Eric Adams indictment: New York City mayor must govern while facing federal charges
New York City Mayor Eric Adams exits federal court after his arraignment on Friday. Credit: Ed Quinn
“Stay focused, no distractions and grind” is a mayoral mantra that Eric Adams chants at rallies, posts to Instagram and even embroiders on hats.
But the distraction of federal investigations, culminating in Adams’ historic indictment last week on corruption charges, has made it harder to focus on governing the nation’s biggest city. And the storms threaten to grind the municipal bureaucracy into paralysis.
“It’s difficult. You know, we do get distracted. It’s hard sometimes to focus,” said Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Adams’ top adviser, hours after criminal investigators intercepted her at Kennedy Airport on Friday returning from a vacation to Japan, seized her cellphone and told her that her home was currently being searched.
At least a dozen others in Adams’ circle have been subpoenaed, had their homes raided by the FBI, seen their electronics seized or been served with warrants. There are at least three, and possibly four, other pending investigations besides the one for which Adams was indicted. He pleaded not guilty.
Appointees are quitting. Vacancies — a problem for most of Adams' mayoralty, even before the scandals — are piling up. The drama notwithstanding, the city of 8.3 million people and its sprawling, $112.4 billion government must continue to function.
Mayor Eric Adams wears a hat with his slogan “Stay Focused, No Distractions and Grind” in March at a “Talk to Eric” event in Queens. Credit: Mayoral Photography Office/Benny Polatseck
Government still running
Experts said that the bread-and-butter duties of civil servants probably aren't meaningfully being affected, but the tumult at the top is likely to stagnate big-picture policies and jeopardize the city in times of crisis.
“For day-to-day activity, for the normal things that government has to do, that will continue, with relatively little disruption, because the government is so well staffed with so many capable people,” said the author Chris McNickle, author of the book "To Be Mayor of New York" and others about former mayors David Dinkins and Mike Bloomberg.
Fabien Levy, Adams’ deputy for communication, said the government is running well and doing the things people expect.
“The trash is still getting picked up, the streets are still being patrolled by officers, kids can still go to school,” Levy told Newsday on Friday at City Hall. “I think that’s what the majority or if not all 8.3 million New Yorkers care about. And that’s gonna continue to work every day.”
He added: “You can see, your city government’s still working. We have dozens of city agencies and commissioners and hundreds of thousands of city employees that continue to do work every single day. None of them are affected.”
Still, long-term projects — such as Adams’ "City of Yes," the ambitious proposal to ease the city's record-low vacancy rate by revamping the zoning code and creating 100,000 new homes, or another to remove trash-filled bags from the sidewalk and containerize garbage instead — are now going to be harder to implement.
Leaders get things done by allocating resources to allies, using the power of the bully pulpit and overwhelming foes. All of that is immeasurably more difficult when wounded by scandal, McNickle said.
“It’s a promise being made by a person who might be changing public residence from Gracie Mansion to a federal detention center,” McNickle said. “He’s not in a position to keep promises he might make."
What about emergencies?
Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute, is concerned about how the administration’s troubles might imperil the response to a crisis that demands 24/7 mayoral leadership.
“Say Adams had to be in court one morning, and we had a major weather event or other type or event in the city, would the federal prosecutors give him leeway to skip court on that day? What is the situation that we’re entering here?”
The day his indictment was unsealed, Adams signed an executive order transferring the duties of his first deputy, Sheena Wright, whose home was raided earlier this month by the FBI, if she leaves her post. Currently, the first deputy mayor is in charge when the mayor is out of town or otherwise temporarily indisposed. The order transfers the powers of the first deputy to another deputy, Anne Williams-Isom, who oversees health and human services.
The leadership of the city’s public safety apparatus — police, fire, buildings, jails — have all seen resignations. In the most recent example, the police commissioner, Edward Caban, resigned soon after the FBI seized his phone as well as those of his twin brother and others in senior NYPD jobs. Soon came news that the feds raided the homes of Caban's interim replacement, Tom Donlon.
Mayor Eric Adams keeps a photo on a mantel of his City Hall office of one of his predecessors, Jimmy Walker, who as mayor from 1926 to 1932 left town before he could be criminally charged with corruption. Credit: Politico/Jeff Coltin
Although Adams is the first mayor in modern New York City history to be criminally charged while in office, he’s not the first to face debilitating scandal. Mushrooming corruption probes in the 1980s led Ed Koch to contemplate suicide. The bribe-taking, womanizing Jimmy Walker, mayor from 1926 to 1932, would have been charged had he not fled with his mistress to Europe. And William O'Dwyer, mayor from 1946 to 1950, quit and was appointed ambassador to Mexico while under the weight of a bookie scandal involving cops in Brooklyn.
But nowadays the mayoralty is far more powerful, and the public expects more from government than in Jimmy Walker’s time, said McNickle, who's writing a fourth book that will cover the O'Dwyer scandal.
As for Adams, he came into office in 2022 promising to "get stuff done," and he said he's not done doing that.
In the aftermath of the indictment, Adams has gone about his business as usual, meeting with an Italian journalist, dancing at a senior center in Harlem, delivering impromptu remarks to personnel at City Hall and speaking from a pulpit at a Jamaica, Queens, church.
“I do a lot of praying, and I’m looking forward, when I leave here, to go on and continue to do what I do, moving our city forward,” Adams said Saturday. “That is what needs to take place now.”
Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.
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