Elections, Mayors

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Christine Quinn Fights for Migrants and the Homeless. Could It Destroy Her Dream?

      by

      Christine C. Quinn was impatient. The leader of New York City’s largest provider of shelter for homeless families with children, she peered over her fuchsia reading glasses at her team, assembled in a conference room, and rattled off a list of instructions.Listen to This ArticleListen to this story in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.It was a few weeks after she had helped persuade the City Council to pass some of the most consequential legislation on the worst homelessness crisis in New York City’s history, and a few days before Mayor Eric Adams would veto those bills.Ms. Quinn, the former City Council speaker, directed one of her staff members to offer to brief a deputy mayor on the legislation. She named a handful of journalists who might write more about the bills, a move that she knew would frustrate City Hall’s press office.She rolled her eyes at the mention of one advocacy group she considered especially ponderous, joking it would take months to release new data. And she snapped her fingers at no one in particular as she asked whether a meeting scheduled for the next day could be moved up to that afternoon, or even sooner.“I miss being able to pick up the phone and say, ‘Do this, do it now, get it done,’” she said later.It only takes a few minutes in Ms. Quinn’s presence to understand that she is itching to return to the action and authority of elected office.Once the city’s second-most powerful politician, Ms. Quinn is now a high-profile advocate on one of the most divisive issues in New York City — one that could threaten her chances with voters in the future.As protests against waves of migrants coming into the city grow louder and larger, and New York’s Democrats cannot seem to settle on a path forward, the city’s shelter population has exploded to over 100,000 people — all while affordable housing lags pitifully behind demand.Ms. Quinn has jumped into the fray.Over the past few months, she helped set the stage for the most contentious fight yet between the Council and Mr. Adams, after leading an effort to secure enough votes for the Council to override the mayor’s opposition to the bills.The package of bills that she helped create is part of a push to help free up space in shelters for asylum seekers. The bills will reduce the time homeless people need to wait to look for permanent housing after they enter a shelter, make more homeless people eligible for vouchers that help them pay rent for permanent housing and provide vouchers for those at risk of being evicted.Ms. Quinn, 57, has spent the last eight years using her knowledge of local politics to build an advocacy arm for Win, the shelter provider, and the organization has since become a frequent thorn in the mayor’s side — even as it receives most of its annual funding through contracts with the city.She may no longer run the Council, but she has become a kind of elder stateswoman on homelessness and housing for an especially green group of legislators.For a while after she lost the Democratic primary for mayor in 2013, it was weird to come back to City Hall, Ms. Quinn said. But these days, she embraces the Council’s security guard and janitor on her way into the building.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesThough Ms. Quinn is firmly back in the mix of New York politics, there is only so much an advocate can do from the outside. The kind of power she really wants is still to be found elsewhere.Ms. Quinn was once considered the person most likely to become the city’s first female and first openly gay mayor. That expectation evaporated in 2013 amid a disastrous Democratic primary in which she went from front-runner to also-ran. For years afterward, she operated largely behind the scenes.Now, she is not coy about still wanting to be mayor one day.That aspiration has created a conundrum for Ms. Quinn: The better she is at expanding Win’s influence, the more she risks alienating the New Yorkers who increasingly view the influx of migrants as a strain on the city and say officials have done enough for them.“Quinn is trying to have a really hard conversation with New Yorkers,” said Christina Greer, a professor of political science at Fordham University. “She’s chosen an issue that is of great import but doesn’t really do her any favors” if she wants to run for any elected office in New York.Even as she says she has no plans to run in a primary against Mr. Adams, she has emerged as a prominent foil, challenging his warnings that the migrant crisis will “destroy” New York and protesting his push to weaken the city’s right-to-shelter law and his declaration that migrant families might be moved into mass shelters.She likes to tell a story about mothers at a Win shelter pooling their extra clothes to donate to migrants as proof that vulnerable families will not be pitted against each other.But the city’s twin homelessness and migrant crises defy such neat packaging.As she looks ahead, Ms. Quinn says she knows full well that these issues are stubborn, at the very least. Making a real dent in homelessness — to say nothing of the migrant crisis — would take a decade or more, Ms. Quinn says, a challenge no mayor can credibly promise to solve in two terms.She knows that voters are not always forgiving of her perceived stumbles. And she is not surprised that some regard her as a politician playing at advocacy before she runs again.For now, Ms. Quinn insists she is unconcerned.“When are you really going to use your capital, when are you really going to do something? In the next job?” she said. “You know, I thought I was going to get the next job. I didn’t.”Crossroads of powerWin, the nation’s largest provider of shelter for homeless families with children, operated shelters but did not have an advocacy arm when Ms. Quinn became its chief executive in 2015. She quickly set about changing that.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesThe George Washington statue in the white marble lobby of City Hall stands at a crossroads of power.To the right are the Council’s offices, where Ms. Quinn long made her mark on the city.To the left is the mayor’s office, where she assumed she was heading as 2013 drew closer.That race was supposed to be Ms. Quinn’s coronation, as Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was leaving an open seat for a Democrat to seize. By then, Ms. Quinn had earned a reputation as a pragmatic speaker who vastly expanded the Council’s influence, passing legislation in part by her sheer force of will, including the occasional burst of straight-up yelling.In the primary’s final stretch, her opponents cast her as the second coming of Mr. Bloomberg, a moderate at a moment that demanded something more radical. In what ended up being a fatal blow to her chances, Ms. Quinn had paved the way for Mr. Bloomberg to run a third time by helping overturn the city’s term limits law, a move that voters had soured on.To some, Ms. Quinn seemed to be saying she should be mayor simply because she really, really wanted to be.She finished third, losing to Bill de Blasio.Ms. Quinn spent the first few months of 2014 willing herself to leave her Chelsea apartment.After finishing a distant third in the primary, Ms. Quinn endorsed Bill de Blasio, the winner. She said she spent the next few months struggling to get out of bed.Ozier Muhammad/The New York TimesEventually, after a stint working as a special adviser for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and a fellowship at Harvard, Ms. Quinn got a call from a headhunter about Win. Part of it felt like a homecoming. She had spent the early part of her career as a tenant organizer, and, as speaker, she successfully sued Mr. Bloomberg’s administration over its push to limit eligibility for shelter spots and made it easier for tenants to sue their landlords.When she took over in 2015, she quickly began trying to shift the public’s perception of homelessness. New Yorkers knew they were seeing mentally ill people on the streets, but they often did not realize that the majority of the city’s homeless population is made up of families with children, many of whom have 9-to-5 jobs.But there was no way to get people to listen without changing something about Win, which ran shelters but did not advocate on behalf of homeless families.Ms. Quinn began training her staff to become political activists. They have distributed iPads and other devices to 1,600 homeless students learning remotely and created a legal clinic to help migrants apply for asylum.Under her direction, Win — which employs 1,000 people with an annual budget of about $150 million — added seven new shelters and now operates 14. They serve about 7,000 people nightly, and, recently, over 270 families seeking asylum, including about 700 children. Ms. Quinn makes $424,000 a year, roughly triple what she made as speaker.While she has found her way back to a version of a life she never wanted to leave, some of her former peers or rivals have struggled to do the same. Several — Mr. de Blasio, Mr. Bloomberg, and her two successors as speaker — have run for other offices they did not win. Some of her male peers fell in sexual misconduct scandals, including Anthony Weiner, who helped topple Ms. Quinn in 2013.Ms. Quinn may be the only one of the bunch who still has a job that requires telling people things they do not want to hear, over and over.She is used to that.Nice until it wasn’tMs. Quinn visited children living at the Shirley Chisholm Family Residence, a new Win shelter in Park Slope that drew some opposition from local residents.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesSome years ago, Ms. Quinn and an aide walked to the back of a restaurant and found James Gandolfini, the star of “The Sopranos,” waiting for them. He was unhappy. Ms. Quinn had been pushing to open a sanitation department garage in his TriBeCa neighborhood.Mr. Gandolfini, who died in 2013, told her if she did not reconsider, he was prepared to blanket TriBeCa with fliers criticizing her. She told him to do what he needed to do.“It was a nice conversation until it wasn’t,” Ms. Quinn recalled. “You can’t have a city that calls itself fair and equitable if only some parts of the city are doing their part.”That is particularly true when you are building homeless shelters in neighborhoods where many residents do not want them.Consider Win’s newest shelter, set to serve about 200 families on Staten Island.At a 2019 town hall, Ms. Quinn sought to explain that Staten Island needed a shelter in part so that the borough’s many homeless families could remain close to their children’s public schools. Residents appeared unmoved, and Ms. Quinn was greeted by “an aggressively pissed off” group, she recalled.Afterward, The Staten Island Advance published an opinion piece dismissing her chances amid rumors of another run: “Christine Quinn for mayor? Not after homeless shelter debacle.”It is a change for Ms. Quinn, who spent years fending off criticism from progressives who found her too cozy with Mr. Bloomberg and his conservative allies. Now, she is going up against a highly passionate force that is skeptical of new shelters. While the migrant crisis has prompted a reshaping of that movement to include more Democrats, it has been led by Republican politicians and advocates.Protesters rallied against a facility housing migrants on Staten Island in August. Demonstrations against migrant shelters have become larger in recent months.Stephanie Keith for The New York TimesRepresentative Nicole Malliotakis, a Republican, said Staten Islanders she represents are fed up with Democrats like Ms. Quinn “building shelter after shelter in communities that don’t want them” — particularly for migrants.But even some who might have been sympathetic to Ms. Quinn say they were turned off by the debate over the Win shelter, set to open later this year in an area that tends to vote Democratic.“You don’t poke a stick in the eye of a potentially favorable community,” said Michael Harwood, a member of the St. George Civic Association.Mr. Harwood said Win did not communicate effectively with residents about the impact of the shelter and noted that Ms. Quinn had opposed a new shelter in her own Manhattan district when she was speaker.Ms. Quinn says she has a new calculus for decision making.She acknowledges that some of her choices as speaker were made more because of future ambitions rather than the right policy, and she regrets it.So even as she weighs whether and how to return to elected office, she says she is focused on immediate goals: moving more families into permanent housing faster, raising more private money, making Win into a top developer of affordable housing with services for formerly homeless families — and continuing to shape city policy.But it does not always feel like enough.She recently remembered something that Judith S. Kaye, the late chief judge of New York State, once told her: She would have paid a million dollars to keep her job for just five more minutes.It was a joke, sort of. But it is how Ms. Quinn feels about being speaker, and the reason she is given to daydreaming about how much more she could accomplish on homelessness, the migrant crisis and housing if she ran the city one day.The idea of actually getting elected on the agenda of addressing those crises might seem like a bit of a fantasy.But Ms. Quinn believes, still, that there is a first time for everything in New York City politics.“In a way, it would be the greatest issue for a mayor to take on,” she said. “If you solve the unsolvable, you get credit.”Audio produced by More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      He Faces Jan. 6 Trespassing Charges. He Might Become Mayor.

      by

      Gino DiGiovanni Jr., who was charged with trespassing at the U.S. Capitol, is the presumptive Republican nominee for mayor in a small Connecticut city that voted for President Biden.The final votes have not been tallied. The race has not been called.But initial results from the Republican mayoral primary in Derby, Conn., this week indicate that voters have rejected the city’s three-term incumbent in favor of a man who was charged with trespassing during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.Gino DiGiovanni Jr., a member of the local board of aldermen, beat Mayor Richard Dziekan by just 10 votes — 202 to 192 — which triggered an automatic recount, set for noon on Friday.The rise of Mr. DiGiovanni, 42, has astonished leaders in Connecticut, where 59 percent of voters cast their ballots for Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020. Only a handful of Connecticut residents have been charged in connection with the riot.His win is also notable for Derby, an old mill city of just over 12,000 people. The presidential race was close: Mr. Biden beat Donald J. Trump in Derby by four points. So was the 2021 race for mayor: Mr. Dziekan beat his Democratic opponent by just 48 votes.“It’s not like Derby is some town in the Deep South where there’s an overwhelming amount of support for Trump,” said Roy Occhiogrosso, a longtime Democratic operative in Connecticut, adding, “It’s not a hotbed of MAGA activity.”If Mr. DiGiovanni’s win in the Republican primary holds, Mayor Dziekan, 57, intends to appear on the November ballot anyway, as a candidate unaffiliated with a political party. He would also face Joe DiMartino, 57, the Democratic nominee; and Sharlene McEvoy, a 73-year-old retired law professor, another nonaffiliated candidate.Mr. DiGiovanni is among just a handful of elected officials across the country to be charged in connection with the Capitol riot. Bob Duff, the State Senate majority leader in Connecticut, said Mr. DiGiovanni’s rise shows the danger of voters not paying close attention to local elections. “Too many people focus entirely on the federal level,” he said.But the local level is where the fight for democracy matters most, he said. “The system of government gets infiltrated, and then people work their way up. That’s where it rots.”Mr. DiGiovanni, who said he recognizes Mr. Biden as president, said he traveled to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, to hear Mr. Trump’s speech. Then, he said, he followed the crowd. He entered the Capitol through a door that a Capitol Police officer was holding open, took a look around, and left, he said. He saw no violence, he said, and engaged in no violence.“I didn’t go down there to overthrow the government,” he said, adding, “I didn’t know there was going to be a quote-unquote insurrection.”He faces federal misdemeanor trespassing charges but has not yet entered a plea.“I’m not an election denier,” he said, adding, “I’m not this crazy tinfoil-hat conspiracy wack job.”Statewide, Mr. DiGiovanni said, he is now known as a “domestic terrorist.” But locally, he is widely liked. He played and later coached football, and he helped build a local Sept. 11 memorial.“There are people who have given Gino a pass for his role in Jan. 6 because he is a nice guy,” said Jim Gildea, the chair of Derby’s board of education and a longtime figure in city politics.Even Mr. DiGiovanni’s political opponents speak mildly of him and his actions on Jan. 6.“Was his judgment a little off?” said Mayor Dziekan. “I think so. But he’s a great guy.”Mr. DiMartino, the Democrat, said, “I don’t think it was a great move on his part,” adding, “I’m not trying to really bash him.”In fact, Derby leaders said, the primary was less a referendum on Mr. DiGiovanni’s participation on Jan. 6 than on Mayor Dziekan’s record.Earlier this month, state officials put Derby’s finances under strict oversight after an audit found a $1.9 million deficit when the city was projected to have a $1 million surplus. The city does not have a finance director, a main criticism of Mr. Dziekan.“I’m a mayor, but my hands are tied,” he said. “I can only do so much, and sometimes, people are going to get mad at you.”Noah Bookbinder, the president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog, said that voters’ support of Mr. DiGiovanni reveals a worrying trend: Although only a few politicians were charged in connection with Jan. 6, many play down the violence.“The significance in some ways goes beyond both the size of this particular community in Connecticut,” he said, arguing that acceptance makes it harder for the country to learn from the riot.Connecticut lawmakers considered a bill that would have barred people who participated in an insurrection from holding office. But the legislation died, said Mr. Duff, who co-sponsored it.Mr. DiGiovanni, Mr. Duff said, “was Exhibit A as to why we needed this legislation.” He added, “He should not be anywhere near the levers of government.” More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Eric Ulrich, Former NYC Buildings Commissioner, Faces at Least Two Indictments

      by

      The former commissioner, Eric Ulrich, will be arraigned on Wednesday, along with at least four other defendants, several of whom raised money for the campaign of Mayor Eric Adams.The former commissioner of New York City’s buildings department surrendered to the Manhattan district attorney’s office early Wednesday morning to face at least two indictments in which he is accused of bribery, according to people with knowledge of the matter.The former commissioner, Eric Ulrich, is expected to be arraigned at 2:15 p.m., after a news conference by the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, and the head of the city’s Department of Investigation, Jocelyn Strauber. The full scope of the bribery case is expected to be revealed there.Mr. Ulrich surrendered at the district attorney’s office in Lower Manhattan shortly after 7 a.m. He was accompanied by his lawyer, Samuel M. Braverman, and was carrying a copy of Bill O’Reilly’s book, “Killing Jesus: A History.”People with knowledge of the matter said that at least five other defendants were expected to be charged along with him, most of whom donated to the campaign of Mayor Eric Adams, raised money for him, or both. Four were expected to be arraigned on Wednesday.Mr. Ulrich, who also was a fund-raiser for Mr. Adams, served as a senior adviser and was appointed to head the Buildings Department in May 2022.Mr. Ulrich resigned six months later, when news of the investigation surfaced. The other defendants are expected to be accused of seeking favors from him related to his position, according to the people with knowledge of the matter.Mr. Ulrich was expected to be charged along with Mark Caller, a Brooklyn real estate developer whom prosecutors will accuse of having offered Mr. Ulrich a discounted luxury apartment.Mr. Caller’s firm, the Marcal Group, worked on developing commercial and residential projects in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, including an 86-unit condo building in Rockaway Park and several others in the Rockaways, according to news reports from the real estate website The Real Deal and The City.According to the Marcal Group’s website, Mr. Caller “amassed a $100 million portfolio” of more than 1,500 units in “underserved communities.” The Marcal Group says in recent years it has collaborated with the city’s housing department on affordable housing projects and with Maimonides Medical Center on medical facilities.Also expected to face charges are Joseph and Anthony Livreri, brothers who own a Queens pizzeria, and Michael Mazzio, who operates a Brooklyn towing company. The Livreri brothers were also seen entering the district attorney’s office on Wednesday, shortly before 6:45 a.m.Law enforcement officials have identified Mr. Mazzio and the Livreri brothers as having connections to organized crime, and prosecutors had sought to find out more about Mr. Ulrich’s relationship with organized-crime figures.The district attorney’s office declined to comment before the 1 p.m. news conference.A lawyer for Mr. Caller, Benjamin Brafman, said his client “intends to plead not guilty and fully expects to be exonerated.”James R. Froccaro, Mr. Mazzio’s lawyer, said the tow company operator would enter a plea of not guilty, adding, “He’s innocent.”Mr. Ulrich’s lawyer, Mr. Braverman, referred to a statement he had made previously that noted he would not respond to any allegations before seeing the charges.A lawyer for the Livreris could not be reached for comment.Mr. Adams is not expected to be charged, but the investigation has put him in an uncomfortable position, given his appointment of Mr. Ulrich. His name has repeatedly surfaced in connection with the inquiry.Mr. Ulrich, the Livreri brothers and Mr. Mazzio were hosts of an August 2021 fund-raiser on behalf of Mr. Adams.Mr. Ulrich has said that Mr. Adams warned him of the investigation, which the mayor has denied doing. And Mr. Adams was among those whose conversations were wiretapped by investigators.A spokesman for the mayor said in a statement that Mr. Adams would “allow this investigation to run its course and will continue to assist the D.A. in any way needed.”The statement said, as City Hall has maintained for weeks, that Mr. Adams “has not received any requests from the Manhattan D.A. surrounding this matter and has never spoken to Mr. Ulrich about this investigation.”Mihir Zaveri More

    • 100 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Ex-Buildings Commissioner Expected to Surrender in Bribery Investigation

      by

      The former commissioner, Eric Ulrich, is expected to turn himself in Wednesday morning with at least four other defendants.New York City’s former buildings commissioner is expected to surrender on Wednesday after a lengthy wiretap investigation of bribery that ensnared at least four other defendants, according to people with knowledge of the matter.The former commissioner, Eric Ulrich, is expected to be arraigned later in the day with the other defendants, among them two generous donors to the 2021 campaign of Mayor Eric Adams. Mr. Ulrich, a former city councilman, was appointed by Mr. Adams in May 2022, but resigned six months later, after the investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office was reported.While the specific charges are not yet clear, Mr. Ulrich’s indictment is expected to include bribery-related crimes. The other men are expected to be accused of seeking favors from him related to his official position, the people with knowledge of the matter said.Among those expected to be arraigned along with Mr. Ulrich are Joseph and Anthony Livreri, brothers who own a Queens pizzeria; Michael Mazzio, who operates a Brooklyn towing company; and Mark Caller, a Brooklyn real estate developer who is expected to face charges for having offered Mr. Ulrich a discounted luxury apartment.A spokeswoman for the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, declined to comment, but the office sent out an advisory Tuesday evening saying that Mr. Bragg and the head of the city’s investigation department, Jocelyn Strauber, would make an announcement at 1 p.m. tomorrow. The arraignments will likely follow.A lawyer for Mr. Caller, Benjamin Brafman, said his client “intends to plead not guilty and fully expects to be exonerated.”James R. Froccaro, Mr. Mazzio’s lawyer, said the tow company operator would enter a plea of not guilty, adding, “He’s innocent.”Mr. Ulrich’s lawyer, Samuel M. Braverman, has said in recent months that he would not respond to any allegations against his client before seeing the charges in an indictment. On Tuesday, he cited that statement when asked for comment.A lawyer for the Livreris could not be reached for comment.In the course of the investigation, prosecutors looked into potential connections between Mr. Ulrich and organized crime. Law enforcement officials have identified Mr. Mazzio and the Livreri brothers as having connections to organized crime, though it is not yet clear what role that may play in the case.The mayor is not expected to be charged, but his name has come up several times in connection with the investigation.Mr. Ulrich told prosecutors that the mayor had warned him to watch his back and watch his phones, which the commissioner took to mean he was under investigation. The mayor has denied having done so, or having any knowledge of the investigation before its existence was reported.Several of those who face charges — including Mr. Ulrich, the Livreri brothers and Mr. Mazzio — hosted a 2021 fund-raiser for the mayor, which brought in a total of $140,900, according to the news outlet The City. Two days later, the outlet reported, Mr. Caller held a party on the roof of his Brooklyn office building that raised $47,050 for the mayor’s campaign.The investigation also made use of a wiretap on Mr. Ulrich’s phone, and the mayor was among those whose conversations were intercepted. There is no indication that the mayor’s conversations implicated him in any criminal conduct, the people familiar with the inquiry have said.A spokesman for the mayor did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

    • 163 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Some Democrats Don’t Like Eric Adams. But Can They Beat Him in 2025?

      by

      A group of mostly left-leaning Democrats held an early strategy meeting to discuss how they might defeat Mr. Adams in 2025. It won’t be easy.On a warm July evening, as Mayor Eric Adams visited Staten Island to highlight his work on public safety at a town hall meeting, a cross section of some of New York City’s progressive class was nearby, plotting how to make the mayor’s first term his last.The group had been summoned for a “completely confidential” dinner meeting to discuss how to take on “a dangerous man,” according to an invitation obtained by The New York Times.The dinner included members of some of the city’s most important left-leaning institutions, including the Working Families Party, and staffers from former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration. There was also a potential challenger they were hoping to recruit: Antonio Reynoso, the 40-year old Dominican American lawmaker who succeeded Mr. Adams as Brooklyn borough president.As the group dined on a vegetarian menu of homegrown squash Parmesan and beet salad, they strategized over how to harness festering discontent and assemble a coalition capable of beating the mayor in the 2025 Democratic primary — an unusual pushback to a party incumbent, especially this early in his tenure.“This is a room full of people who truly believe in the ability to go up against Adams and win,” said Cristina González, one of the hosts, on Thursday, after word of the meeting leaked.Mr. Adams will likely be a heavy favorite to capture a second term.He remains broadly popular with the coalition of Black and Latino voters outside of Manhattan that sent him to Gracie Mansion. He has already built a campaign war chest that is expected to hit $4.6 million with matching funds, and barring a dramatic reversal, the incumbent mayor would likely enjoy the support of the city’s most powerful labor unions.Evan Thies, a spokesman for the Adams campaign, said in a statement that the mayor had lowered crime and “invested billions of dollars in working people” and that polls showed he had strong support from New Yorkers.“The fact that these folks would rather play politics in some back room two years before the election, instead of help the mayor help working people, tells you all you need to know about what they really care about: their own power,” he said.Liberal and progressive Democrats have made little secret of their dismay over Mr. Adams, a centrist former police captain who ran on a public safety message. They have assailed his moves to cut library funding and universal prekindergarten, his efforts to delay the closing of the Rikers Island jail complex, and his response to the migrant crisis, among other policies.The dinner was perhaps the clearest sign yet that they are now openly strategizing how best to put forward a formidable challenger.Ms. González, an alumni of the de Blasio administration who hosted the dinner with her partner Janos Marton, a civil rights advocate who ran for Manhattan district attorney in 2021, at their Staten Island home, described the event as part of a “serious effort” to rally around a progressive candidate who can actually win.Mr. Reynoso, the only elected official at the dinner, acknowledged that the left was “trying to coalesce early to find one candidate. The strategy is to start early and find one strong candidate this time.”In an interview, Mr. Reynoso said he was not interested.Antonio Reynoso, the Brooklyn borough president, said he was uninterested in challenging Mr. Adams, but understood the desire for the left to coalesce behind one candidate as early as possible.Hilary Swift for The New York Times“I got elected to be the borough president of Brooklyn,” Mr. Reynoso said. “It’s a big borough, and I have a big job.”Mr. Adams, the city’s second Black mayor, has made a habit of using the left as a foil, blaming progressives for spikes in crime because they support policies like bail reform and favor reducing the amount of money spent on policing. The mayor has challenged the definition of what it means to be a progressive and often refers to himself as the “original progressive.”But Mr. Adams has also faced a series of negative headlines in recent weeks and has struggled to respond to the migrant crisis — a situation that has soured his relationship with President Biden and led to people sleeping on the streets in Midtown Manhattan.Progressives are broadly unhappy with Mayor Adams and are looking for a challenger to face him in 2025. Dave Sanders for The New York Times“It’s clear that Adams is vulnerable. What remains to be determined is, if there’s a viable candidate to challenge him,” said Rebecca Katz, a liberal operative who has not been part of the anti-Adams discussions, but works with Representative Jamaal Bowman, whose name has been floated as a possible opponent.Some progressive leaders appear to be coalescing around the idea that the ideal candidate would be a Black or Latino Democrat running to the left of Mr. Adams, but with appeal to a broader ideological range of voters. Even so, that candidate would face a daunting challenge.Jessica Ramos, a state senator from Queens, has discussed running with people in politics, but has not made a decision, according to a person familiar with the matter.Zellnor Myrie, a state senator who represents the Brooklyn district Mr. Adams once did, is also said to be in the early stages of considering a run. Mr. Myrie, a lawyer who has made affordable housing a top priority in Albany, declined to comment. But a person familiar with his thinking said he had not moved toward assembling a campaign — despite being pushed by political allies.Others have tried to convince Mr. Bowman to enter the race. Mr. Bowman, an outspoken former middle school principal, has made no secret of his differences with Mr. Adams over policing and city resources for schools and libraries, but he currently lives in Yonkers in Westchester County and told The Times this spring that he was not interested in running.New York City officials were criticized for forcing migrants to sleep and stay outside for days, outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesOther attendees at the July dinner included Rodrigo Camarena, director of Immigration Advocates Network, and Nisha Agarwal, a former commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs under Mr. de Blasio.Ms. González, who is Puerto Rican, said it was important that a viable challenger to Mr. Adams be a person of color. The mayor has already said that certain attacks against him were based on his race. He has begun to lean heavily on his base of religious supporters.“It needs to be a person of color to inoculate them against specific kinds of attacks,” she said. “Those are also the people who are most impacted by his policies right now — it’s important to have someone from the community who is most impacted.”In the 2021 mayoral primary, the city’s progressives had a disastrous showing. The former city comptroller, Scott Stringer, faced sexual harassment allegations and was abandoned by many of his progressive endorsers. Some on the left supported Dianne Morales, who faced a revolt from her staff. Much of the left finally threw their support behind Maya Wiley, a former top lawyer for Mr. de Blasio; she finished a distant third.“Whoever challenges this mayor has to be equipped — nothing amateurish,” said Councilwoman Shahana Hanif, a co-chairwoman of the Council’s progressive caucus. “We really need to prop up someone who will unite a broad coalition, understand the progressives and work in collaboration with us.”Alyssa Cass, a political strategist with Slingshot Strategies who worked on Mr. Yang’s campaign, said the mayor’s opponents should be looking someone with broad ideological appeal.“Any challenge to Mayor Adams that hopes to be anything other than a pipe dream requires a candidate who can make the case that the functioning of the city is reaching a point of no return — and can make that case with just about every voter who did not support the mayor in 2021,” Ms. Cass said.Another dinner guest was Bill Neidhardt, a former press secretary for Mr. de Blasio who worked on Brandon Johnson’s winning mayoral campaign in Chicago. He said the discussion focused on “frustrations with the Adams administration,” including his response to wildfire smoke that darkened the skies this summer.There was “a lot of shared urgency about the moment we’re in right now,” he said, adding: “Also Cristina might be the best chef in all of Staten Island.” More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Manhattan D.A. Investigates Mayor Adams’s Circle of Support

      by

      Mayor Eric Adams has not been implicated in any wrongdoing, but District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg has targeted people who are in the mayor’s circle.The Manhattan district attorney’s office is prosecuting two criminal cases that come uncomfortably close to Mayor Eric Adams, bringing unwanted attention to the administration and raising questions about Mr. Adams’s relationships with the accused.One involves Mr. Adams’s former buildings commissioner, who has been charged in a sealed indictment with corruption-related crimes, according to two people familiar with the investigation who asked for anonymity to discuss sealed charges.In the other, six people — including a longtime friend of the mayor, Dwayne Montgomery — were charged with conspiring to illegally funnel money to Mr. Adams’s mayoral campaign in 2021.The cases have subjected the mayor’s associates — and to a degree, Mr. Adams himself — to the scrutiny of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg. While there is no suggestion that Mr. Adams is under criminal investigation, the cases are not the first to place the mayor, who touts his law-and-order credentials, in the awkward position of having to explain his conduct or that of his associates.Since taking office in January 2022, the mayor also has been linked with a Brooklyn pastor known as the “bling bishop” who was charged with fraud and extortion and to twin brothers who share a criminal history involving money laundering.In the most recent case, the sealed indictment against the mayor’s former buildings commissioner, Eric Ulrich, Mr. Adams has faced questions about his relationship with the former agency head.Mr. Ulrich resigned in November 2022, days after investigators with the district attorney’s office seized his phone and he was questioned by prosecutors. He told them that months earlier, Mayor Adams had warned him that he was the focus of a criminal investigation, two of the people said. (Mr. Ulrich’s comments to prosecutors were first reported by The Daily News.)Mr. Adams has denied that he gave any warning, which would not appear to violate state laws in any event. A spokesman for Mr. Adams said in a statement Thursday that the mayor had not received any requests from the Manhattan district attorney regarding either Mr. Ulrich or the straw donor case.“The mayor hasn’t spoken to Mr. Ulrich or Mr. Montgomery about either of the respective investigations, either before or after they became public,” he said.Mayor Eric Adams, a former police captain, has presented himself as a force for law and order. Dave Sanders for The New York TimesIn recent weeks, a grand jury voted to charge Mr. Ulrich with having accepted a discounted apartment from a real estate developer who has had business before the city, the people said. Mr. Ulrich accepted at least some of the benefit while he was still in charge of the agency. The Brooklyn-based developer, Mark Caller, is also charged in the indictment, the people said.The charges also touch on what prosecutors are expected to characterize as Mr. Ulrich’s ties to organized crime, the people said. The indictment is likely to be announced by Mr. Bragg in September.A lawyer for Mr. Ulrich, Samuel M. Braverman, said last month that until he saw the charges in an indictment, he would not comment. On Thursday, he said he had nothing to add.Mr. Caller’s lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, said he had not seen the indictment but that he expected it to include an allegation that Mr. Ulrich received a discounted apartment in one of Mr. Caller’s buildings.“That is patently false,” Mr. Brafman said. “He paid market rate without any discount whatsoever,” Mr. Brafman said, adding that Mr. Ulrich had rented the apartment before becoming buildings commissioner.Last month, Mr. Bragg announced the indictment of the six people who he said had recruited and reimbursed individual donors to Mr. Adams’s campaign in order to illegally obtain more money from the city. The lead defendant is Mr. Montgomery, a retired Police Department inspector, longtime friend of the mayor and a former colleague on the force. Prosecutors said that the defendants had sought to influence the administration.According to court papers filed by the district attorney’s office, Mr. Montgomery and Rachel Atcheson, a close aide to Mr. Adams, set up a fund-raiser at which straw donors gave the campaign $250 apiece. Neither Ms. Atcheson nor Mr. Adams have been accused of wrongdoing.New York City has a matching funds program designed to dilute the influence of big donors that rewards campaigns for donations of up to $250 from residents. For every personal donation of that amount to a mayoral campaign, the city gives a campaign $2,000.The mayor, a retired police captain, campaigned as a tough-on-crime candidate who would restore order to New York City in the wake of the pandemic. In a Monday news conference, Mr. Adams said that he would not be distracted by the case against Mr. Ulrich.“The D.A. has his job,” he said. “I have my job.”Mr. Bragg, who like Mr. Adams was elected in 2021, has studiously avoided direct confrontation with the mayor, and the two men maintain a cordial relationship. But the district attorney, a former federal prosecutor who handled public corruption cases, has said he wants his office to pursue investigations into the powerful.District Attorney Alvin Bragg has maintained a relationship with the mayor even as investigations proceed.Andrew Seng for The New York TimesA spokeswoman for Mr. Bragg declined to comment on either of the cases.Mr. Ulrich told prosecutors that Mr. Adams’s warning was delivered during a brief meeting in 2022, the people said. Beforehand, the mayor asked Mr. Ulrich to hand his phone to an associate, they said.Then, as the two men talked, Mr. Adams warned Mr. Ulrich to “watch your back and watch your phones,” according to the people. Mr. Ulrich, they said, later told prosecutors that he understood the mayor to mean that he was a focus of a criminal investigation.At the Monday news conference, Mr. Adams said that he had not even known that Mr. Ulrich was under criminal investigation.Mr. Adams has shown few qualms about maintaining ties with people who have been accused of wrongdoing. He appointed Mr. Ulrich to head the buildings department despite a letter Mr. Ulrich had written four years earlier on behalf of a constituent with mob ties, and despite Mr. Ulrich’s acknowledged gambling and alcohol addictions.The mayor also remains close with Johnny and Robert Petrosyants, twin brothers who pleaded guilty to financial crimes in 2014 and have continued to engage in a pattern of questionable business dealings, according to a New York Times investigation.“I’m going to talk with people who have stumbled and fell,” Mr. Adams has said of the Petrosyants. “Because I’m perfectly imperfect, and this is a city made up of perfectly imperfect people.”Supporters and members of the Adams administration are not Mr. Bragg’s only recent City Hall targets: His prosecutors are pursuing a third case, which focuses on the administration of Mr. Adams’s predecessor, Bill de Blasio.The district attorney’s office is expected, in the coming weeks, to unveil charges against Howard Redmond, the head of Mr. de Blasio’s security detail. Mr. Redmond has been accused of blocking an investigation into the misuse of the detail by Mr. de Blasio, including bringing his security team on unauthorized city-financed trips related to his failed 2020 presidential bid.A lawyer for Mr. Redmond declined to comment.In June, Mr. de Blasio was fined close to $500,000 by the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board for that conduct. Mr. de Blasio has appealed that ruling. More

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Mayor Adams Turns His Back on Immigrants and New York’s Legacy

      by

      Since last year, tens of thousands of asylum seekers have arrived in New York City from the southern border and around the world, seeking a better life in a place that has welcomed generations of immigrants since its founding.What many of those migrants have found instead is a tepid welcome amid a housing crisis that has left the city barely equipped to offer them more than a meal in the hotels used to house a booming homeless population. They are lucky if they get a bed.In recent days, the slapdash system the city has built to address the crisis has broken down completely, leaving migrants sleeping on Midtown streets. The city says there is no more room for them, but advocates say it needs to try harder.And on Sunday, The Times reported that a shady contractor tapped by New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, to send asylum seekers upstate and provide them with services harassed them instead. The city’s taxpayers are footing the bill for this abuse, to the tune of $432 million. The curiously large, no-bid contract with DocGo, a medical services company, should never have been signed and needs to be terminated.It’s true, as Mr. Adams has repeatedly said, that this crisis is a national issue and requires action from the White House and Congress. Cities like New York, which has more than 100,000 people living in shelters, cannot be expected to welcome asylum seekers on their own. More than 90,000 migrants have arrived in New York City over the past year, many as part of a political stunt by Texas, Florida and Arizona. Though immigrants strengthen the U.S. economy and are a vital part of the fabric of the democracy, local governments can’t simply absorb tens of thousands of people without help — especially for housing — and their taxpayers, in New York and elsewhere, shouldn’t be expected to foot the bill.Still, there is something particularly disappointing about New York City’s official response to the asylum seekers, unfolding under the gaze of the Statue of Liberty in the harbor. Nearly four in 10 city residents were born outside the United States. Waves of immigrants — Dutch, Irish, Italian, Jewish, Chinese, Latino and Afro-Caribbean immigrants, along with many others — helped build this city. So did millions of Black Americans who chased dreams in the city after fleeing the tyranny of the Jim Crow South.That rich legacy doesn’t seem to be on Mr. Adams’s mind. Since the moment the migrants began showing up last spring, he has made clear he wants little to do with the practical or humanitarian issues their arrival has raised. The mayor has provided basic services for the migrants, and rightly so. But at every turn, he has done so grudgingly.Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesMr. Adams has complained loudly that the immigrants were a “burden” on the city’s resources. His administration shut down a welcome center at the Port Authority bus terminal where volunteers had for months helped connect asylum seekers to services.He said the migrants would cost the city $4.3 billion over the next two fiscal years, a figure New York’s nonpartisan budget watchdog said is probably $1.2 billion too high. He tried to undo a 1981 court decree that requires the city to provide shelter to anyone who needs it.He erected giant tents — now dismantled — to house the migrants in remote areas of the city inaccessible to public transit, then made it exceedingly difficult for nonprofit groups to provide critical services to this vulnerable population, like legal assistance and even help navigating the city and its laws. Such services could help migrants acclimate to life in New York City and could ease complaints from neighbors of the hotels the city is using to house many migrants.The Adams administration has been warehousing asylum seekers instead of putting the country’s largest municipal government to work helping them build new lives, in New York or wherever else they may want to go. This summer the Adams administration printed fliers to dissuade migrants from seeking new lives in New York, leaflets that sum up the mayor’s overall approach and betray the promise and spirit of New York as a home for people from around the world.New York’s leaders are supposed to be different. The city’s voters didn’t intend to elect a mayor who acted like Greg Abbott, the Texas governor who sent migrants to cities across the country, including New York. Nor did they vote for someone like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the presidential candidate who used asylum seekers for political sport, flying them to the resort island of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts at taxpayer expense just to own the libs.New York can do better.First, it seems clear that Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York needs to step in and demonstrate the concern lacking from City Hall. It may be in the best interest of both taxpayers and the asylum seekers for the governor to name an expert manager to oversee the crisis, which is clearly too much for the mayor to handle — a kind of New York asylum czar.That wouldn’t free Mr. Adams to simply throw up his hands and walk away from the obligations the city has to these tens of thousands of people, whether they turn out to be temporary guests or newly minted New Yorkers.The mayor could make a big difference quickly by welcoming established nonprofit groups — not no-bid profiteers — to provide critical services where migrants are being housed. Those services should include English-language classes, as well as basic job certification courses to help asylum seekers find work.Despite Mr. Adams’s cold approach, many nonprofits and private volunteers and some municipal workers are engaged in this humanitarian work. In one small example, Dr. Theodore G. Long, a senior vice president at the city’s public hospital system, noticed many meals at the facilities used to house migrants weren’t being eaten, so he conducted a survey to find out why. The results? “We swapped out roast beef and did Italian food instead,” he told me. “I figured, let’s ask people what they want instead of guessing.”That’s the kind of welcome a city of immigrants provides.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More