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Status: 08.07.2021 10:22 a.m.
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Eric Adams won the Democratic primary – and will most likely become New York’s new Mayor. The ex-police officer wants to get a grip on the glut of weapons and poverty.
From Antje Passenheim,
ARD-Studio New York
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Eric Adams also likes to relate the cheers of the crowd to himself when he walks along Broadway in the confetti parade, which is actually New York’s first responders, beaming and waving. “As a former emergency worker. As someone with their feet on the ground, these people here are my heroes,” he says.
Antje Passenheim
ARD-Studio New York
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Adams wants to be the shining hero of New York. It has just become known that he is winning the democratic primary elections for mayor’s office. It’s not official yet. Nevertheless, he enjoys the television appearance as if it were already so. The presenter of the broadcaster CBS also welcomes him as “almost-mayor”.
In the liberal stronghold of New York, a Democratic winner in the primary is also the most likely winner of the actual November election. The 60-year-old has never left any doubts that he is tough enough for the job, which is considered the toughest right after the presidency: “I am a man of workers. One who brings the economy up and crime down. And New York back, “he promised during the election campaign.
Eric Adams is already enjoying bathing in the crowd – here at a parade for the Corona heroes of New York.
Image: AFP
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“We have a glut of weapons here”
The borough mayor of Brooklyn wears two blue collars: the “blue collar” of the working class, into which he grew up in the borough of Queens, and that of the police uniform. Both made him a fighter. “There is a group of people here who live permanently in systemic poverty. We go to restaurants, we eat well, we take a taxi – but that’s the reality in America and New York,” he says. “If we want to turn the city inside out, we have to end these injustices. And there are many ways to do that.”
When he was 15, a white police officer beat him. That’s when the African American decided to become a cop himself. In his campaign appearances, he likes to quote how he dared to prevent a knife attack in the subway while on a shift – without shooting.
“We have a glut of weapons here and we have to stop this,” he urged. “We need a police unit that only specializes in illegal weapons in the city.”
Adams is already dreaming of a bubble bath
Adams served as a police officer for 22 years. He has made it clear: He is not thinking of withdrawing funds from the police, as many New Yorkers have requested as a result of the Black Lives Matter protests.
But neither does the moderate politician tolerate police violence and structural racism. Because something is going wrong in the USA, that’s what Adams calls it: “We don’t function as a city and not as a country.”
The city that he is likely to take over has to find itself again after the pandemic. One of their greatest concerns is the rise in violent crime.
The moderate Adams would replace the left Mayor Bill de Blasio, who can no longer run after two terms in office. In the November election, he must assert himself against the Republican vigilante founder Curtis Sliwa. Adams sees it relaxed: the day after the election, he announced, he would take a long bubble bath.
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