Dhe election count was chaotic. That’s why it took almost two weeks until the (provisional) winner of the New York mayoral election was finally determined: So his name is Eric Adams, and the most important thing about him is not his skin color – he will be the second black mayor of New York City -, but the color of the uniform he wore for two decades: blue.
Adams was a police officer before he became a Democratic Party politician. The election of the 60-year-old means two things: first, that the left wing of the party around Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will not become the dominant wing of the Democratic Party, that the Democrats (unlike the Labor Party under Jeremy Corbyn) are not even thinking about themselves to radicalize; Second, the demand to withdraw funds from the police or to liquidate them completely, which was often heard last summer in the course of the demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd, was rejected by the majority in New York – including by black residents of the City. There are reasons that will be discussed in a moment.
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Actually, this election is a pre-election: It was a matter of choosing between different candidates within the Republican as well as the Democratic Party. The Republicans decided to put a certain Curtis Sliwa into the race – a name we can forget in a minute. New York is left-wing liberal; de facto it is a one-party state; the Republican Party has – since its trumpification – definitely no longer a chance in this city. There will still be an election in November, but the outcome has basically already been determined today.
It’s not difficult to imagine an alternate story in which the United States would never have managed to pull itself together; Virginia and Rhode Island and New Jersey would have remained independent states, such as Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.
And it’s not difficult to imagine that in that alternate story, New York City would have become a city-state modeled on Singapore. After all, the city has – an estimated – eight million inhabitants, as many as Austria or Switzerland, and extends over five major districts (Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island), each of which is home to its own universe. The mayor’s job is often referred to as “number two” in our timeline in which the United States exists: second most important – and second most difficult – job after that of president.
Nobody will mourn the incumbent mayor
The incumbent mayor, the leftist Bill de Blasio – who replaced billionaire Michael Bloomberg in 2014 – acted largely unlucky. This became apparent at the beginning of the corona epidemic, when he had not understood for too long how serious the situation was. Nobody will mourn him, not even the leftist left.
Eric Adams becomes mayor at a time that is in many ways a time of upheaval for New York – much more radical than the period after September 11th. More than 50,000 people fell victim to the treacherous plague; as everywhere in the United States, blacks and Hispanic Americans were more affected than others.
The good news is that vaccination rates are high – 51.6 percent of the population received both doses of the vaccine. The businesses that survived are reopening. Restaurants are full. In the subway, on the bus and in the cinema, people still wear masks, elsewhere the mask requirement has long since fallen, and yet the number of seriously ill and dead people has fallen continuously; That’s the good news. If you walk through New York this summer, you will experience a city that is awakening from a nightmare. The time when the streets were dead and the howling of the ambulance could be heard everywhere seems unreal to passers-by.
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The bad news: The crime rate rose 22 percent in May 2021 compared to May 2020. There were 46.7 percent more robberies than the previous year and 173 shootings so far. It is not yet as if one would notice this as a normal citizen – the crimes are concentrated in a few hot spots. But the statistics are enough to bring back uncomfortable memories of the 1970s, when muggings were part of everyday life, every trip on the subway became an adventure vacation and there were areas that were ruled by gangs. And because the victims of violent crimes are often poor and dark-skinned, they by no means want the police to withdraw from the city.
At the same time, the New Yorkers also remember the television images of the “Black Lives Matter” demonstrations a year ago, when their police acted with great brutality; when police cars drove into peacefully demonstrating crowds in Brooklyn; when journalists were arrested for doing their job and documenting the violence.
$ 2,700 monthly rent – a record low in New York City
The New Yorkers will expect their Mayor Eric Adams to manage the following balancing act: on the one hand, he should protect them from criminals – and on the other hand, reform the police in such a way that violent officials become friends and helpers. In his election commercial, he said he was a victim of the police himself as a child: they arrested him and his brother when they were children and beat them at the police station. But he, Adams said in the commercial, had decided not to be bitter and to reform the system from within. That’s why he became a police officer himself. Unlike the hapless de Blasio, who was almost an outsider when he was surprisingly elected, Eric Adams is a well-connected political professional: Since 2013 he has been the “Borough President” of Brooklyn, the most populous district in New York City.
One of the most important indicators of how New York is doing is the real estate market. And the real estate market is glowing: more than thirty sales contracts for four million dollars or more have been signed every week since February. In other words, the wealthy New Yorkers who fled to the Hamptons during the plague are returning to the city. At the same time, rents have fallen to a record low: on average, you now only pay $ 2,700 per month for an apartment.
Both trends hide opportunities and risks. Because in the years before the pandemic, New York had become a city in which the poor were increasingly being displaced to the outskirts. In Manhattan, non-millionaires could hardly afford life anyway because of high rents and purchase prices, but parts of Brooklyn had long since become unaffordable. We shall see whether the epidemic is a turning point; whether New York will be a city in the future, in which people of all walks of life and skin colors can live – without fear of trigger-happy gangs. If Eric Adams, as mayor, can turn the crisis into an opportunity, he could become an important partner for President Biden.
