Will Mayor Eric Adams, the city’s second Black mayor in its history, be a one-term leader or is it far too early to tell? Polls say yes, bring on the challengers. Some Black voters and electors say nah.
Seemingly in response to Adams’ burgeoning sexual assault allegation trouble and a overhanging FBI investigation into his campaign finances, as well as his handling of the asylum seeker crisis and constant budget cuts, a slew of new polling has slated Adams as losing his re-election to a whole host of rumored challengers.
So far people have speculated that Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, Senator Zellnor Myrie, Senator Jessica Ramos, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams (in the event that Adams resigns), former city Comptroller Scott Stringer (who already lost to Adams once), and even former Governor Andrew Cuomo could potentially replace Adams as mayor.
To his credit, Adams appears unrattled about an election that’s still technically two years out. At least not publicly where reporters can scribble about it in notebooks and tweets.
“This is the game of politics, and some people are going to politicize this moment,” said Adams at a presser on Dec 5. “I have to govern this city. That’s what we’re doing, and all of the crises that are coming with it. And every mayor I spoke with told us about these moments where a lot of things happen at one time and you have to be focused and disciplined enough to be able to still manage the city. And that’s what we’re doing, and that’s my focus on continuing to manage this city. New York is a big place, and you have to have big ideas to move us forward.”
He firmly believes that he will be the mayor for two terms and has said he has no plans on changing that. “So, if you are not planning your career, shame on you. But you know, running for mayor and managing a city of this level of complexity is different from having an idea, you have to actually be able to execute all the layers of doing so,” said Adams about his potential competitors.
He also doesn’t put a whole lot of stock in polling numbers, pointing to when he was trailing far behind in the mayoral race in 2021. “Do you remember that day when that guy had me by 13 points in the poll, Andrew Yang? He was so happy on skateboards and you know, cheery-faced, and all of a sudden people heard my message and those 13 points went to one point and then all of a sudden I was up,” said Adams.
RELATED: Mayor Adams drops in approval, new poll says
To the pollsters: isn’t it too early for this?
There’s a few polls circulating from different sources: Quinnipiac University, Slingshot Strategies, and Marist Institute for Public Opinion are all based in New York and nonpartisan. The Republican-leaning polling site American Pulse, who’s lead pollster Dustin Olson is a regular commentator on Fox News, reportedly put out a hypothetical matchup between Cuomo and Adams which was paid for by affiliates of Curtis Sliwa. Slingshot also posed this matchup question in their polling.
For context, Marist’s poll was released in November and it surveyed mostly white Democrat women over the age of 60. Slingshot’s poll was released in the beginning of December and surveyed mostly heterosexual, white, Catholic, moderate Dems, 35 to 44 years olds, and renters in Brooklyn respectively. Quinnipiac has a specific methodology that relies on a random sample size that statistically adjusts for things like race and gender.
Founding Partner of Slingshot Strategies Evan Roth Smith is confident about his methodology and Marist and Quinnipiac findings that show Adams with “declining favorability” and “low approval ratings across the board.” Smith doesn’t think it’s too early to get valuable perspective on what voters think and want in times of political uncertainty.
“These similar findings across multiple pollsters are clearly reflective of broader trends among voters, far beyond the impact that coverage of the polls themselves could have. And, of course, all polls go in the field before they go public, so the numbers we’re reporting all reflect the political reality prior to the poll being released,” said Smith. “Right now there is an ongoing federal investigation into the administration and the 2021Adams campaign, and it’’ important to know how voters feel about that and how they would react to different possible outcomes.”
Smith said that he definitely would like to do a poll that focuses solely on the perspective of Black and brown New Yorkers but until “things are more concrete we’ll likely stick to citywide polling.”
Quinnipiac University Poll Assistant Director Mary Snow said in a statement that: “There’s no good news for Mayor Adams in this poll. Not only are voters giving him poor grades on the job he’s doing at City Hall, their views on his character have dimmed. As the city faces across the board budget cuts while dealing with a migrant crisis, headlines about a federal investigation into the mayor’s 2021 campaign and an accusation of sexual assault leveled against him from 30 years ago are taking a toll.”
Quinnipiac’s polling points out quite starkly that “the mayor receives his only positive rating from Black voters who approve of the job he is doing 48 – 38%”
Mayor David Dinkins was one-term
It’s long been acknowledged that governing New York City is one of the single hardest jobs one can volunteer to do. Most who have had the job liken it to tirelessly running a small country, and then are struck with the inexplicable notion that they should then run the entire country—only to inevitably fail in their run for presidency.
Only one other person had to deal with being a Black man while in the role though: former Mayor David Dinkins. He was elected in 1990, and served one controversial term, before being voted out. The city then elected two Republican mayors for the next 20 years.
Derek Perkinson, Bluejacket Strategies Director of Advocacy, said that Dinkins faced a lot of challenges and discrimination, but it was the visceral racial tension in the city that was his “downfall.” It’s similar to the issues Adams has faced over the asylum seeker crisis and the Israel-Hamas war, he said.
Before Dinkins was elected, the unwarranted death of Yusuf Hawkins, a 16-year-old Black boy murdered by a white mob in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, set off a series of protests in 1989. Later, a year into Dinkins’s term, the circumstances of the deaths of Gavin Cato, a seven-year-old Black boy, and Yankel Rosenbaum, a Hasidic Jew, sparked the infamous Crown Heights race riots of 1991.
Former Assemblymember Keith L.T. Wright, who is also Manhattan Democrat County Leader, worked for Dinkins and later worked with Adams. He described Dinkins as smart, disciplined, and dignified, despite the fact that he yelled at him often. More importantly, he believed that Dinkins was not at fault for the race riots in Brooklyn and “it was very unfair for him not to be reelected.”
He drew a few comparisons between Dinkins and Adams.
“When David was the Mayor, when he first got elected there was a whole lot of hope and a whole lot of pride and a lot of communities taking ownership,” said Wright. “And remember he came in at a time when there was really no money, a real fiscal crisis that his predecessor had left him. Ed Koch. And crime was up, though crime had been up but all the media and newspapers wanted to blame him.”
Wright said that Dinkins took critical steps to implement community policing initiatives that brought crime down. Similarly, he said, Adams took the reins of the city during a tumultuous time when crime and joblessness was high because of the COVID pandemic. People needed hope. Now, crime is statistically trending down this year and jobs are on the rise. He feels there’s a definite correlation in how the media covered them, but declined to say that the city has an unconscious bias towards Black mayors. “Managing this city is incredibly difficult and I think that the current Mayor is doing his best to try and manage the city in the middle of a migrant crisis and getting out of COVID,” said Wright.
Wright also doesn’t have a lot of faith in polling, especially this early in Adams’ mayoralty.
“Eric’s facing a lot of multiple tensions on different levels and it’s really unfair that that is who God calls to be in leadership at these tough times, you know, with the migrant crisis. He’s done a great job,” said Perkinson. “He’s trying to do a lot of things and I don’t think he’s getting a lot of help and cooperation.”
Perkinson added that Adams’s nightlife “rubs people the wrong way” and that the FBI probe is “not a good look.”
NAACP New York State Conference President Dr. Hazel Dukes, in a statement, threw in her support for Adams in response to polling as well. She said they are working with the Adams administration to improve education, ensure public safety and justice, and continue delivering for working people across the city. “The influx of migrants coming into New York City has affected all of the city’s services, and I am confident in Mayor Adams’s ability to continue leading and working with all New Yorkers to ease the burden that has been imposed on us,” said Dukes, “We know we have a blue-collar mayor fighting for us, and we need him to continue that fight every day.”
[updated Thurs, Dec 14]
Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member and writes about politics for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.