In the victory speech, New York’s next mayor quoted lines from Canadian rapper Drake: “We started at the bottom, now we’re here.” As he did in the campaign, Democrat Eric Adams highlighted his own humble biography — the dyslexic son of the unmarried cleaning woman who arrived at university, the black man who was beaten by cops as a young man and became captain of the New York police.
But he could have chosen the verses of a distinguished New Yorker. “Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes,” wrote poet Walt Whitman in the 19th century.
As soon as the celebration with supporters and campaign members ended, Adams headed to a club in the Soho neighborhood and went to toast with big businessmen and celebrities at a private party. He took the opportunity to, once again, snipe the current mayor, Bill de Blasio —who supported his candidacy—, promising to govern as a friend of the local elite, fighting bureaucracy.
The politics of this city built by immigrants has always produced controversial characters. But it’s not every day that a walking metamorphosis like Eric Adams emerges. He, who was already a member of the Republican Party, is a vegan and adept at meditating and bathing in the petals, introduces himself as the bully who doesn’t take shit home and warns him that he can enter a church armed.
Adams campaigned as a pragmatic centrist, vowing to tackle worrying crime rates that have risen again since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. He has ambitious, though not necessarily detailed, plans to promote access to child care and housing for low-income families.
The new mayor argues that, being black and a former police officer, he can achieve balance in a strict security policy that does not violate human rights, especially of blacks and Latinos.
After retiring from the New York Police Department in 2006, Adams was elected senator in the state assembly and currently holds the position of Brooklyn regional administrator. But the 61-year-old Democrat has been dreaming of running the city since the 1990s, when he approached political strategists.
In addition to political ambition, the other constant in the biography of the new mayor is the detailed construction of the Eric Adams myth. At this point, he adheres to a maxim coined by writer Mark Twain: “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.” Over the years, it has accumulated many more stories than witnesses to its veracity.
With an opaque and intensely private personal life, Adams even attracted doubts about his address, when reporters realized that the New York mayoral candidate lived across the Hudson River in New Jersey, where he has an apartment with his partner, Tracey Collins. . Always a performer, Adams took TV cameras to a home he owns in Brooklyn, where the shoes he found seemed to belong to his only child, Jordan.
At the moment, Eric Adams’ trademark smile is dominating the victorious candidate’s interaction with the combative New York press.
In celebration of the Democratic primary election victory in June, Adams’ campaign barred two investigative reporters who had published unflattering profiles of the politician. Which version of Eric Adams will prevail in January? One prediction is safe: it won’t bore New Yorkers.
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