accused Thursday of having been “watered” with bribes for years and of having “seriously broken the bond of trust with the public”, according to prosecutor Damian Williams.
A scent of dirty affairs has been blowing for several months around New York City Hall, where several close to the mayor have resigned, including the police chief.
A shame for Eric Adams, himself a former captain of the New York Police Department (NYPD), elected in 2021 on the promise of restoring security, after an increase in violent crimes during the Covid pandemic, and to restore the largest city of the United States on good economic track.
In New York, a progressive bastion, his success in the primary then his election in November 2021 marked a victory for the more centrist wing of the Democratic Party.
And a new page of an exceptional destiny. Born in Brooklyn, Eric Adams flirted with delinquency in his youth and experienced police violence, before making a career at the NYPD, where he fought against racism.
During his election, he poignantly held up a portrait of his recently deceased mother, who raised him while working as a housekeeper and cook.
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But the new mayor also reveals himself to be a man of media stunts who surfs the spirit of the times, like his promise to receive his compensation in the form of cryptocurrencies or the implementation, ultimately abandoned, of a police robot in the Times Square subway station.
With a bright little chip in his ear and aviator glasses, the elected official who highlights his vegan diet proclaims himself a “stylish” (“swagger”) mayor, equally at ease in front of his former police colleagues and the business community. whether on the steps of the Met Gala or under the neon lights of nightclubs.
But several appointments of relatives, including his brother as his security advisor, are raising eyebrows. And he attracts criticism from his left wing by reestablishing controversial police patrol units, dismantled because they controlled more the African-American and Hispanic minorities.
With a lot of communication, he also declared war on the rats that invade the streets of New York, by appointing a chief pest control then by organizing a “summit” on the subject, even though he himself has been fined several times for rodent infestations at his Brooklyn residence.
“He’s a mayor who campaigns and advertises. It’s really hard to credit him with a major political accomplishment,” said Brian Arbor, professor of political science at John Jay College in New York.
“He makes so many blunders that it no longer matters,” he adds.
Faced with a considerable influx of migrants – more than 200,000 in two years – the mayor first assured that they were welcome in New York, before asserting that the migration crisis would “destroy” the city.
Eric Adams prides himself on having reduced the number of violent crimes in the megalopolis, a trend at work at the national level. But under his mandate, New Yorkers also had to deal with the rising cost of living and a housing crisis that pushed rents to unprecedented levels in a city already known to be expensive.
