To IT’SUnited States, theew Yorkers are called to the polls on Tuesday November 2 to elect their new mayor. In total, 5.5 million people are called upon to choose Bill de Blasio’s successor in this Democratic stronghold. Two candidates, a Democrat and a Republican, compete. They have very different profiles, sometimes even surprising.
Eric Adams: a former police officer, vegan, originally from Brooklyn
The favorite is therefore, logically, the Democratic candidate. Eric Adams, 61, is a vegan and, like any good American candidate for election, he has a story to tell. Part of his is that he has diabetes and nearly lost his sight in 2016. He says eating healthy saved him and made a book out of it.
His ambition is therefore to succeed the unpopular Bill de Blasio and thus become the second black mayor of New York City, after David Dinkins between 1990 and 1993. In a clip, Eric Adams tells why he spent twenty years in the New York police force and founded a union that fights against racism. According to him, it all started with a brutal arrest when he was 15, when he was about to turn to delinquency. He finally chose the uniform. His goal, he says, is to “change the system from within”.
He later became a New York State Senator and Brooklyn Borough President. It is in the context of this last mandate that he is the subject of an investigation into a possible conflict of interest. Brooklyn and Queens are the neighborhoods in which he grew up, in a poor family: a housekeeper mother, a butcher father.
It was therefore naturally in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx that he concentrated his campaign. Eric Adams targets the middle and working classes, without neglecting the business districts. His profile is reassuring because the senator belongs to the right wing of the Democratic Party. Even the New York Post, a conservative newspaper, supports him.
If elected, Eric Adams will have to continue to heal the social and economic wounds of a city of more than 8 million inhabitants bruised by the Covid-19, which killed more than 34,000 people there. It will also have to meet the expectations of the population in terms of security because the crime indicators have gone into the red in 2020.
Curtis Sliwa: a fan of cats, anti-system, with a red beret
For his part, the Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, is a fan of cats. This 67-year-old man has 17 and wants to set up shelters “without killing” – according to his expression – for felines but also dogs that roam the streets.
The rest of Curtis Sliwa’s campaign takes on Trumpist overtones, with anti-system rhetoric, even though he has already said he hates the former president. Safety is his preferred campaign theme. When Eric Adams promises more crime, confinement and school closures, the Republican candidate says he wants to give New York back to the people, not the politicians.
I’m Curtis Sliwa, and I’m asking for your vote on November 2nd to save and resurrect New York City. pic.twitter.com/kJbetvMhMZ
— Curtis Sliwa for NYC Mayor (@CurtisSliwa) October 23, 2021
Curtis Sliwa made his notoriety in the late 1970s, creating “The Guardian Angels”, a kind of militia that volunteered patrols in the subway to prevent muggings when New York was a cutthroat. Their distinctive sign: a red beret, which Curtis Sliwa never let go.
The Republican candidate jostled Eric Adams during the last televised debates but, according to the latest polls, this will not be enough because Eric Adams has a 40-point lead. On the other hand, the participation rate is difficult to predict, even if it is often low for local elections.
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