The title of state senator may have sounded nice to Eric Adams in 2006. Now seven years later, the title of Brooklyn borough president seems to have a better ring to it.
Adams has made public his aspirations to succeed Marty Markowitz and become Brooklyn’s next borough president. Last week, reports of Adams’ 11th-hour effort to raise funds before a filing deadline were made public. In what can been seen as Adams’ 2013 New Year’s resolution, the 52-year-old retired police captain has reportedly raised nearly $400,000 in campaign funds in his run for the borough’s chief executive seat.
Markowitz is constitutionally barred from running again after having served three consecutive terms, leaving the seat wide open for the hunt.
Adams is considered a frontrunner, and while trailing in campaign funds for the office behind another possible candidate, he has been the most vocal candidate to make public his intention to run for the office thus far. Should he win, Adams claims that he would be active in crafting municipal laws, be more discerning in selecting community board members and use the borough president’s bully pulpit to hold more hearings on the issue of affordable housing and health care.
“I have no desire to spend the next four years cutting ribbons only,” Adams recently told the press.
Should Adams lose, he risks nothing but effort. His current state Senate seat is not up for re-election until fall of 2014–well before the date of the borough presidential election, set tentatively for Sept. 10, according to the New York City Board of Elections.
Yet, Adams, despite his recent spike in media coverage, has yet to successfully inspire more than 35 percent of voters in his district. During his most recent election, he garnered nearly 44,000 votes out of an active base of more than 129,000 votes that were actively Democratic and up for grabs in the state’s 20th Senate District, according to the New York State Board of Elections. Brooklyn is decidedly blue and has 918,000 active Democratic voters, according to the New York state board.
The Amsterdam News reached out to Adams for comment, but there was no response by press deadline.