Elected To Office More Than Two Years Ago as a Moderate Democrat Embracing a Law-and-Order Platform, Mayor Adams Has Become a Pariah in the Democrat Part, at Odds with His Party on Just About Every Agenda Item, His Administration has Become Engulfed in Multiple Federal Investigations for Failure to Maintain, Among all Things, Law-and-Order.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 7: New York City Mayor Eric Adams attends the annual Labor Day Parade on September 7, 2024, in midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York. The FBI continued to seize the phones and make house raids of several top officials in the Adams administration earlier in the week, and it’s believed that there are four separate investigations into corruption in the Adams administration. (Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)
By Samiha Charles, CRDN
Wednesday, September 18, 2024
New York City Mayor Eric Adams was elected to Office, effectively as a consensus candidate. He was viewed by the party as the lesser of two evils (for lack of a better term): Maya Wiley (viewed as an extreme progressive) on the one hand, or Eric Adams (a Republican turned Democrat, viewed as being generally much more conservative than the City’s electorate and political establishment on Democrat agenda items), the latter deemed by the consensus as the safer of the two options. By the time of the New York City 2021 Mayoral Campaign and ensuing election, Republicans had successfully transformed consensus calls for meaningful dialogue on issues of inequality in the wake of the death of George Floyd to a so-called “woke ideology” run amuck. Mr. Adams capitalized on that changed sentiment. There was little opposition from party leaders to Mr. Adams’ conservative platform organized around concepts of law and order that became popular in the mid-1990s during the Rudolph Giuliani Mayoral Administration, such as stop and frisk, which by the time Mr. Adams assumed Office had been deemed to be a racially discriminative form of policing.
However, fast-forward two-and-a-half years later, and the state and local New York Democrat establishment, as well as the national Democrat Party, have buyer’s remorse. The Democrat Party, nationally and locally, views the Adams Administration as a horror show, which will not end, and every other day, just when one presumes it cannot get worse, another shoe drops. Suddenly, there is perspective and reconsideration that pushing aside Ms. Wiley, a lawyer, and a professor, could not have been as bad or worse as the Adams Administration. Now there are calls for Mr. Admas to step down and turn over the reins of New York City Mayor. Those calls are coming from conservatives who have supported Mr. Adams and liberals, who probably never quite felt comfortable with Mr. Adams’ election to Mayor.
Recently, Mr. Adams’ Chief Counsel, Lisa Zornberg, resigned. But Ms. Zornberg did not simply resign. She abruptly resigned from her position leaving Mr. Adams without chief legal counsel. Moreover, news soon leaked that Ms. Zornberg was unable to get Mr. Adams to heed her legal advice. What exactly was Ms. Zornberg attempting to do? From the news that leaked it appears that Ms. Zornberg was attempting to get Mr. Adams to do something that every politician does when one close to them has become accused of a controversial act, they demand that such person tender their resignation, chiefly because to not do so would be to allow the underlying accusation or controversial to consume the Administration. Such demanded resignations are both plausible and rational. However, in two and a half years, the Adams Administration has had a running feud with the plausible and the rational. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Ms. Zornberg abruptly resigned from her position. Ms. Zornberg was merely coming to terms with something that likely had either being going on her entire tenure as Chief Counsel, or had simply come to a head.
In a letter sent to the Mayor’s Office she wrote “I am tendering my resignation, effective today, as I have concluded that I can no longer effectively serve in my position.” None of this should have come as a shock to anyone. The only question is does Mr. Adams finish out the duration of his term, which ends December 31, 2025, or does he resign? With more than a year left to the end of his term, it is quite difficult to see how Mr. Adams survives this ever-growing firestorm, particularly in the absence of the wisdom of a seasoned Chief Counsel. Ms. Zornberg had been a staunch defender of Mr. Adams. Responding to Ms. Zornberg’s departure, Mr. Adams released a statement reading in pertinent part, expressing his appreciation of Ms. Zornberg’s work and that, “These are hard jobs, and we don’t expect anyone to stay in them forever.” Ms. Zornberg’s departure follows that of Edward A. Caban, the NYPD’s first Latino commissioner. Mr. Caban resigned from his position as NYPD Commission amidst one of a number of federal investigations of the Adams Administration.
Just about a week earlier, federal agents raided Mr. Caban and his twin’s home. Agents seized their electronic devices. The seizures are said to be linked to alleged kickbacks received by Mr. Caban’s brother as to the NYPD’s policing of local bars and nightclubs in Midtown Manhattan concerning alleged frivolous and made-up violations, such as alleged noise complaints. Within days of Mr. Caban’s abrupt resignation, Thomas Donlon, who had previously been the head of the New York Homeland Security office, worldwide security chief of Black Rock, worked for the FBI., replaced Mr. Caban. Mr. Donlon, in addition to being highly recommended, was put into the position as a result of state and federal lawmakers demand that Mr. Adams allow one from outside the NYPD to take over the NYPD.
Mr. Donlon is not a person handpicked by Mayor Adams. Therefore, Mr. Adams has lost substantial and fundamental control of the NYPD. That effectively means that Mr. Adams, in his first term as Mayor, is effectively a lame duck.