1. Second black mayor
Guaranteed to be elected mayor of New York in November (the city votes overwhelmingly Democratic), Eric Adams will be the second black mayor in the history of the Big Apple. The first, David Dinkins, had been the city’s chief magistrate from 1990 to 1993, at a time when crime was still raging. Dinkins launched reforms that paid off, but too late to counter the perception of a city in the throes of anarchy. Trying to get re-elected, he was beaten by Rudy Giuliani.
2. P’tit gars of Brooklyn
Father butcher, mother housekeeper who had not completed his studies, Adams grew up with five siblings in Brooklyn, a neighborhood where he was born on 1is September 1960. After graduating from high school in Queens high school, he attended New York City College of Technology while employed in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. During his campaign for mayor, he often highlighted his humble origins.
3. Ex-flic
Adams was a New York police officer for over twenty years before entering politics. One of his motivations to don the blue uniform, he says, was to have been arrested and beaten by cops when he was 15 years old. He vowed to change the culture of the NYPD (New York Police Department) from within and did a lot to defend and promote the city’s black police. However, it is not unanimous among police unions: the Captains Endowment Association, its former union, has supported another candidate.
American Police: The Culture of Violence
4. Legislator
In 2006, Adams retired as a police officer and won a seat in the New York State Senate, where he represented part of Brooklyn, a district of which he became the first black president in 2013. It was during these years that he weaves his networks in the formidable New York democratic machine, with the unions – he campaigned for mayor by presenting himself as a “blue collar” candidate – but also the rich donors, lobbyists and real estate developers – extensive connections including ethics have more than once left something to be desired.
5. «Stop-and-fresh»
His stance has been rather slippery on the practice of police “stop-and-frisk”, a “facies offense” that targets mostly blacks and Hispanics. He denounced it for a long time, before tacking and congratulating Rudy Giuliani for using it. Giuliani, he said in 1999, “Deserves huge credit for falling crime rate”. Adams later denounced the abuse of the “stop-and-frisk » before, finally, of defend this practice during the campaign hated by the Democratic left.
6. « Defund »
In the summer of 2020, under the impetus of the Black Lives Matter movement (“Black lives matter”), the left of the Democratic Party wanted to cut into the budgets (“defund” in English) of the police force. Adams has campaigned against this idea, surfing on a growing concern among New Yorkers about the rise in violent crime in 2020 and early 2021. With the Covid-19 ebbing, recent figures show an improvement, however: shootings in the city fell 20% in June from the same month a year earlier, and murders by 23%. But it’s the perception that matters, and fear played a big part in Adams’ victory.
Covid-19 and death of George Floyd: “generation Z” is that of the double shock
7. AOC
The victory of this moderate is a real slap in the face for the left of the New York left, in particular for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the elected Congress star who led an active campaign against Adams. Controversial and criticized by campaign workers, progressive candidate Maya Wiley came third in the first count, a frankly mediocre result for a city as activist as New York.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, by Cécile Duflot: “A double incarnation of modernity”
8. Alternative vote
On paper, the idea was good: a new voting system, which New Yorkers had approved by referendum, to appoint the future mayor of the city. “Instant Second Round Voting”, also known as Alternative Voting, is a ranking electoral system used to choose a winner. If a candidate obtains an absolute majority of votes, he is elected. Otherwise, we eliminate the candidate who received the fewest votes and we attribute the votes of his voters to their second preferred candidate. This allows, in principle, to favor moderate or centrist candidates. San Francisco, for example, has been using this system since 2004, to the satisfaction of many. But in New York …
9. Ric-rac
… Entrusting such an innovation to the city’s election office, a party-controlled body plagued by nepotism and scandals for years, was like taking a sprint over a minefield. It did not fail: in its first statement, the said commission mistakenly counted 135,000 fictitious ballots, created to test the system! Add to this a tiny final gap (around 1%) between Adams and the loser, Kathryn Garcia : a big black cloud of suspicion floats on the final result. Garcia, already, “Requires additional clarity” on the result.
10. Melting pot
In a city as racially and ethnically colorful as New York, the political balances are the result of a learned alchemy. This has been shaken up by controversies, quarrels and accusations of racism between the candidates, and this at a time when New York, hard hit by the virus, is by no means guaranteed to regain its preeminence. One thing is certain: none of the Democratic candidates, and there were many, aroused the enthusiasm of the crowds. Perhaps a sign of the times: New York has the blues.
–
