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      Adams Is Keeping a Low Profile as Election Day Nears

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      It’s Thursday. We’ll look at how Eric Adams, the likely next mayor, has been keeping a low profile. And a rockabilly star is getting his distinctive black-and-pink bass back, 39 years after it was stolen.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesWhere in the world is Eric Adams, the Democratic candidate for mayor?My colleague Katie Glueck writes that Adams’s team sometimes leaves reporters guessing about how he spends his time — in contrast to elected officials like Gov. Kathy Hochul. Her aides send out daily schedules listing everything from ribbon-cuttings and parades to news briefings.Such schedules can be an essential tool for the editors and news directors planning coverage as they decide where to send reporters or crews — and thus how to inform readers, listeners or viewers.For elected officials, the announcements capitalize on their incumbency, keeping them in the public eye even when they do not make headlines. For a campaign not to do everything it can to publicize a candidate’s schedule is a departure from the way other politicians engage with the press and the public, not just in New York but also nationally.But as of Tuesday, with Election Day three weeks away, Adams’s campaign had released no more than five public schedules in October. His one planned appearance last weekend was in his capacity as the Brooklyn borough president — a visit to the Federation of Italian-American Organizations of Brooklyn.On Monday, Hochul and Mayor Bill de Blasio both marched in the Columbus Day parade, as their schedules had said they would. But Adams did not, and his whereabouts remain unknown. A spokesman said he was organizing with volunteers. His campaign released no public schedule that day. By contrast, Curtis Sliwa, the long-shot Republican candidate, has issued a public events schedule almost every day this month.Adams recently said in an interview with NY1 that he was participating in 13 events a day and canvassing until 1 a.m. Asked for a snapshot of Adams’s full schedule in recent weeks, a campaign spokesman, Evan Thies, did not provide one, instead offering a list of 21 public events that he said Adams had attended since Labor Day, some as a candidate, some as the borough president.Neither his campaign nor his government office sent word in advance about many of those events. Adams’s campaign said he had also attended events with volunteers and voters that were not on the list.This is not the first time Adams has faced questions about details of his schedule: His team had declined to say where he spent some vacation time this summer (Monaco, according to Politico).While most candidates do not publicize every detail of their days, the scattershot way in which Adams’s team has communicated his activities has made it difficult to gauge the full extent of his engagement with the campaign. Adams, long a highly visible fixture in Brooklyn, has frequently shown up at community and political gatherings in appearances that his campaign did not advertise. But clearly he has not been hitting the trail each day in the final month of the contest.In October 2013, the last month of the last open-seat mayoral race, de Blasio was hardly barnstorming the five boroughs day after day. But he released a near-daily public schedule of events as he rolled out endorsements, marched in parades and delivered speeches.Adams and his team reject any suggestion that his schedule is anything less than full — even if they do not always send it out. “Eric is working hard from early in the morning until very late at night,” Thies said, adding that the candidate is meeting voters and volunteers “and holding events to ensure the working people who support him win on Election Day.”“He is also spending significant time preparing to be mayor should he be successful on Nov. 2, meeting with government, nonprofit and business leaders to ensure he is ready to lead New York,” Thies added.WeatherWe’re having a heat wave — for October — but it’s not a tropical heat wave. The warm air that will push temps into the mid-70s is not coming from that far away. We’ll have another partly cloudy evening in the mid-60s.alternate-side parkingIn effect until Nov. 1 (All Saints Day).The latest New York newsKatrina Brownlee was abused, shot and left for dead. Told she’d never walk again, she went on to have a 20-year career with the N.Y.P.D.Margaret Garnett, the commissioner of the New York City agency responsible for rooting out corruption in local government, will leave her post. She will become the No. 2 official in the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan.The $2.1 Billion La Guardia AirTrain project is on hold after Gov. Kathy Hochul called for a review of alternatives. The AirTrain was a favorite of her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo.Return to previous owner: A bass stolen in 1982Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesNot quite 40 years later, Smutty Smiff is getting his bass back — the shiny black one with “SMUTTY” printed in pink letters across the bottom.To recap: One night in 1982, a van loaded with all the instruments of the Rockats, the pre-eminent rockabilly band of the downtown New York music scene, was stolen outside a diner near the Holland Tunnel. Among the missing gear was the bass.This summer, someone who remembered the Rockats noticed the bass in a Jersey City pawnshop and posted a picture on Facebook. The bass was not for sale — the pawnshop owner, Manny Vidal, a bass player himself at the time, had traded his own electric bass for it not long after the van disappeared, unaware that he was getting stolen goods.The Times published a story about it last week, and on Monday, the pawnshop owner decided to return the bass to Smutty, who lives in Iceland and called our writer Helene Stapinski from the homeless shelter in Reykjavik where he now works. The band’s guitarist, Barry Ryan, offered to pick up the instrument for safekeeping. Smutty decided not to have it shipped to Iceland — even though a GoFundMe page set up after the article appeared raised $3,000 — because the Rockats will be playing in New York next year.The outcome had “kind of restored my belief in humanity and karma,” Smutty said from Reykjavik. He said that he felt bad for Vidal, who became a target of social media posts and angry telephone calls, but had no hard feelings toward him.Ryan, whose Gretsch Country Gentleman guitar was stolen with the bass and rest of the Rockats’ gear in 1982, wants Vidal to keep his eye peeled. “If you see my Gretsch, give me a shout,” he said, “and we’ll start this story all over again.”What we’re readingViolent crime rates were up even as N.Y.P.D. officers logged more overtime hours than any other major city in the country, Bloomberg reports.During a sentencing hearing, the owner of a longtime Manhattan gallery acknowledged that much about his antiquities business was an elaborate scam.There are 274 streets listed in the Department of Transportation’s Open Streets program. Only 126 of them are functional, Gothamist reports.MetROPOLITAN diarySharingDear Diary:I ordered a ride-share car to take me back to the Upper West Side from Queens. When it showed up, to my delight, the first female driver I’d ever had was at the wheel.We soon made another stop to pick up an elegantly dressed woman. When she slipped into the car, the driver and I remarked on how wonderful she looked and asked whether it was a special occasion.“It’s my first date after my divorce,” the woman said, acknowledging that she was nervous.Knowing our role in this moment, the driver and I expressed our confidence. The driver volunteered that she was about to get married again, 35 years after her first wedding. She said she had found someone who adored her.“You have to hold out for love!” she said.The attention then turned to me now.“Me?” I said. “I’m single. No one in my life at the moment.”The driver smiled at me in the rearview mirror:“No one yet,” she said, “but you’re in New York City, honey!”— Annie FoxIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Read more Metropolitan Diary here. Submit Your Metropolitan DiaryYour story must be connected to New York City and no longer than 300 words. An editor will contact you if your submission is being considered for publication.

      Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Melissa Guerrero, Rick Martinez and Olivia Parker contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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      Eric Adams, New York City’s Likely New Mayor, Is Keeping a Low Profile

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      Mr. Adams, the likely next mayor of New York City, has kept a light public campaign schedule in recent weeks, allowing him to raise funds and plan a new administration.For decades, the Columbus Day Parade in New York City has been a must-stop destination for politicians and aspiring politicians — so much so that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s decision to skip it in 2002 drove headlines for days.This year’s gathering, even factoring in the growing controversy around the holiday, appeared to be no different: Mayor Bill de Blasio showed up and sustained some taunts. Gov. Kathy Hochul and some would-be primary rivals were in attendance. Curtis Sliwa, the long-shot Republican mayoral contender, also made his way along the Manhattan route.But Eric Adams, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City and the Brooklyn borough president, did not attend the parade on Monday. His whereabouts was unclear: Mr. Adams did not release any kind of public schedule that day.Indeed, Mr. Adams, who secured the Democratic mayoral nomination in July and is virtually certain to win next month’s general election, has been a relatively rare presence on the campaign trail in recent weeks. To his allies, Mr. Adams’s scant public schedule suggests an above-the-fray posture that has allowed him to focus on fund-raising, preparing to govern and cementing vital relationships he will need in office. But it also amounts to a cautious approach that lowers the risk of an impolitic remark, and limits media scrutiny of the man on track to assume one of the most powerful positions in the country.As of Tuesday — three weeks from Election Day — Mr. Adams’s campaign had released no more than five public schedules in October, with a few more government-related advisories issued by his borough president’s office. He announced no campaign events over the weekend; the only advertised stop was a visit to the Federation of Italian-American Organizations of Brooklyn, in his government capacity.Curtis Sliwa, the Republican mayoral candidate, has a public events schedule for almost every day in October.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesBy contrast, a review of most of Mr. de Blasio’s public campaign schedules from early October 2013 — during the last open-seat mayoral race in New York — shows that while he was hardly barnstorming the five boroughs each day, he released a near-daily public schedule of events as he rolled out endorsements, marched in parades and gave speeches.“Regardless of the likely outcome, it never hurts to ask voters for their support, run up your numbers and head to City Hall claiming a strong mandate,” said Monica Klein, a political strategist who has worked on many Democratic campaigns, including for Mr. de Blasio. “You don’t want to win by default, even if you’re running against a guy with 16 cats.”Mr. Adams and his team strongly reject any suggestion that he is pursuing anything less than a frenetic schedule — even if they do not always broadcast his events. Indeed, Mr. Adams, long a highly visible fixture in his home borough of Brooklyn, has frequently shown up at community and political gatherings across the city in appearances that his campaign did not advertise.He recently claimed in an interview with NY1 that he is participating in 13 events a day and canvassing until 1 a.m. Asked for an accounting of Mr. Adams’s schedule in recent weeks, a campaign spokesman, Evan Thies, instead offered a list of 21 public events — a mix of government business and campaign activities — that he said Mr. Adams had attended since Labor Day. The list, the campaign said, did not include events Mr. Adams has attended with volunteers and voters, or extensive media interviews. Asked how Mr. Adams spent his day Monday, Mr. Thies said he was organizing with volunteers.“Eric is working hard from early in the morning until very late at night,” Mr. Thies said, meeting voters and volunteers “and holding events to ensure the working people who support him win on Election Day.”“He is also spending significant time preparing to be mayor should he be successful on Nov. 2, meeting with government, nonprofit and business leaders to ensure he is ready to lead New York,” Mr. Thies added. But while public officials and candidates seeking office typically distribute their daily schedules in media advisories, Mr. Adams’s campaign or government office did not widely publicize a notable number of the events Mr. Thies referenced.The opaque nature of how Mr. Adams spends his time makes it difficult to gauge the full extent of his engagement with the mayoral race — but he does not appear to have been hitting the trail each day in the final month of the contest.It also raises the question of how transparent Mr. Adams will be about his activities if he becomes mayor. (Mr. Adams has already faced other questions about details of his schedule: His team declined to say where he was vacationing this summer, and he has confronted significant scrutiny over his residency.)Mr. Thies did not directly respond to a question about the kinds of commitments Mr. Adams was prepared to make regarding the public schedules he will release should he win.“We do not always advise campaign events and appearances because hosts and participants would prefer we do not, and often campaign strategy is discussed,” Mr. Thies said of the current race. “But Eric believes it is very important that members of the media have regular access to him to ask questions on behalf of the public, which is why he holds frequent press conferences and daily interviews with individual reporters.”A day after skipping the Columbus Day Parade, Mr. Adams appeared in Brooklyn to promote a plan to increase access to nutritious food.Andrew Seng for The New York TimesMr. Adams was on the campaign trail Tuesday, visiting an urban farm to discuss how to provide underserved New Yorkers with better access to nutritious food and preventive health care. He has also highlighted policy proposals around issues including public safety, boosting the economy and housing, and his team and other allies stress that he is deeply focused on the transition.“I know for a fact he is working to form his administration, putting all the pieces together to hit the ground running,” said State Senator John C. Liu, who attended a rally for Mr. Adams last week.There are signs that Mr. Adams is beginning to accelerate his public schedule, announcing appearances on both Tuesday and Wednesday. He is also using his significant war chest to start broadcasting campaign advertisements.The heavily Democratic tilt of New York City — it is even more Democratic now than when Mr. de Blasio first ran for mayor — means that virtually no political expert in the city sees the race as competitive, and many Democrats are sanguine about Mr. Adams’s apparent public campaign style.In part, that is because many see Mr. Sliwa as a far less credible opponent than Joseph J. Lhota, Mr. de Blasio’s 2013 Republican rival who had chaired the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and Mr. de Blasio still won that race by nearly 50 percentage points.“Curtis Sliwa isn’t a serious human,” said Bill Hyers, who was Mr. de Blasio’s campaign manager in 2013. “It’s not really a race anymore. It’s all about getting ready to transition to governance.”Fernando Ferrer, the 2005 Democratic nominee, added of Mr. Adams, “He’s doing exactly what he should be doing right now: He is tying his coalition together and solidifying it, he’s finished raising money, he’s keeping support in place. Focus on a campaign with Curtis Sliwa of all people? Excuse me.”There will be opportunities for Mr. Adams to do so: Two general election debates are scheduled, the first set for Oct. 20, three days before the start of early voting. Certainly, there have already been the occasional clashes between the candidates: Mr. Adams has called Mr. Sliwa, who has admitted to fabricating incidents of fighting crime, a “racist” who is engaged in “antics”; Mr. Sliwa hectors Mr. Adams often.In a brief phone call, Mr. Sliwa, who has issued a public events schedule almost every day this month, described Mr. Adams as “M.I.A., he’s invisible.”“It’s a major difference from when he was out during the primaries,” he added.Mr. Sliwa also defended his own electoral prospects.“Normally they think Republicans are like, ‘Oh, they’re going to cater to Wall Street, Fortune 500, hedge fund monsters,’” Mr. Sliwa said, suggesting he was a different kind of Republican. “It’s going to be a surprise to all of them, because I have support in places where generally Republicans don’t have support.”In some ways, Mr. Adams’s approach is not so different from the campaign conducted by President Biden in the last weeks of the presidential contest as the pandemic raged last fall.“It’s like the Rose Garden strategy the president would have, it’s the same approach,” said Mr. Lhota, who is now a Democrat. “Somebody that has a substantial lead doesn’t need to do as many events, doesn’t need to get their name out as frequently.”Michael M. Grynbaum, Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Dana Rubinstein and Tracey Tully contributed reporting. More

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      ‘Once a City Hall Reporter, Always a City Hall Reporter’

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      Patricia Mazzei has spent nearly 15 years covering Miami. The experience helped her make sense of a controversy swirling around the city’s new police chief.MIAMI — Ten years ago, I sat inside the over-air-conditioned chambers of the Miami City Commission for many long hours to cover a tense debate over the fate of a beleaguered police chief.Recently, I did it again, returning to the same City Hall — to the same second-row seat, in fact — to report on a different commission discussing the future of a different official, Chief Art Acevedo, with a precarious hold on his job. Back then, I was a local government reporter for The Miami Herald, where I worked for 10 years. Now, I am the Miami bureau chief for The New York Times. Once a City Hall reporter, always a City Hall reporter.My job on the National desk is to cover Florida and Puerto Rico, a wide-ranging beat that makes it impossible to attend every City Commission meeting (of which there are many) or follow every bit of gossip (of which there are even more). In the nearly four years since I have been at The Times, I have written about hurricane hunters, climate change and statewide elections.But sometimes the story takes you back to the beginning. Knowing how City Hall works, and its bizarre and colorful history, has been essential to understanding Miami and translating its eccentricities to Times readers. Just as all politics is local, all news is local, too, and this is why I was back in my old seat.City Hall reporters have a Spidey sense that tingles when drama is near. That is why I told my editor, Kim Murphy — herself a former City Hall reporter in Mississippi — that I planned to drop in on a recent commission meeting about Chief Acevedo, who was hired to lead the Miami Police Department six months ago. His arrival made a splash — a big-name hire for a city trying to establish itself as a player in big tech. He was chosen by Mayor Francis Suarez, who faces re-election and has grown his national profile over the past year. But the hype could not save either the chief or the mayor from the political entanglements of powerful city commissioners.A majority of city commissioners were mad at the chief, in part because he had — jokingly, he said later — referred to the Police Department as being run by a “Cuban mafia.” (The chief himself is a Cuban immigrant.) In response, Chief Acevedo had written a long letter essentially accusing some commissioners of corruption.Cops, corruption, Cuba: The day had all the makings of quintessential Miami political theater.This, after all, is one of the best news cities in the country — not only for its well trodden Florida Man oddities but also because of its many local governments and their corresponding soap operas. Miami-Dade County alone has 34 cities. That’s a lot of elected officials, a lot of public employees and a lot of news, which The Herald and other outlets cover admirably, though there never seem to be enough local reporters to hold everyone accountable.Becoming a national reporter was liberating in many ways. My time is no longer dictated by the whims of local officials. I can tackle a wider range of issues. I get to explore more of the country. But it is also more challenging to write for an audience that goes beyond local readers. Why would someone in another state or another part of the world care about a little Florida story? Sometimes it’s the stories that seem obvious to people living here that make good national stories. Other times it’s the oddball anecdote that you find yourself telling friends about that demands a larger audience.We chose to write about Chief Acevedo, and the machinations of Miami politics, in The Times because his story has elements that resonate in any big American city currently trying to bring reforms in policing, as it balances entrenched competing interests.The city has gone through six police chiefs in 11 years, though not all their tenures have been as contentious as Chief Acevedo. The meeting to discuss his fate turned into something of a circus. In the afternoon, I got a slew of text messages from sources who had seen me on the meeting livestream, remarking on how wild it was. Many Miami government types had been watching for hours, transfixed by it all.A few days later, commissioners held another special meeting to further discuss Chief Acevedo. I was not, technically, covering the story. But I turned on the meeting and watched anyhow. I could not tear myself away.This week, the saga came to an end: The city manager suspended Chief Acevedo with the intent to fire him. His ouster, as expected, made headlines. But it is also be just another outlandish chapter in the history of the Magic City. More

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      A Boston Mayoral Candidate Is Leaning Into Her Accent

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      The mayoral candidate Annissa Essaibi George, the daughter of Polish and Tunisian immigrants, speaks with the accent of working-class Boston. And she’s having some fun with it.BOSTON — The mayoral candidate Annissa Essaibi George was amping up her supporters, who had gathered in an Italian restaurant on the waterfront, a little punchy after a long day of getting out the vote.As she built toward the climax of her speech, a pledge to be “the teacher, the mother and the mayor” the city needs, her accent unfurled like a banner. Those in the crowd were in high spirits, so they chanted it together a second time, then a third.“I will be the teachah!” they shouted, to raucous celebration. “The mothah!” (Cheers.) “And the mayah!” (sustained cheers) “to get it done!”In that catch phrase, which she also featured in two television advertisements, Ms. Essaibi George makes several things clear: that though she identifies as Arab American, she was born and bred in the heart of Irish American Boston. That amid an influx of affluent professionals, she would stand up for Boston’s working class — not just police officers and firefighters, but electricians and construction workers. That her neighborhood, Dorchester, is stamped on her DNA.Boston is a city that cherishes its accent — one that ignores R’s in some places, inserts them in others, and prolongs its A sounds as if it were opening its mouth for a dentist.In the second half of the 20th century, linguists say, New Yorkers began to look down on their own R-less accent, but Bostonians, like Philadelphians, continued to revel in theirs. They were not embarrassed by it; it conveyed toughness and good humor and authenticity. Candidates with pronounced accents have won the last 10 mayoral elections.But this campaign comes at a moment of change, as growing populations — young professionals, Latinos, Asians — redraw Boston’s electoral map. Ms. Essaibi George’s opponent, Michelle Wu, who moved to the area to attend Harvard, speaks to the concerns of many of those new Bostonians. Slowly but steadily, like polar ice caps, the core of working-class Boston is diminishing.Ms. Essaibi George, right, the daughter of Polish and Tunisian immigrants, can effortlessly evoke old-school Boston when campaigning.M. Scott Brauer for The New York TimesWhen Ms. Essaibi George speaks, dropping references to her parish (St. Margaret’s), her favorite teacher (Sister Helen) and her football grudges (the trade of Jimmy Garoppolo), she effortlessly evokes that Boston.“I will say we’ve had a little bit of fun with the accent,” she said in an interview. If you watch the first television ad to feature the phrase, she said, “you can see that I’m doing all I can to not crack up laughing.”Asked whether it conveys a political advantage, she gives a verbal shrug.“I don’t think about it at all,” she said. “It is how I think. It’s how I talk.”The two candidates, both Democrats and at-large city councilors, differ most notably on issues of policing and development: Ms. Wu, who placed first in the preliminary election, has pushed for deeper cuts to the police budget, while Ms. Essaibi George argues for adding hundreds more officers to the force. Ms. Wu supports rent stabilization and the dissolution of the city’s main planning agency, which she says favors politically connected developers, while Ms. Essaibi George, who is married to a developer, warns that such measures could bring building “to almost a grinding halt,” cutting into the city budget and working-class jobs.But it is Ms. Essaibi George’s accent-flexing that has sparked the most spirited discussions. A local filmmaker who recently celebrated a birthday received a card saying, “You’re my SISTAH, you’re a PRODUCAH, and now you’re OLDAH.”Many of Ms. Wu’s supporters roll their eyes at this, saying Ms. Essaibi George has dialed up her Dorchesterese for the occasion. Anyway, they say, the solidarity conveyed by the Boston accent — really a white, working-class Boston accent — is one that excludes much of the city. Recent census data found that only 43 percent of Boston’s population was born in Massachusetts.The mayoral candidate Michelle Wu, who moved to the Boston area as a teenager, differs with Ms. Essaibi George on the issues of policing and development. M. Scott Brauer for The New York Times“It’s a message of belonging,” said Mimi Turchinetz, a community activist who supports Ms. Wu. “That unless you’re from the neighborhood, you don’t have deep roots and can’t represent this city. It’s a statement of belonging, versus the other. That’s the quiet suggestion.”Ms. Wu, the child of Taiwanese immigrants, was raised in a suburb of Chicago; her speech does not carry a strong regional flavor. If she is elected in November, she would be the first mayor since 1925 who had not been born in Boston.Last week, when she was asked by Boston Public Radio whether Ms. Wu’s lack of Boston roots should be a factor in the race, Ms. Essaibi George said it was “relevant to me” and “relevant to a lot of voters.” This prompted a backlash on social media, including from Ms. Wu herself. “Reminder,” Ms. Wu wrote on Twitter. “The Mayor of Boston needs to lead for ALL of us. I’m ready to fight for every resident — whether you’ve been here since birth or chose to make Boston your home along the way.”Ms. Essaibi George spent much of the next day trying to explain her comments, dismissing the perpetual contrast of old Boston and new Boston as “such a silly, silly debate.”“This is not about being born and raised here,” she said. “So many Bostonians are not born and raised in the city. Both my parents immigrated to this country, never mind the city. And for me, it is what makes this city special.”Accents have long been weaponized in Massachusetts politics, usually identifying their owner as the more authentic champion of the working class. James Michael Curley, who served four terms as Boston’s mayor, beginning in 1914, once derided his opponent as having a “Harvard accent with a South Boston face.”Senator Ed Markey’s accent came into play in his race against then-Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III.David Degner for The New York TimesSenator Ed Markey leveraged his accent last year, when during a debate with then-Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III, he turned to Mr. Kennedy and said, “Tell your father right now that you don’t want money to go into a Super PAC that runs negative ads.” The jab was clear: Mr. Markey, a truck driver’s son, was drawing a contrast with the scion of a political dynasty.Almost instantaneously, “Tell ya fatha” became a meme, for sale on T-shirts on Mr. Markey’s campaign websites. It was so popular that Robert DeLeo, then the speaker of the Massachusetts House, posed with a “Tell ya fatha” T-shirt without realizing what it meant, and then privately apologized to Mr. Kennedy, Politico reported.Mr. Markey’s campaign website began to sell T-shirts with a phrase meant to underscore his working-class roots.The Markey CommitteeIt is an accent that can cut both ways, said Marjorie Feinstein-Whittaker, a speech therapist who has spent 20 years helping Massachusetts residents modify their accents.Often, clients seek out her firm, the Whittaker Group, because they fear that in professional settings they’re seen as “working-class, or not so smart.” Sometimes they’re just tired of being asked to say “park the car in Harvard Yard” all the time, which makes them feel “like a circus act.”But there is also something positive about the accent — something intangible, an emotional attachment. “It’s hard for me to answer because I’m not from here, but I think it’s, ‘I’ve got your back, you’ve got my back, we’ve got this bond no one can break,’” Ms. Feinstein-Whittaker said. “It’s like a family thing. It’s solidarity.”Ms. Essaibi George’s history makes her both an insider and an outsider to this tradition. Her father, Ezzeddine, grew up in a Tunisian village and fell in love with her mother, a Polish immigrant, when they were studying in Paris. He followed her back to the Savin Hill section of Dorchester, which was then overwhelmingly white and Irish Catholic.As an Arab and a Muslim, he never felt fully accepted, Ms. Essaibi George said, and scoffed at the idea his daughter could win office, telling her “an Arab girl, with an Arab name, will win nothing in this country.” That she has managed it — winning an at-large City Council seat three times — represents “my inner 15-year-old self” trying to prove him wrong, she said.“I’m very proud of the neighborhood I grew up in,” she said, even though “I was sometimes seen as a little bit of a different kid, because I didn’t come from a traditional white Irish Catholic family.”“I don’t think about it at all,” Ms. Essaibi George said about whether her accent might give her an edge in the race. “It is how I think. It’s how I talk.”M. Scott Brauer for The New York TimesThis combination of attributes — a booster of traditional Boston who also represents change — helped her place second in last month’s crowded preliminary.“We need someone who has been in our shoes,” said Michael Buckman, 38, a janitor who fears the rising cost of living will force him out of South Boston, where his family has lived for nine generations since immigrating from Ireland.“It stems all the way back into the roots of Boston,” he said. “It was a working city. It’s gone the direction of skyscrapers and hospitals and universities. I understand cities evolve. If anything, Boston has evolved a little too much.”As for Ms. Essaibi George’s accent, it is an advantage, said Douglas Vinitsky, 45, a sheet-metal worker who was waiting to meet her at a campaign stop.Though he “wasn’t raised uppity,” he said, his mother tried for years to train him to pronounce his Rs, warning that he would be seen as uneducated. Mr. Vinitsky disagreed so strongly that he leaned deeper into his accent just to make a point. And it has never cost him.“Nobody else in the world cared how I spoke,” he said. “It didn’t even matter in Boston.” More

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      Eric Adams Runs His First General Election TV Ad

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      The Democratic nominee for New York City mayor used the 30-second ad to tell his personal story, stressing his commitment to affordable housing.With a month left until Election Day, Eric Adams is finally starting to use some of his sizable campaign war chest, releasing his first post-primary television ad on Tuesday in the general election for mayor of New York City.The ad focuses on his working-class roots and his mother, Dorothy Adams, who died in March — a departure from his ads during the Democratic primary, which focused on policing.“My mom cleaned houses and worked three jobs to give us a better life in a city that too often fails families like ours,” Mr. Adams says in the ad, as a Black woman is shown cleaning a home and embracing her children at the end of the day.Mr. Adams then appears onscreen with a smile and says that the city must invest in early childhood education and affordable housing: “That’s how we really make a difference.”The ad marks the beginning of the final stretch of the mayor’s race, which pits Mr. Adams against Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, on Nov. 2. Mr. Adams, 61, the Brooklyn borough president, is widely expected to win and has been promoting himself and his centrist platform as the future of the Democratic Party.He won a contentious Democratic primary by focusing on public safety and his background as a police officer. Now he is trying to highlight other priorities like reducing the cost of child care for children under 3.Mr. Adams wants to offer “universal child care” for families that cannot afford it by reducing the costs that centers pay for space with tax breaks and other incentives. He also wants to rezone wealthy neighborhoods to build more affordable housing and to convert empty hotels outside Manhattan to supportive housing.Mr. Sliwa, 67, has focused his ads on the message that he is compassionate toward homeless people — as well as his small army of rescue cats — and that he would offer a departure from Mayor Bill de Blasio. He has also criticized Mr. Adams for spending his summer meeting with the city’s elite and traveling outside the city to court donors.“The choice is somebody up in the suites like an Eric Adams — a professional politician — or somebody down in the streets and subways — that’s Curtis Sliwa,” he says in one ad. “I’ve got the touch with the common man and common woman.”Mr. Sliwa’s ad shows Mr. Adams standing next to Mr. de Blasio, who has supported Mr. Adams during the race.But Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly seven to one in New York City, and Mr. Sliwa has struggled to gain attention, let alone momentum. Mr. Adams also has a major fund-raising advantage: He has more than $7.5 million on hand; Mr. Sliwa has about $1.2 million.Mr. Adams’s new ad was produced by Ralston Lapp Guinn, a media firm that worked with him during the primary. The team has made ads for other Democrats like President Barack Obama and Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota.The ad mentions Mr. Adams’s signature issue — public safety — noting that “we all have a right to a safe and secure future”Mr. Adams, who would be New York City’s second Black mayor, has often spoken about his mother on the campaign trail and of growing up poor with five siblings. Ms. Adams died earlier this year — something Mr. Adams revealed in an emotional moment during the primary.In recent interviews, Mr. Adams has said that it was two months into the Democratic primary when he decided to focus on his personal narrative.He said in a recent podcast with Ezra Klein of The New York Times that he decided to share a “series of vignettes” about his life, including being beaten by the police, having a learning disability and working as a dishwasher, and he believed that his authenticity won over voters.“Each time I stood in front of a group of people and gave them another peek into who I am, they said to themselves, ‘He’s one of us,’” he said. More

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      Rome Mayor Loses Re-election Bid, a Defeat for Five Star Movement

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      In five years in office, Virginia Raggi failed to stem the dysfunction of Italy’s capital, where voters will choose between two of her rivals in a runoff.ROME — Voters on Monday resoundingly rejected the re-election bid of Rome’s mayor, Virginia Raggi of the Five Star Movement, who swept into power five years ago promising change but was unable to turn around the degradation of services and quality of life that has become a hallmark of the capital.Instead, Ms. Raggi, the first woman to govern Rome and its youngest mayor, became associated with the city’s decline, earning her — and her party — a national reputation for incompetence.Speaking to supporters at a hotel in downtown Rome late on Monday, Ms. Raggi appeared to concede defeat.“As they say in Rome, I took on the most difficult part of the job and I did it with conviction,” she said. “Now those who come after me have no more excuses for not doing a good job, and we’re going to be watching them closely.”She lagged well behind the two leading candidates: Enrico Michetti, a lawyer supported by several parties on the right, and Roberto Gualtieri, a former finance minister and the candidate of a center-left coalition led by the Democratic Party.With most election districts counted, Mr. Michetti had more than 30 percent of the vote, Mr. Gualtieri 27 percent and Ms. Raggi just under 20 percent. Carlo Calenda, a rival to Mr. Gualtieri to be the center-left standard-bearer, had about 19 percent.With no candidate winning more than half the vote, Mr. Michetti and Mr. Gualtieri will compete in a runoff election on Oct. 18. Ms. Raggi told her supporters that she would not openly back either man.“The vote is free,” she said. “Votes are not packages to move around, nor are citizens cattle to be taken to pasture.”Ms. Raggi was once a bright spot in the firmament of Five Star, an upstart anti-establishment party that had charmed Italians who were jaded with the country’s political class.But the city’s problems piled up on her watch, as did uncollected garbage, attracting swarms of sea gulls, crows, and even hungry boars. A pothole epidemic saw no fix in sight. Public buses caught on fire, and some cyclists complained that the bike lanes the mayor had installed were unsafe and poorly maintained.Then on Saturday night, just hours before polls opened, a 19th century bridge in a trendy Rome neighborhood caught fire. Investigators and experts are still looking into the causes of the fire, but the metaphor of Rome burning was not lost on Ms. Raggi’s critics.Municipal elections were held on Monday in over 1,000 Italian cities and towns, but it is not yet clear what they mean for national politics. The next parliamentary elections could be more than a year and a half away.Prime Minister Mario Draghi, an independent and the former president of the European Central Bank, has broad support in Parliament, but low voter turnout may be a reflection of general disaffection among the electorate. Only 48.8 percent of Rome’s electors went to the polls, about ten percent less than five years ago, and the national average fell just short of 55 percent, the lowest ever.Ms. Raggi’s fate was, in part, a reflection of her party’s. Five Star has hemorrhaged support since triumphant national elections in 2018, when it won the largest share of the vote and formed part of the governing coalition.“It’s one thing to promise changes when you’re in the opposition, another to transform them into effective policies when you’re in the government,” said Roberto Biorcio, a professor of political sociology at the University of Milan at Bicocca. “In this sense, she followed this downward trajectory.”In Rome, disillusionment with Ms. Raggi grew as she failed to build a strong team, frequently replacing top cabinet members, which paralyzed administrative decisions.“It was the continuation of a trend of the deterioration of the city,” said Giovanni Orsina, the dean of Luiss University’s School of Government.“Rome’s problems are all still there,” after five years of Five Star government, he said, citing the garbage crisis and the city’s notoriously ineffective transport system. “And now the bridge caught fire ahead of the elections.”Support for the Five Star Movement also eroded in other cities. In Turin, another big win for the party in 2016, its mayoral candidate finished a distant third.But center-leftists where the Five Star and Democratic Party were allied won their races outright in closely watched races in Bologna and Naples, giving a boost to former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who was elected president of the Five Star in August. He has been pushing for these alliances, putting him on a collision course with more orthodox Five Star members who remain grounded in their anti-establishment roots.The outcome in various cities “suggests that where the Five Star and Democrats joined forces they can obtain some good results,” Mr. Biorcio said.Ms. Raggi may have lost her job, but she still has clout within Five Star, after being elected last month to the party’s governing body. And at 43, she is still young.“After being mayor of Rome for five years, it will be hard for her to go back to being a lawyer,” said Professor Orsina. “Now she’ll try to see if she’s able to parlay a different political future in the Five Star Movement.” More

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      Lovely Warren, Troubled Rochester Mayor, to Resign in Plea Deal

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      Ms. Warren will leave office early as part of a plea deal on campaign finance violations. The deal also resolves gun charges against her.Lovely Warren, the embattled Democratic mayor of Rochester, N.Y., agreed to resign on Monday as part of a plea deal on several state criminal charges, capping a swift and staggering fall for a politician once considered a rising star in the state Democratic Party.The plea deal, in Monroe County court, resolves two separate state cases against Ms. Warren: one arising from campaign finance violations and another that included gun and child-endangerment charges that Ms. Warren and her estranged husband faced.Ms. Warren’s resignation is effective Dec. 1, just a month before she would have left office, having lost a June primary for a third term to Malik Evans, a city councilman.Last October, Ms. Warren was indicted by a grand jury in Monroe County on two campaign finance charges related to her 2017 re-election campaign, involving her official campaign fund and a political action committee.Those charges came just a month after Ms. Warren’s administration had been engulfed in a scandal involving accusations of a cover-up in the death in March 2020 of Daniel Prude, a Black man, after the Rochester police pinned him to the ground and put a hood over his head while taking him into custody.In July, Ms. Warren and her husband, Timothy Granison, were indicted on gun and child-endangerment charges, after police found weapons in a May raid of the home they shared, despite being estranged. Both pleaded not guilty.Mr. Granison had previously been charged in state and federal court as part of what prosecutors called a drug-trafficking ring. His charges weren’t resolved by Ms. Warren’s plea, his lawyer said Monday.In a news conference after her husband’s May arrest, Ms. Warren said she was the victim of a conspiracy, engineered in part by the county prosecutor, to discredit her on the eve of the Democratic primary. “People will try anything to break me,” she said.Ms. Warren’s resignation adds to a period of turmoil in Rochester, a city of some 200,000 people on the shores of Lake Ontario that suffered a steep toll from the coronavirus and was shaken by the fallout from the death of Mr. Prude, including heated demonstrations and the firing of the city’s police chief.A lawyer and onetime president of the City Council, Ms. Warren was the city’s first female mayor and the youngest in the modern era. She was first elected in 2013 after scoring a stunning upset against a Democratic incumbent, Thomas S. Richards, in both a September primary and a general election two months later. (Mr. Richards ran on two third-party lines.)She was also the city’s second Black mayor and spoke passionately in her 2014 inaugural address about the city’s future, devoting her speech to promises to her young daughter.“I know this isn’t going to be easy,” she said. “But I’m going to fight for changes and outcomes with the fierceness of a parent defending their child. Because I am defending you, and all of Rochester’s children.”She was handily re-elected in 2017, but the criminal charges against her arose from allegations raised at the time by her challengers about evasion of donor limits. Those complaints led to an investigation by the state Board of Elections.Ms. Warren’s trial on the campaign finance charges was set to begin on Monday. Carrie Cohen, her lawyer, said that the mayor’s plea — to a misdemeanor, rather than the initial felony charges she had faced — was in line with her previous admission that payments to her political action committee “were not categorized correctly.”“There never was any allegation of theft of any campaign or other funds by the mayor, or anybody else involved in the campaign,” said Ms. Cohen, adding that the plea resolved all the pending state criminal charges without admission of any fraud or dishonesty.Calli Marianetti, a spokeswoman for Sandra Doorley, the Monroe County district attorney, said that as part of a plea deal with Ms. Warren, the gun and child endangerment charges would no longer be pursued.In a statement, Ms. Doorley said that the resolution of the charges facing Ms. Warren — and those facing two fellow defendants, her campaign treasurer and Rochester’s finance director — was “fair and just based on the nature of their crimes.”“This is an important step in our larger efforts in promoting ethical elections in our state,” said Ms. Doorley, a Republican.It was the Daniel Prude case that came to define much of Ms. Warren’s second term. In March 2020, Mr. Prude, visiting Rochester from Chicago, ran out of his brother’s home in an agitated state. After his brother called 911, police responded and handcuffed Mr. Prude. When he began spitting, they covered his head with a hood and later pinned him on the ground, face down.Mr. Prude stopped breathing and was resuscitated, but died a week later at a hospital. An internal investigation by police quickly cleared the officers involved, despite a medical examiner’s finding that Mr. Prude’s death was a homicide caused by “complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint.”Months later, the public release of a video of the encounter sparked outrage in the wake of a national reckoning over police brutality. Ms. Warren soon announced the firing of the police chief and suspension of other city officials, but questions about her response — and allegations of a cover-up — continued to dog her.Mr. Evans, the Democratic nominee and Ms. Warren’s presumptive successor, said Monday that he expected to continue to work with the administration until Ms. Warren stepped down.“We have to stay focused on making sure the city of Rochester continues to move forward,” Mr. Evans said. More

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      Andrew Yang Says He Left Democratic Party to Become Independent

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      Mr. Yang, who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2020 and for mayor of New York this year, said he could be more “honest” about politics if he were not a Democrat.Andrew Yang, the former long-shot presidential candidate and onetime technology entrepreneur, announced on Monday that he had left the Democratic Party and become an independent.In an essay on his website, Mr. Yang, who built a passionate following in 2019 during the party’s primary race, highlighted his work for Democrats. He noted the deep relationships he had developed with activists and local leaders and the fund-raisers he had headlined, and he took credit for helping to elect the party’s candidates, including President Biden.Yet he described the two-party system as “stuck,” saying he could be more “honest” about politics and politicians if he were not constrained by official membership as a Democrat. Mr. Yang offered his support for alternative election systems, like open primaries and ranked-choice voting, saying these were “key reforms” that would give voters more choices in campaigns.“I believe I can reach people who are outside the system more effectively,” he wrote. “I feel more … independent.”Mr. Yang has struggled to find his footing since skyrocketing to prominence during the 2020 race. One of the highest-profile Asian Americans to ever run a presidential campaign, Mr. Yang built a fiercely loyal following of disaffected voters through proposals like providing every American with a universal basic income of $1,000 per month.After ending his unlikely campaign, he joined CNN as a political commentator, started his own podcast and moved to Georgia to help Democrats win the runoff Senate races in January.A bid for New York City mayor this spring ended in defeat, after Mr. Yang struggled to answer basic questions about the functions of city government and failed to build on early momentum.Last month, he announced plans to start his own political party called “The Forward Party” — a phrase lifted from the last chapter of his new book.In an excerpt from his book published by Politico Magazine this week, Mr. Yang recounted the strangeness of running for president and how the experience had inflated his sense of his own importance.“I’d been a C.E.O. and founder of a company, but running for office was a different animal,” he wrote. “Everyone in my orbit started treating me like I might be a presidential contender. I was getting a crash course in how we treat the very powerful — and it was weird.”He added: “It turns out that power actually gives you brain damage.” More