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      Kasim Reed Focuses on Crime in Atlanta Mayoral Election

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      Kasim Reed, the former mayor whose administration was marked by corruption scandals, is running for another term, promising to restore public safety.ATLANTA — The fear of rising crime in American cities is having a profound effect on mayoral politics from New York to Seattle. In Atlanta, it has had the power of resurrection, delivering a reanimating jolt to the once-moribund career of one of the South’s most polarizing public figures.Kasim Reed, the former Atlanta mayor who fell off the political map in 2018 amid a steady drip of scandal in his administration, has returned to the spotlight with an unlikely bid for a third term and is now a leading candidate in a crowded field of lesser-known contenders.The overwhelming focus of Mr. Reed’s second act is the troubling increase in violent crime in Atlanta — and a promise that he, alone, can fix it.“I am the only candidate with the experience and track record to address our city’s surge in violent crime,” he recently wrote on Twitter, introducing a new campaign ad in which he called public safety “Job No. 1.”“I am the only candidate with the experience and track record to address our city’s surge in violent crime,” Mr. Reed wrote on Twitter.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesIn an echo of moderate Democrats like Eric Adams, the winner of this summer’s Democratic mayoral primary in New York City, Mr. Reed is promising to strengthen law enforcement in a way that takes into account grass-roots demands for a cultural change in policing. He has promised to add 750 officers to Atlanta’s police force. “But we’re going to train them in a post-George Floyd way,” he said in a recent television ad.Most of Mr. Reed’s major opponents in the nonpartisan race identify as Democrats, and most are also offering some version of this message, which is distinctly different from the defund-the-police rhetoric that emerged from progressive activists during the street protests of 2020.Mr. Reed’s fate at the polls in November may also hint at how much voters are willing to overlook from politicians so long as they think they might gain a modicum of peace and order. His time in office was defined by a sharp-elbowed style that some described as bullying, and by several scandals involving kickbacks, theft of public funds and weapons violations, among other things.Felicia Moore, the City Council president and one of Mr. Reed’s top rivals for mayor, wants voters to think hard about the string of corruption cases involving members of his administration. “The leadership should take responsibility for the actions of their administration,” she said. “He was the leader of that organization.”But in Atlanta, crime has increasingly taken center stage. The number of homicides investigated by the Atlanta police surged from 99 in 2019 to 157 in 2020, a year when the United States experienced its largest one-year increase in homicides on record, and in Atlanta, this year is on track to be worse. Some homicides have particularly horrified residents over the past year: An 8-year-old girl shot and killed in a car she was riding in with her mother last summer. A 27-year-old bartender kidnapped at gunpoint and killed as she was returning home from a shift last month. A 40-year-old woman mutilated and stabbed to death, along with her dog, while she was on a late-night walk near Piedmont Park, the city’s signature open space, in July.“They are more random, and they’re happening all over the city at all times of day,” said Sharon Gay, a mayoral candidate who noted that she was mugged about 18 months ago near her home in the well-heeled neighborhood of Inman Park. A memorial for Katherine Janness, who was fatally stabbed near Piedmont Park this summer.Ron Harris/Associated PressThe political ramifications extend beyond the mayor’s office. Georgia Republicans have begun campaigning with dire warnings about the violence in liberal Atlanta — even though cities run by both Democrats and Republicans have seen a rise in violent crime. Gov. Brian Kemp has devoted millions in funding for a new “crime suppression unit” in the city. And the upscale Buckhead neighborhood is threatening to secede from Atlanta due mostly to concerns about crime, a move that could be disastrous for the city’s tax base.Some critics blame the current mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, for failing to adequately tackle the crime problem.This spring, a few days before Ms. Bottoms announced she would not run for re-election, Mr. Reed asserted that crime had reached “unacceptable levels” that were “fracturing” the city. It was widely interpreted as a turn against Ms. Bottoms, his one-time protégée, and a sign that Mr. Reed was plotting a comeback.When it came, it was with a heavy dose of glamour.“The fate of the city of Atlanta is at stake,” Mr. Reed declared at a star-studded party at the Buckhead manse of Tyrese Gibson, the actor and musician. “Atlanta, tell L.A., tell New York, tell Charlotte, tell Dallas, tell Chicago, and definitely tell Miami — I’m back!” In a matter of weeks, he had raised roughly $1 million in campaign contributions.Still, the idea that Atlanta would be better off if it could go back to the days of 2010 through 2017, when Mr. Reed was in office, is deeply divisive. Mr. Reed takes credit for keeping crime low during those years and boasts of recruiting hundreds of police officers.F.B.I. statistics show that violent crime in the city fell beginning in 2012, and continued falling throughout Mr. Reed’s tenure, a time when violent crime around the country was on a downward trend that began in the early 1990s.In fact, the total number of violent crimes per year continued to decline in Atlanta through 2020. But the high-profile nature of some of the more recent crimes has put many residents on edge, as have some short-term trends: As of early September, murders, rapes and aggravated assaults were all up compared with the same time last year.Mr. Reed has promised to add 750 officers to Atlanta’s police force. Nicole Craine for The New York TimesMr. Reed, as mayor, could display both conviction and practicality: He dismissed the city fire chief after the chief published a book calling homosexual acts “vile,” and he faced down union protesters in pushing through reforms to address the city’s enormous unfunded pension liability.However, investigations into scandals in Mr. Reed’s administration led to guilty pleas from the city’s former chief procurement officer, its former contract compliance officer and Mr. Reed’s deputy chief of staff. A former human services director, watershed management head and chief financial officer were also indicted, and are awaiting trial.In June, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, relying on court documents and campaign records, reported that Mr. Reed appeared to be under federal investigation for using campaign funds for personal purchases. Mr. Reed, in an interview, said the Justice Department had told his lawyers he was not under investigation. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta declined to comment.In the interview, Mr. Reed said he accepted responsibility for the problems that occurred on his watch, and noted that after years of scrutiny, no charges have been lodged against him. “I have been through a level of vetting and security that very few people go through and survive, and I have come out with my name clear,” he said. He suggested that racism might have been a reason for all the scrutiny he received.Federal investigations like the ones in Atlanta, he said, are “frequently directed at Black political leaders, certainly in the job of mayor.”In a University of Georgia poll commissioned by The Journal-Constitution and conducted in late August and early September, Mr. Reed was narrowly leading the mayoral race, with roughly 24 percent support. But about 41 percent of likely voters were undecided, and Mr. Reed’s opponents are hoping to convince them that there are better choices.Felicia Moore, the City Council president, narrowly trailed Mr. Reed in a recent poll.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesSome voters have had enough of Mr. Reed. Bruce Maclachlan, 85, is a landlord who lives in Inman Park close to the place where Ms. Gay was mugged. Corruption, he said, seemed to be “circulating around Kasim Reed. It makes you wonder.”Mr. Maclachlan said he was voting for Ms. Moore, the City Council president who was just behind Mr. Reed in the poll with about 20 percent support. He said she appeared to be honest and free of scandal.Robert Patillo, a criminal defense lawyer, has felt the crime problem intimately. In the past few months, his sister’s car was stolen, his laptop was stolen from his car, and a friend’s house was broken into.“I think everybody’s been touched by it,” he said.Mr. Patillo said he, too, was voting for Ms. Moore, who he believed would be more trustworthy and better at balancing crime fighting with a civil rights agenda. But he said he understood the appeal of Mr. Reed. “When people are scared,” he said, “they turn back to a strongman.”Pinky Cole, the founder of Slutty Vegan, a local restaurant chain with a cult following, had a different view. Ms. Cole, one of the city’s better known young African American entrepreneurs, said Mr. Reed had helped her with legal problems her business faced.For Ms. Cole, the issues of crime and the city’s business climate were intertwined, a common sentiment in Atlanta these days, but one that has hit her particularly hard: In recent months, she said, two of her employees have been shot, one of them fatally.Despite the baggage from the corruption cases, she believed that Mr. Reed was a man of integrity. And she saw how he had made the city safe before.“I’m confident,” she said, “that he’ll do it again.” More

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      India Walton Beat the Buffalo Mayor in a Primary. He Won’t Give Up.

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      India Walton, the democratic socialist who won the Democratic primary for Buffalo mayor, still faces a challenge from Mayor Byron Brown, who is running a write-in campaign against her.BUFFALO, N.Y. — In late June, India Walton shocked the political world by defeating the four-term incumbent mayor of Buffalo, Byron Brown, in the Democratic primary, seemingly guaranteeing her eventual election in November in a solidly Democratic city.Her win would be historic: She would be the first socialist to be elected mayor of a major American city in more than half a century, and the first woman — and first Black woman — to lead New York’s second-largest city.In recent months, however, Mr. Brown has also been trying to make some history, mounting a furious comeback campaign to hold on to his job as a write-in candidate after trying — in vain — to add his name to the ballot as an independent.While most write-in campaigns are quixotic, political observers in Buffalo believe that Mr. Brown’s widespread name recognition and ample campaign resources could actually make him a slight favorite, particularly if the city’s small cohort of Republicans votes for him.The unexpected battle for Buffalo reflects the defining tension within the national Democratic Party, pitting its new generation of left-wing politicians against its more moderate establishment, as represented by Mr. Brown.That battle played out in the Democratic presidential primary last year and again in the New York City mayoral primary this year — with more centrist candidates, Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Eric Adams, winning both times. And it may well resume in next year’s primary for governor, when Gov. Kathy Hochul, a centrist Democrat, is likely to face a challenge from the party’s left flank.Against that backdrop, the mayoral race in Democratic-dominated Buffalo has gained national attention, particularly on the left. With a little more than five weeks to go before the election, a roster of prominent liberal figures, including Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are pledging support for Ms. Walton.Liberal groups and downstate Democrats, including the New York City public advocate, Jumaane Williams, and the former candidate for governor, Cynthia Nixon, have also been rallying to Ms. Walton’s side, hoping to demonstrate that their insurgent energy flows all the way to the edge of Lake Erie, where Buffalo sits.“This has become a statewide, national and international priority,” said Sochie Nnaemeka, the director of the New York Working Families Party, which has endorsed Ms. Walton and is offering strategic and fund-raising support. “People are calling from everywhere to make sure that India can come out ahead.”On paper that would seem like a fait accompli: Ms. Walton is the only person on the ballot. But Mr. Brown, a lifelong Democrat who is the city’s first Black mayor, seems to be banking on a coalition of business leaders and conservatives, some labor groups and loyal voters who approve of his 16 years in office to vault him to victory.Long known as a mild-mannered moderate, Mr. Brown has hardened his rhetoric in response to the threat of political oblivion, portraying Ms. Walton, a registered nurse making her first run for public office, as an inexperienced interloper.“I am convinced that she is unqualified for this position,” said Mr. Brown, 63, in a recent interview. “And if she became mayor of the city of Buffalo, it would be a disaster for this community.”Nor does he see any problem with accepting the support of Republicans.“The way I look at it, an election isn’t over until the general election has been held,” Mr. Brown said. “So I see no concerns with optics at all.”Such statements are galling to Ms. Walton, 39, who says the mayor’s intransigence is doing a disservice to the residents of the very city he says he loves.“I believe that if the mayor wants what’s best for Buffalo, he would have conceded, he would have helped with a productive transition, and gracefully bowed out,” said Ms. Walton, sitting in her single-room downtown campaign office. “But instead he’s throwing a tantrum.”Mr. Brown’s ongoing campaign has made some Democrats queasy, as well as put elected officials in an awkward political position. Among them are Ms. Hochul, a Buffalo native, who is faced with either abandoning Mr. Brown — a former head of the New York Democratic state party — or risking alienating the ascendant left wing.The governor’s office has said Ms. Hochul had no comment on the race, and her campaign office says she will not be making an endorsement, but instead will be “supporting county parties across New York to bolster their get-out-the-vote efforts.”Jeremy Zellner, the chairman of the Erie County Democratic Committee, said that Mr. Brown’s quest to upend a fellow Democrat was unsettling, noting that several prominent local conservatives, as well as outspoken fans of former President Donald J. Trump, have expressed support for Mr. Brown, and have been attacking Ms. Walton.“He’s openly taking the support of Republicans, and working with them,” said Mr. Zellner, who also serves on the Erie County Board of Elections and is backing Ms. Walton.Byron Brown, the mayor of Buffalo, talked to Patrick Lett, a constituent, outside a workforce training center. He lost the primary, but has waged a write-in campaign.Libby March for The New York TimesMs. Walton’s primary victory came largely from the work of a volunteer staff and strong support from the city’s west side, a mix of middle-class neighborhoods, new immigrant communities and elegant homes.She has a compelling personal biography: She is a mother of four children, having had her first child at 14 and later living in a group home and earning a GED while pregnant with twins. Her path to politics was circuitous, including once working as a tattoo artist and later serving as a representative for the powerful health care union, SEIU 1199.Her message, during the primary and now, was one of sharing the wealth in Buffalo, which has seen a surprising uptick in population and pockets of economic vitality over the last decade. Her campaign promises, including reforming policing, addressing poverty and reducing economic and racial inequities, seemingly struck a chord with primary voters, after a year of Covid-19 and a national reckoning over race relations.Her general election campaign seems to be staying on that message, while also trying to play down any suggestion that — as a socialist — she is anti-growth.“I want to reduce poverty in my community,” Ms. Walton said, adding, “If people are less poor, they have more money to spend in businesses.”There are signs, however, that Ms. Walton is bulking up — and changing up — her staff, a possible indication of the seriousness of Mr. Brown’s challenge. Last week, she announced a new campaign manager, Drisana Hughes, who worked on Alvin Bragg’s successful primary run for Manhattan district attorney.She has also been welcoming downstate supporters, doing a swing of events over the weekend in New York City, including a fund-raiser with Mr. Williams, a potential candidate for governor next year, who has criticized Governor Hochul for not vocally backing Ms. Walton.“This should be a race where the governor is stumping for the first female mayor of Buffalo,” he said.Many local and state politicians have, in fact, scrupulously avoided making endorsements of either candidate. And last week, Jay Jacobs, the current chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee and a moderate himself, confirmed that the party was not planning on making an endorsement in the race.“One way or another, a Democrat is going to be elected mayor of Buffalo,” Mr. Jacobs said.Mr. Brown was a trailblazer when he was elected the first Black mayor of Buffalo in 2005, after stints as a state senator and city councilman. He takes credit for a series of accomplishments, including tax cuts and increased property values, as well as gleaming new buildings along the city’s waterfront. At the same time, however, Buffalo remains home to one of the highest poverty rates in the country — more than 30 percent — a problem that is even worse for the city’s children. In mid-September, the mayor’s hopes suffered a setback, when judges in both federal and state court ruled that Mr. Brown’s name — and a newly created party he had called the Buffalo Party — should be removed from the official ballot, reversing lower court decisions.Mr. Brown’s write-in campaign’s slogan — “Write Down Byron Brown” — is found on red-white-and-blue campaign signs peppered throughout the city and has been echoed by the Twitter hashtag #writedownbyronbrown.Last week, that hashtag was used by a curious ally: Carl Paladino, the Buffalo developer, former Republican candidate for governor and staunch supporter of Mr. Trump. Mr. Paladino tweeted his support for Mr. Brown, and circulated an emailed invitation for a fund-raiser for him.Jacob Neiheisel, a professor of political science at the University at Buffalo, said Mr. Brown erred in refusing to debate Ms. Walton before the primary or regularly acknowledge her candidacy.“Frankly I think he just didn’t take it seriously enough,” said Mr. Neiheisel. Since deciding to pursue a write-in campaign, Mr. Brown has been aggressively attacking Ms. Walton; in an early September debate, he accused her of wanting to “defund the police” and cut police jobs, echoing a recent ad.Ms. Walton denied this, saying that she wants the police to concentrate on stopping and investigating crime, not handling social services like homeless outreach and mental health calls.“There’s one person up here that’s been defunding our community,” she said in a reference to her opponent, mentioning his administration’s cuts to community centers and swimming pools. “And that’s caused crime to run rampant.”Later, sitting in a gleaming new workplace training center on the city’s hardscrabble east side, Mr. Brown pressed his case that he was running to safeguard “the future of my city.”“I think I’m the best equipped person to do the work that needs to do done,” he said.He was blunt in response to accusations that he is meanspirited in not accepting the outcome of the primary.“I never cry and whine about what people do who are running for office,” he said, adding, “So I think that notion of ‘sore loser’ that some of her supporters are trying to push is just a false notion.”For her part, Ms. Walton seems confident, saying she and her team are working the phones, knocking on doors and raising money every day.Still, there is a small sense of frustration that Mr. Brown’s general election campaign has prevented her from concentrating on a potential move to City Hall. She noted that “for the last 50 years, the Democratic primary has decided who the presumptive mayor is.”Her responsibility, Ms. Walton said, is to the city’s voters. “I have to deliver for them,” she said. “I shouldn’t be spending all this time justifying a solid win.” More

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      As Adams Plots City’s Future, He Leans on a Past Mayor: Bloomberg

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      The relationship between Eric Adams, the Democratic mayoral nominee in New York City, and Mike Bloomberg has benefits for both men.In the lead-up to and aftermath of the New York City mayoral primary, Eric Adams and his team sought guidance from current and past city leaders — first, to help craft his successful bid for the Democratic nomination, and then to prepare for a likely transition to the mayoralty.But Mr. Adams has recently come to lean on one person in particular: Michael R. Bloomberg.In mid-September, Mr. Bloomberg released a video endorsement of Mr. Adams for mayor. The next day, at a business conference featuring various of Mr. Bloomberg’s fellow billionaires, Mr. Adams declared, “New York will no longer be anti-business.”Two days later, Mr. Bloomberg hosted a fund-raiser for Mr. Adams on the roof of the East 78th Street headquarters of Bloomberg Philanthropies, featuring dozens of guests, several of them financial sector executives.Last Wednesday, one of Mr. Bloomberg’s closest advisers, Howard Wolfson, met with David C. Banks, who is thought be among Mr. Adams’s top choices for schools chancellor.The meeting between Mr. Wolfson, Mr. Bloomberg’s former deputy mayor, and Mr. Banks, the founder of a network of all-boys public schools, was not happenstance. It was a product of a burgeoning relationship between the once and likely future mayors and has played out in proclamations of mutual regard.“The best New York City mayor in my lifetime is a combination of Mayor David Dinkins and Michael Bloomberg,” Mr. Adams said during the primary, hailing Mr. Bloomberg’s “practical approach.”Mr. Adams’s overtures to Mr. Bloomberg reinforce the notion that Mr. Adams has himself perpetuated on the campaign trail: that he is a pragmatic, centrist Democrat eager to make New York safe, prosperous and functional.Tying himself to Mr. Bloomberg may yield other benefits for Mr. Adams, too. It gives him access to a particularly well-heeled corner of New York’s donor class and the opportunity to wrap himself in the aura of Mr. Bloomberg’s reputed managerial skill, especially as questions arise about Mr. Adams’s ability to manage his own affairs.In recent days, Mr. Adams has been battered by headlines about his tax returns, which he has promised to revise, for the second time, after reporters found irregularities in them. Mr. Adams blames those errors on his accountant, whom Mr. Adams said he kept in his employ, even though the tax preparer was homeless. The news outlet The City reported that the tax preparer’s neighbors had accused him of embezzling money and had evicted him.Mr. Adams and his campaign have spoken to a number of former officials in the Bloomberg administration and former and current officials in the de Blasio administration, said Evan Thies, a spokesman for Mr. Adams.“It’s not like he’s embracing one mayor over the other mayor,” Mr. Thies said. “That’s just what you do, check in with people who have been there.”Mr. Adams plans to have a group of deputy mayors with whom he can consult, including current and former officials from past administrations. In some ways, he has approached the mayoralty like a research project — seeking out the advice of deputy mayors going as far back as the Giuliani administration.“He was trying to pick my brain and think out of the box,” said Phil Thompson, the deputy mayor for strategic policy initiatives for Mr. de Blasio and a former staffer in the Dinkins administration. “He is trying to figure out how a mayor can do something for low-income communities of color to make a difference.”Mr. Adams, center, has said recently that New York City is “out of control,” but is wary of alienating Mayor Bill de Blasio, a supporter.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesMr. Bloomberg, who has extended an open-door policy to Mr. Adams and his team, may also derive some benefit from the relationship with Mr. Adams. It allows him to involve himself again in New York City municipal matters — following eight years of disengagement while his successor, Bill de Blasio, held office — and to burnish his reputation here.One former Bloomberg aide, who requested anonymity to speak freely, noted that while the former mayor had little standing in the de Blasio administration, he is far more likely to act as a respected source of advice for Mr. Adams.Mr. de Blasio ran for mayor by decrying Mr. Bloomberg’s legacy, arguing that New York had become a “tale of two cities,” one for the rich, the other for the poor. At Mr. de Blasio’s inauguration in 2014, Mr. Bloomberg was forced to sit poker-faced as speakers derided his tenure, with one comparing the city under his rule to a “plantation.”Mr. Adams, in contrast, campaigned on a platform of restoring public safety and prosperity, the frequently voiced concerns of the business class. He has recently decried the city’s state of “disorder,” and has cited a laundry list of ills such as graffiti, ATVs, homelessness and shootings.Like Mr. Bloomberg, Mr. Adams is a former Republican. And during Mr. Bloomberg’s ill-fated presidential campaign, Mr. Adams served as a surrogate, saying publicly that he believed the former mayor was remorseful for his Police Department’s abusive use of stop-and-frisk, after the two men met for 45 minutes at Mr. Adams’s table at Brooklyn’s Park Plaza Restaurant.Dennis M. Walcott, the former city schools chancellor and deputy mayor under Mr. Bloomberg, said Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Adams have similar styles.“Adams’s style is such that he works with people from both sides of the aisle,” Mr. Walcott said. “One of the interesting things about Mayor Bloomberg is he recruited people who didn’t necessarily support him and then surrounded himself with solid talent.”In mid-September, Mr. Adams appeared on two Bloomberg Media programs, one on the radio, the other on TV, during which he promised to crack down on disorder and open New York City to business, including by offering incentives. Job No. 1, he said, was public safety.Mr. Wolfson, Mr. Bloomberg’s longtime adviser, is spearheading the Bloomberg-Adams engagement effort, by several accounts. He spoke regularly with Sheena Wright, the United Way of New York City chief executive who is running Mr. Adams’s transition, in the run-up to the fund-raiser. Representatives of Mr. Adams have also connected with Robert Steel, another former deputy mayor under Mr. Bloomberg. And Daniel Doctoroff, Mr. Bloomberg’s former deputy mayor for economic development and the former head of Bloomberg L.P., has independently spoken with Mr. Adams.Mr. Bloomberg has also met personally with Mr. Adams, according to one person familiar with the meeting, and has spoken with him privately throughout the course of the campaign, according to Mr. Adams’s aide. And Mr. Bloomberg hosted last Wednesday’s fund-raiser, during which Mr. Adams is said to have extolled Mr. Bloomberg’s expertise, and Mr. Bloomberg is said to have expressed confidence in Mr. Adams.Several dozen Bloomberg associates attended the 8 a.m. fund-raiser, where the price of admittance was $2,000 a head.The guests included at least five former Bloomberg deputy mayors: Mr. Steel and Robert C. Lieber, both bankers; Edward Skyler, an executive vice president at Citi; Kevin Sheekey, a close adviser to Mr. Bloomberg; and Patricia E. Harris, the head of Bloomberg Philanthropies, according to fellow attendees.Mr. Adams said at the fund-raiser that he wants the city to work on behalf of both the person in the front of the limousine and the person in the back, according to two attendees. And he said that New York City squandered the last eight years by failing to learn any lessons from the Bloomberg administration.Ken Lipper, a friend of Mr. Bloomberg’s from their days at Salomon Brothers, was also there, and he said he was impressed with Mr. Adams’s practical approach to governance, with its emphasis on making the actual levers of government work.There was something “old-fashioned” about him, according to Mr. Lipper, an investment banker and former deputy mayor under Ed Koch.He said he also appreciated Mr. Adams’s understanding of the tax structure.“Sixty-five thousand people in the entire city pay 51 percent of the taxes,” Mr. Lipper said, referring to the wealthiest personal income tax filers. “Those people don’t use the hospital system, generally, they don’t use the subways in many cases, they’re not using the public schools. So their focus is on having a safe city. You’ve got to give them those minimal services, even though it might seem disproportionate to other areas, and I think Adams kind of gets that.” More

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      Turn Empty N.Y.C. Hotels Into Permanent Housing for Homeless, Adams Says

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      Hotels in New York City that have been left empty by the pandemic would be converted into “supportive housing” that provides a wide range of assistance to people struggling with mental illness or substance abuse and to people leaving the prison system, under a plan proposed on Monday by Eric Adams, who is likely to be the city’s next mayor.More than 20 percent of the city’s hotels are now closed, a trade association says. At the same time, the city faces a homelessness crisis, growing sentiment against warehousing homeless people in barrackslike shelters and a lot of severely mentally ill people living in the streets.“The combination of Covid-19, the economic downturn and the problems we’re having with housing is presenting us with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Mr. Adams, who won the Democratic primary for mayor in June, said as he stood outside a boarded-up hotel in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. “Use these hotels not to be an eyesore, but a place where people can lay their eyes on good, affordable, quality housing.”Details of the plan were thin. Mr. Adams mentioned the possibility of 25,000 converted hotel rooms, but he said that he would focus on boroughs outside Manhattan, where the number of rooms in closed hotels is much smaller than that.He was not clear about whether there was any overlap between his plan and those that the current mayor, Bill de Blasio, and the former governor of New York, Andrew M. Cuomo, have already launched to build 25,000 supportive housing units in the city by about 2030. A spokesman for Mr. Adams’s campaign said that Mr. Adams was also considering converting rooms in former hotels that have already become homeless shelters into permanent supportive-housing apartments, something that Mr. de Blasio has also discussed.The nexus of hotels and homelessness has been a contested one during the pandemic. Early in the lockdown imposed to stem the spread of the coronavirus, thousands of people who had been living in dorm-style shelters were moved to hotel rooms, mostly in Manhattan where their presence led to complaints from some residents about harassment and sometimes violence. The city has since moved most of those people back to group shelters.Several advocates for homeless people and for supportive housing endorsed Mr. Adams’s plan and stood with him at the news conference. “Adams can be the mayor who uses this inflection moment to change the trajectory on homelessness,” Laura Mascuch, executive director of the Supportive Housing Network of New York, said in an interview. “We look forward to working with Adams to implement the strongest supportive housing program in the nation.” More

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      Boston Mayoral Election Race Narrows, With Michelle Wu in the Lead

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      The city’s 91-year succession of Irish American and Italian American mayors has ended, with Michelle Wu earning one of two spots in the general election in November.BOSTON — Michelle Wu, an Asian American progressive who has built a campaign around climate change and housing policy, earned one of two spots in Boston’s preliminary mayoral election on Tuesday, setting the stage for change in a city that for nearly 200 years has elected only white men.As a front-runner, Ms. Wu, 36, marks a striking departure for this city, whose politics have long turned on neighborhoods and ethnic rivalries.The daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, she is not from Boston, and has built an ardent following as a city councilor by proposing sweeping structural changes, like making the city’s public transportation free, restoring a form of rent control, and introducing the country’s first city-level Green New Deal.The vote count moved slowly into Wednesday morning and The Associated Press did not immediately announce who had finished second behind Ms. Wu. But another city councilor, Annissa Essaibi George, announced that she had won the other spot in November’s general election, and her two closest competitors told supporters they had lost.Ms. Essaibi George, 47, has positioned herself as a moderate, winning endorsements from traditional power centers like the former police commissioner and the firefighters’ union.In a debate last week, she promised voters that if elected, “you won’t find me on a soapbox, you’ll find me in the neighborhoods, doing the work.”The Nov. 2 matchup is expected to test the consensus that emerged among many national Democrats after New York’s mayoral primaries: that moderate Black voters and older voters will tug the Democratic Party back toward its center, particularly around the issue of public safety.For weeks, polls showed two leading Black candidates — Acting Mayor Kim Janey and City Councilor Andrea Campbell — in a dead heat with Ms. Essaibi George for second place. But turnout in the nonpartisan preliminary election was low on Tuesday, and they appeared to fall short.The prospect of a general election with no Black candidate came as a bitter disappointment to many in Boston, which had seemed closer than ever before to electing a Black mayor.“Boston is a Northern city,” John Hallett, 62, who had supported Ms. Janey, said in frustration. “They have had Black mayors in Atlanta, in Mississippi, and other places down South. I think this is just ridiculous. Really, I don’t know. I don’t know what it’s going to take.”The winner of the election will take the helm of a swiftly changing city.Once a blue-collar industrial port, Boston has become a hub for biotechnology, education and medicine, attracting a stream of affluent, highly educated newcomers. The cost of housing has skyrocketed, forcing many working families to settle for substandard housing or to commute long distances.Annissa Essaibi George, a city councilor.M. Scott Brauer for The New York TimesMs. Wu, a Chicago native who moved here to attend Harvard University and Harvard Law School, speaks to those new arrivals and their anxieties, acknowledging that her flagship proposals are “pushing the envelope.”“Others have described them, at times, as ‘pie in the sky’ because they are bold, reaching for that brightest version of our future,” she said. “So much of what we celebrate in Boston started as visions that might have seemed ‘pie in the sky’ initially, but were exactly what we needed and deserved. And people fought for them.”Throughout its history, she says, Boston has served as a laboratory for new ideas, like public education, and for movements like abolitionism, civil rights and marriage equality.“This is a city that knows how to fight for what is right,” said Ms. Wu, who credits Elizabeth Warren, her law professor, with helping to launch her in politics.But Boston’s most faithful voters are in predominantly white precincts, where many look askance at many of Ms. Wu’s policies, and at the calls for policing reforms that followed the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.Those voters have rallied around Ms. Essaibi George, who grew up in Dorchester, the daughter of Tunisian and Polish immigrants, and is the only candidate to oppose cuts to the police budget and favor increasing the number of officers on Boston streets.At a victory celebration that began shortly before midnight, Ms. Essaibi George, flanked by her teenage triplets, launched into a critique of Ms. Wu and her policy-wonk platform.“We need real change, and that doesn’t come with just ideas or an academic exercise, that comes with hard work,” she said. “I don’t just talk, I work. I do. I dig in and get to it. It’s how my parents raised me. It’s how this city made me.”She went on to poke holes in two of Ms. Wu’s signature platforms, to cheers from the crowd. “Let me be clear,” she said. “The mayor of Boston cannot make the T free. The mayor of Boston cannot mandate rent control. These are issues the state must address.”Ms. Essaibi George’s supporters, who gathered on a Dorchester street corner on the eve of the election, wearing her campaign’s trademark hot pink T-shirts, were mostly white, and named public safety as a top concern. Robert O’Shea, 58, recalled “Dirty Water,” the 1965 pop ode to the polluted Charles River and its “lovers, muggers and thieves.”“Well, when that was written, nobody wanted to be here,” he said. “Look what it is now. I’ve seen this city grow so much, I can’t afford to buy the house I live in.”Mr. O’Shea said he was not hostile to Ms. Wu, or what he called “all this progressive stuff.”“It’s all great, though the socialism aspect of it kind of scares me a little bit,” he said, noting that several of his relatives are Boston police officers. “But people need to be safe. People need to feel safe in their homes before they can save the world.”One reason Boston may prove more receptive to progressive candidates is that it is a very young city, with roughly one-third of its population between the ages of 20 and 37.Its manufacturing jobs have mostly vanished, making way for affluent, better-educated newcomers, “people who may read The Times but don’t necessarily go to church,” said Larry DiCara, 72, a former Boston city councilor. And it was not jolted by a rise in violent crime over the summer, something that probably shifted votes in New York toward Eric Adams, the Democratic mayoral nominee.Ms. Wu had no choice but to build her political base around a set of policies because she could not bank on ethnic or neighborhood affinities, said Jonathan Cohn, the chair of the Ward 4 Democratic Committee, which endorsed her.“There is a real way that politics is often done here, of ‘what church, what school, what neighborhood,’ and she is trying to shift it to a policy discussion,” he said.Clockwise from top left: Michelle Wu, Andrea Campbell, Kim Janey and Annissa Essaibi George.M. Scott Brauer for The New York TimesWhen Ms. Wu entered the City Council in 2014, the body had largely concerned itself with constituent services, but over the next few years it became a platform for national-level policy, on climate change and police reform. The policies Ms. Wu zeroed in on, like fare-free transit and the Green New Deal, emerged as her mayoral platform.Some observers question whether Ms. Wu’s policy platform will be enough to carry her through the general election in November.“People just want the city to work for them, they don’t want nice policies,” said Kay Gibbs, 81, who worked as a political aide to Thomas Atkins, the city’s first Black city councilor, and to Representative Barney Frank. Boston’s next mayor, she said, will have her hands full with the basics, taking control of powerful forces within a sprawling city government.“The electorate is smarter than we think they are, and they have certain interests that don’t extend to all these dreamy ideas of free public transport and Green New Deal,” she said. “They are going to choose the person they think is most able.”Boston is growing swiftly, with rapid growth in its Asian and Hispanic populations. It has seen a shrinking percentage of non-Hispanic white residents, who now make up less than 45 percent of the population. And the percentage of Black residents is also dropping, falling to 19 percent of the population from about 22 percent in 2010.Ms. Janey, who was then the City Council president, became acting mayor in March after Martin J. Walsh became the country’s labor secretary, and many assumed she would cruise into the general election. But she was cautious in her new role, sticking largely to script in public appearances, and damaged by criticism from her rival Ms. Campbell, a Princeton-educated lawyer and vigorous campaigner.At a campaign stop on Monday, Ms. Janey said incumbency had not necessarily proved an advantage.“I certainly would say, if anything, it’s a double-edged sword,” she said.Municipal elections, especially preliminary ones, tend to draw a low turnout, whiter and older than the city as a whole. It is only in the last few years that change has begun to ripple through Massachusetts, which has seen a series of upsets for progressive women of color, said Steve Koczela, president of the MassInc Polling Group.“This is the culmination of a lot of flexing of new political muscle,” he said. More

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      Boston Preliminary Election Results

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      Four women of color lead a field of seven in the preliminary election to become mayor of Boston, a city that has, since its founding, only elected white men. The top two finishers will face each other in November. City Councilor Michelle Wu has led in polling, followed by acting Mayor Kim Janey, City Councilor Andrea Campbell and City Councilor Annissa Essaibi George. Get full coverage here » More

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      Eric Adams Vows to ‘Welcome Business,’ Calling New York ‘Dysfunctional’

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      Eric Adams, the Democratic mayoral nominee, said that New York will “no longer be anti-business,” drawing a contrast with the current mayor, Bill de Blasio.After nearly eight years of a strained and periodically hostile relationship between the mayor of New York City and its business community, the city’s likely next mayor on Monday delivered a clear message: He wants a reset.“New York will no longer be anti-business,” declared Eric Adams, the Democratic mayoral nominee who is almost certain to win November’s election, in a speech at a business conference in Manhattan. “This is going to be a place where we welcome business and not turn into the dysfunctional city that we have been for so many years.”In many ways, Mr. Adams and Mayor Bill de Blasio have found political common ground, and Mr. de Blasio was thought to favor Mr. Adams during this year’s primary. But Mr. Adams’s brief remarks on Monday underscored what may be one of the most consequential differences between the de Blasio administration and an Adams mayoralty: a significant shift, in tone and approach, when it comes to dealing with the city’s big-business community.Mr. de Blasio has, at times, fostered close ties to the real estate sector, but he based his first mayoral campaign on addressing the city’s widening inequity, saying that New York had become a “tale of two cities.” He has also downplayed the need to bring back wealthy New Yorkers who fled during the pandemic.Mr. Adams also ran on a message of combating inequality and was embraced by key labor unions. But his main focus was on combating crime, which also happened to be a primary concern of the city’s business elite. He quickly adopted a far warmer approach to engaging the business community than Mr. de Blasio did, becoming a favorite of New York’s donor class — with whom he has spent much of the summer — while earning skepticism from the left. Publicly and privately, he has pledged to travel to Florida to bring erstwhile New Yorkers home. Mr. Adams’s advisers and allies see a shift in tone as a matter of policy at some levels: If he builds stronger relationships with business leaders, it might pave the way for more public-private partnerships. If he engages wary business leaders in discussions about what is needed to make the environment more hospitable to growth, they may then be more inclined to stay in the city, or to expand. In his remarks on Monday, Mr. Adams ticked through a list of priorities around improving quality of life, public safety and innovation in the city, while asking business leaders to be partners as New York pursues economic recovery amid the pandemic. Mr. Adams, who appears especially interested in boosting the life sciences, green jobs and start-ups, may mix more easily with business leaders than Mr. de Blasio has, in part because he shares a number of their key priorities. He has been more supportive of charter schools than several of his Democratic mayoral rivals, and more so than Mr. de Blasio; he also has close ties to real estate. And Mr. Adams has said that public safety must be at the center of the economic recovery efforts — echoing a theme that more than 150 business leaders underscored in a letter to Mr. de Blasio last fall, when they demanded that he take more decisive action to address crime and other quality-of-life issues that they said were jeopardizing the city’s economic recovery.Mr. Adams’s remarks came at the SALT Conference, held at the Javits Center and overseen by Anthony Scaramucci, the onetime Trump White House communications director. The schedule promised appearances from two hedge fund billionaires who were principal backers of a super PAC supporting Mr. Adams’s candidacy: Daniel S. Loeb, a prominent charter school supporter, and Steven A. Cohen, the owner of the Mets.Mr. Scaramucci, a Wall Street veteran, donated $2,000 to Mr. Adams’s mayoral campaign. Over the weekend, former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who got on poorly with Mr. de Blasio, released a direct-to-camera video noting his support of Mr. Adams, who is facing off against Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, in the general election.“As a candidate, Eric Adams has shown ambition and political courage,” Mr. Bloomberg said in the video.In his speech, Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, urged employers to collaborate with the city on a common job application, part of a suite of proposals aimed at boosting the city’s economy and combating unemployment and underemployment. Both the public and private sectors would be encouraged to participate.“I’m proposing an unprecedented partnership between city employers and the city itself to make those connections and create one common application, one job application, to field all of the jobs you have available in this city,” he said. “New York wants your jobs and we want to build them.”Mr. Adams, a former police captain, also reached for a slogan that powered his primary win — “the prerequisite to prosperity is public safety and justice” — as he argued that priorities like reducing gun violence are vital aspects of reviving the city’s economy.And he ticked through a list of other goals, from bolstering community health centers in underserved neighborhoods and efforts to be “the center of cybersecurity” and self-driving cars, to investments in green jobs, to improving childhood nutrition and offering more affordable child care.“Today, you choose New York,” Mr. Adams told the crowd. “And we want to choose you.”On Monday, Mr. de Blasio was asked about Mr. Adams’s contention that New York would no longer be anti-business and “dysfunctional.”“I’m not going to take a couple of lines out of context,” the mayor replied. “Obviously, this is a city that has done so much to work with our business community.”Later that day, at an appearance at a Brooklyn street corner where a 3-month-old baby was killed on Saturday after a wrong-way collision sent two vehicles onto the sidewalk, Mr. Adams contended that partnerships between the private sector and government could improve safety on New York City streets.He said New York City should accelerate the implementation of legislation that requires drivers with bad records — like the driver suspected of causing the 3-month-old’s death — to take a safety course or lose their vehicles. Funding for the bill was delayed a year by the Covid crisis.Mr. Adams, who was joined by the mother of another child killed by a driver in the same neighborhood, vowed to make city streets safer. His comments were not that dissimilar from those made by Mr. de Blasio at a news conference eight years ago, when he vowed to end all such fatalities by 2024, via his Vision Zero program.This year, however, the city is on track to have its highest number of traffic deaths since 2014, according to Transportation Alternatives, a group that advocates for safer streets.But even as Mr. Adams spoke of making streets safer, a parked Police Department cruiser was blocking a bike lane at the corner where the infant was killed, and a blue car zoomed past the news conference and made an illegal turn. Mr. Adams seemed reluctant to draw as clear a distinction between himself and Mr. de Blasio as he had earlier that day.“I’m going to be committed to resolving this issue, just as I believe when the mayor stood with those families, he was committed to do so at the same time,” Mr. Adams said, referring to Mr. de Blasio’s 2014 rollout of Vision Zero. “And that is my level of commitment.” More

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      Michael Bloomberg: Cómo la ciudad de Nueva York puede recuperarse de nuevo

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      El futuro de la ciudad de Nueva York está en duda. Los barrios perdieron habitantes que se han mudado a los suburbios. Se han cerrado negocios. La gente está preocupada por la seguridad pública. Las familias lloran la pérdida de sus seres queridos.Ese era el panorama en el otoño de 2001, después de que los terroristas destruyeron el World Trade Center y pusieron a la ciudad de rodillas. Y es el mismo panorama actual, con una pandemia que ha causado estragos y millones de personas que se preguntan una vez más si los días de gloria de esta ciudad son cosa del pasado.El desempleo sigue siendo de dos dígitos, la desocupación de comercios y oficinas se ha disparado y el sector turístico está en una situación desesperada, pero las adversidades económicas son más agudas para las familias de bajos ingresos. Sin embargo, tenemos buenas razones para albergar esperanza, porque lo que se hizo una vez puede volver a hacerse, y mejor, si se tienen en cuenta las lecciones del pasado.Durante los últimos ocho años, he tratado de cumplir mi promesa de no hacer comentarios sobre la gestión de mi sucesor. Los alcaldes no necesitan que sus predecesores intervengan desde la barrera y no tengo intención de empezar ahora. Pero creo que el éxito de la ciudad de Nueva York en la reconstrucción del Bajo Manhattan tras el 11 de septiembre y en la revitalización de los cinco distritos puede ayudar al próximo alcalde cuando tome posesión de su cargo en enero y se enfrente a los dos de los mismos retos generales a los que nos enfrentamos hace 20 años.El primero es urgente: mejorar los servicios vitales de los que dependen los neoyorquinos todos los días, como la vigilancia policial, el transporte, la salubridad y la educación. En los meses posteriores al 11 de septiembre, éramos muy conscientes de que los ciudadanos necesitaban tener confianza en que no permitiríamos que la ciudad entrara en una espiral descendente, como ocurrió en la década de 1970, por lo que nos concentramos de inmediato en mejorar la calidad de vida haciendo que los vecindarios fueran más seguros y limpios, recuperando las escuelas públicas y reduciendo la cantidad de indigentes.Para mantener a los residentes y a las empresas en la ciudad, el próximo gobierno debe implementar programas y políticas que refuercen esos mismos servicios básicos desde el inicio. Los fondos serán escasos, pero manejables; el déficit de ingresos al que nos enfrentamos era más de tres veces mayor, en términos de porcentaje del presupuesto, que el que se prevé que herede el próximo alcalde.El segundo gran reto es más difícil y de manera inevitable está en conflicto con el primero: centrarse en el futuro no inmediato de la ciudad. En última instancia, el alcalde será juzgado no por las noticias del día siguiente, sino por la próxima generación. Su trabajo consiste en mirar más allá de la luz al final del túnel y empezar a construir más vías, aun cuando sea impopular hacerlo.Me vienen a la mente dos ejemplos del Bajo Manhattan.Poco después de haber tomado pposesión como alcalde, cancelé un subsidio planeado para la nueva sede de la Bolsa de Nueva York a pesar de que ésta amenazaba con abandonar la ciudad. No me pareció que ese fuera un uso inteligente de los escasos recursos, pero la perspectiva de que la Bolsa abandonara Wall Street hizo temer que otras grandes instituciones financieras también se marcharan, más aún con gran parte del Bajo Manhattan en ruinas.Lo más fácil y políticamente seguro era no tocar el subsidio. Pero durante décadas, la ciudad había dependido en exceso de la industria bancaria y de servicios financieros. Se decía que cuando Wall Street se estornudaba, la ciudad se resfriaba. Así que en lugar de sobornar a las grandes empresas para que se quedaran en Manhattan, invertimos en proyectos en todos los distritos que atrajeran a nuevas compañías de diferentes sectores, como la biociencia, la tecnología y el cine y la televisión. Años después, estas y otras industrias —y los trabajos e ingresos que generaron— nos ayudaron a sortear la Gran Recesión mucho mejor que la mayoría de las ciudades.El próximo gobierno tal vez se enfrente a exigencias similares de subsidios de empresas que amenacen con abandonar la ciudad. Pero hay mejores formas de retener y crear puestos de trabajo que las dádivas, sobre todo si se invierte en infraestructura fundamental, empezando por el metro..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}En colaboración con el estado, el alcalde puede trabajar para que los trenes vuelvan a tener horarios completos, lo que ayudaría a los empresarios de todos los sectores a recuperar a sus trabajadores y a miles de pequeñas empresas y sus empleados a recuperar a sus clientes. Además, daría confianza a quienes estén pensando en abrir un negocio propio.Sea cual sea la política que adopte el próximo alcalde, la idea fundamental es que para que una ciudad se recupere económicamente es necesario algo más que ayudar a las empresas existentes. Es necesario crear las condiciones para que otros negocios abran y se expandan, a fin de diversificar aún más la economía.El segundo ejemplo del Bajo Manhattan tiene que ver con la vivienda. Tras los atentados, muchos querían convertir todo el World Trade Center en un monumento conmemorativo o simplemente reconstruir lo que había antes. Me pareció que ambas cosas serían un error y recibí fuertes críticas por sugerir que se construyeran viviendas en el lugar. Sin embargo, nuestro gobierno quería que el Bajo Manhattan dejara de ser un distrito comercial con movimiento solo de 9 a 5 y se convirtiera en un barrio diverso y abierto las 24 horas del día.Los líderes de la ciudad llevaban intentando hacerlo desde la década de 1950, pero habían centrado su atención en el desarrollo de edificios, incluido el World Trade Center original, en lugar de atraer a la gente. Nosotros le dimos la vuelta al guion al fomentar el desarrollo de nuevas viviendas y generar aquello que todos los residentes quieren: parques, escuelas y oportunidades culturales, incluido un centro de artes escénicas en el World Trade Center, cuya construcción está a punto de finalizar.A medida que nuestra visión tomaba forma, más familias y jóvenes se mudaron al centro, abrieron más negocios, se crearon más empleos y llegaron más visitantes. El último lugar de desarrollo del World Trade Center será una torre que tendrá más de mil unidades de vivienda.El próximo gobierno tendrá sus propias oportunidades no solo para recuperarse de la pandemia, sino para reimaginar zonas de la ciudad. Por supuesto, nunca es fácil enfrentarse a grupos ruidosos y poderosos que claman: “No en mi patio trasero”. Pero a lo largo y ancho de Nueva York hay estacionamientos, almacenes, playas de maniobras y otras propiedades que ofrecen al próximo alcalde oportunidades de crear viviendas para todos los ingresos y empleos para todos tipo de habilidades.Estos proyectos requieren ambición y valor político. Como candidato, Eric Adams ha demostrado ambas cosas. Por eso lo apoyo en las elecciones a la alcaldía de este otoño. Su pragmatismo y disposición a enfrentar asuntos difíciles, al igual que la comprensión de la importancia de la seguridad pública que le dio su experiencia como policía, le serán de gran utilidad en el Ayuntamiento. Y espero que Bloomberg Philanthropies tenga la oportunidad de apoyar su gobierno, porque este es un momento en el que todos tenemos que poner manos a la obra.En el gobierno, la colaboración es tan importante como la competencia, y la reconstrucción del World Trade Center, que incluyó la creación de un monumento nacional y museo en memoria del 11 de septiembre, demostró lo crucial que son las asociaciones sólidas para volver realidad una visión. El trabajo conjunto con nueve gobernadores de Nueva York y Nueva Jersey nos permitió construir el monumento y el museo para que fueran un poderoso tributo a los que perdimos y para enseñar a las generaciones futuras el extraordinario heroísmo y los sacrificios que inspiraron y unieron al mundo.Hubo tensiones y obstáculos, por supuesto. Pero es fundamental que haya una buena relación de trabajo entre el alcalde y el gobernador para que los grandes proyectos tengan éxito.Ahora, incluso antes de tomar posesión del cargo, Adams tiene la oportunidad de empezar a establecer una estrecha relación con la nueva gobernadora del estado, Kathy Hochul. No siempre estarán de acuerdo, pero necesitamos que trabajen juntos.Al caer la noche del 11 de septiembre de 2001, era difícil imaginar que la ciudad pudiera recuperarse con la rapidez y la fuerza con que lo hizo. Pero al unirnos, pensar con creatividad, planear con ambición y trabajar enfocados en una visión clara del futuro —fiel a los valores de nuestra ciudad, entre ellos acoger a los inmigrantes y refugiados—, dimos inicio a un periodo de renacimiento y renovación nunca antes visto en la historia.Ahora, podemos volver a hacerlo. Si tenemos en cuenta las lecciones del pasado, sé que lo lograremos.Michael R. Bloomberg (@MikeBloomberg) fue alcalde de la ciudad de Nueva York de 2002 a 2013. Es presidente del Museo y Monumento Nacional del 11 de septiembre desde 2006. More