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

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

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      One Pandemic, Two Governors

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      It’s Wednesday. We’ll look at how two governors are faring as the coronavirus crisis continues and pandemic fatigue rises. We’ll also take a short look at a shirt story.From left: Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times; Michelle Gustafson for The New York TimesThe New Jersey governor’s race has become one of the first statewide contests with a focus on how voters are reacting to strict coronavirus mandates. In New York, where Gov. Kathy Hochul expanded vaccine mandates in the 50 days since she was sworn in, a poll released on Tuesday found that she leads the likely Democratic field.After an opening like that, you might expect this to be a tale of two governors, both Democrats. But this is really a tale of this November, when New Jersey holds its election, and next June, when New York will hold its Democratic primary.First, New Jersey. The contest there is clearly defined: Gov. Philip Murphy is facing Jack Ciattarelli, a Republican who was known for moderate views when he was a state assemblyman. But Ciattarelli has tacked right, pounding away at issues that galvanize Donald Trump’s conservative base, like Murphy’s order requiring face coverings for children 2 and older in day care centers.Hochul’s opponents in New York are hypothetical for now. She is the only Democrat who has declared her candidacy. Neither of the two other officials in matchups in the poll from the Marist Institute for Public Opinion — Letitia James, the state attorney general, nor Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate — has done so.Some political strategists I spoke with on Tuesday said the New Jersey race could indicate whether Republicans are energized the way Democrats were a year ago; my colleague Tracey Tully writes that turnout is seen as an essential element in Ciattarelli’s calculations for next month.In New York, where the election is 13 months away, Hochul began setting up a statewide campaign operation when Andrew Cuomo resigned in August and she became governor. Cuomo had repeatedly attacked the investigation that ultimately led to his departure — an investigation led by James’s office — as politically motivated.My colleague Luis Ferré-Sadurní writes that, judging by the Marist poll, Hochul’s efforts appear to be paying off. In a hypothetical three-way primary, 44 percent of New York Democrats said they would vote for Hochul, 28 percent for James and 15 for Williams. Another 13 percent said they were undecided.What if Cuomo were to run again? Voters again preferred Hochul in a four-way race that included Cuomo, who left office with $18 million in campaign contributions. The poll found that 36 percent would cast ballots for Hochul, 24 percent for James, 19 percent for Cuomo and 9 percent for Williams. The remaining 12 percent said they were unsure.Hochul has made responding to the fallout of the pandemic a top priority, implementing vaccine mandates and expediting coronavirus relief funds for struggling rental tenants and undocumented immigrants. Murphy, in New Jersey, was one of the last governors in the country to drop a statewide indoor mask mandate.That was at the beginning of the summer. Two months later, when cases were climbing again as the highly contagious Delta virus spread, he “strongly recommended” that people again wear masks indoors.But he said that people who work in schools, day care centers and health facilities can either be vaccinated or undergo regular testing, an opt-out that matters to New Jersey’s influential teachers union, a longtime Murphy ally. New York City, by contrast, has no opt-out for teachers or health care workers.Polls have given Murphy some of his highest marks for the way he has handled the pandemic. He has said he considered it one of the defining issues setting him apart from Ciattarelli, who attacked Murphy’s mask rule for children in day care. “This is unconstitutional, un-American and has no scientific backing,” said a recent fund-raising email from Ciattarelli and his running mate, Diane Allen.WeatherOh, that patchy early morning fog. It will give way to a mostly cloudy day with temps in the mid-70s. They will drop to the low 60s in the evening, with a still-cloudy sky.alternate-side parkingIn effect until Nov. 1 (All Saints Day).The latest New York newsThe shadow of former President Donald J. Trump hangs over the trial of Lev Parnas, who assisted Rudolph Giuliani in seeking damaging information in Ukraine about Trump’s political rivals. But the campaign finance charges against Parnas have little to do with his dealings with Trump.A federal judge ruled that New York State health officials must allow religious exemptions to the vaccine mandate for health care workers, at least for now.The shirts Nelson Mandela woreReutersNelson Mandela, who was recognized as a global hero, was also recognizable. His colorful, somewhat casual-looking shirts set him apart from what the fashion historian Valerie Steele called “the conventional male ruling-class look.”Ten shirts that belonged to Mandela will be displayed at the museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she is the director and chief curator, starting today. The shirts were sent from South Africa by Mandela’s daughter Makaziwe Mandela and a granddaughter, Tukwini, according to Arlan Ettinger, the president of the Manhattan auction house Guernsey’s.He said the exhibition was a prelude to an auction in December to raise money for a memorial garden in Mandela’s hometown, Qunu, where Mandela was buried in 2013.Perhaps the most formal shirt in the exhibition was the one that Mandela wore to meet Queen Elizabeth II. Mandela wore it as he wore all the shirts, untucked and with dress slacks. Back home in South Africa, the shirts stood out in contrast to the dark suits of government officials.Some South African historians have noted that the shirts are not traditionally African. Mandela was said to have discovered them after seeing the Indonesian dictator Suharto in the mid-1990s. Steele said Suharto’s strongman predecessor, Sukarno, had favored the look in the 1950s.Mandela liked it, Yusuf Surtee, who owned a chain of men’s stores in South Africa, recalled in 1997, “and he wanted one in its image.” Soon admirers were sending Mandela shirts, so many that he was rarely seen wearing the same one twice. Steele said they “became emblematic of post-apartheid freedom, not only his freedom but the country’s freedom.”“The fact that Mandela really preferred these shirts seems to me a rejection of Western conventions of power and a sign of his bonds with all those people in Africa and Asia who struggled against colonialism and political impression,” she said.But one three-piece pinstriped suit is in the exhibition.“He decided that sometimes you do wear a suit,” Steele said.What we’re readingNew York Magazine reported on the murders at the Carter G. Woodson Houses, a public housing complex in Brooklyn.Instead of a script, this new Broadway play has a transcript, NPR reports.“Jesus Christ Superstar,” the rock opera, opened on Broadway 50 years ago to protests, an irate composer — and sold-out shows.METROPOLITAN diaryInvisible voiceDear Diary:The Q to Brooklyn can be more crowded at midnight than midday: mothers with strollers; older women with shopping carts; girlfriends sharing earphones and mouthing lyrics. It all makes for a comforting sight at that late hour.On this particular night, the car I was on was empty except for three men who were sitting evenly spaced out across from me.As the train rattled across the Manhattan Bridge, I shut my eyes against the fluorescent lights, my thoughts tumbling down into the dark water of the East River below.I heard what I thought was a woman singing softly. Startled, I looked up at the three men across from me: an older one who was closely studying a small book; a young punk leaning forward and swiping his phone; and a big construction worker cradling his helmet as he slept, his mouth slightly open.I must have fallen asleep too, I thought to myself.The train went back underground, and I let my eyelids fall. I heard the beautiful voice rise again, more confidently this time, and a few notes of what sounded like opera. I tried to figure out where it was coming from, but the melody came to a halt.Just the same three men, in the same positions.I got off the train at Seventh Avenue and the construction worker did too. As I walked up the stairs, he broke into full song behind me. We went in different directions, but I could hear his soaring falsetto as it bounced off the buildings and filled the night sky.I could still hear it faintly when I locked my apartment door two blocks away.— Michelle FawcettIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Melissa Guerrero, Andrew Hinderaker, Rick Martinez and Olivia Parker contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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      De Blasio Is Faulted for Using Security Detail for Personal Benefit

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      A city investigation criticized Mayor Bill de Blasio’s use of his security detail during his presidential campaign and to transport his children.Mayor Bill de Blasio misused public resources for political and personal purposes, including deploying his security detail for personal trips like moving his daughter to Gracie Mansion, and has not reimbursed the city for security costs from his presidential campaign, according to a city investigation released on Thursday.The city spent nearly $320,000 for members of Mr. de Blasio’s security detail to travel on his presidential campaign trips in 2019 — funds that have not been paid back personally or through his campaign, according to the 47-page report by the city’s Department of Investigation.The report said that the use of a police van and personnel to help move Mr. de Blasio’s daughter was “a misuse of N.Y.P.D. resources for a personal benefit,” and that Howard Redmond, the police inspector in charge of the family’s security detail, had “actively obstructed and sought to thwart this investigation.”At a news conference, Margaret Garnett, the commissioner of the investigation department, said that investigators found that Mr. Redmond had tried to destroy his cellphone after he was told to surrender it and that he had deleted communications. She said she was referring the matter to the Manhattan district attorney’s office.The report did not say that any laws were broken. But the findings still come at an inopportune time for Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat with three months left in office who is actively considering a run for governor. He has faced several investigations into his fund-raising practices over his eight years as mayor, and prosecutors in 2017 raised concerns about them but ultimately decided not to bring criminal charges.Mr. de Blasio’s office criticized the report on Thursday, arguing that “civilian investigators” should not decide how to keep the mayor and his family safe.“This unprofessional report purports to do the N.Y.P.D.’s job for them, but with none of the relevant expertise — and without even interviewing the official who heads intelligence for the City,” his office said in a statement. “As a result, we are left with an inaccurate report, based on illegitimate assumptions and a naïve view of the complex security challenges facing elected officials today.”The report also examined Mr. de Blasio’s use of his security detail during his failed presidential campaign in 2019. The city paid for flights, hotels, meals and rental cars for members of his detail as Mr. de Blasio visited states including Iowa and South Carolina at a cost of almost $320,000. That figure does not include salary or overtime for the officers.Mr. de Blasio failed to make an impact in the presidential race and dropped out after a few months.The report also cited several occasions where the mayor’s detail was used to pick up his brother from the airport, and to drive him to pick up a Zipcar in Palmyra, N.J. The detail also drove Mr. de Blasio’s brother “to an Alamo rental car location without the mayor present.”Asked if Mr. de Blasio was using his security detail as “glorified Uber drivers,” Ms. Garnett said there was a culture that treated the officers like they were City Hall staffers and a “concierge service.”The report made recommendations to prevent misuse of the mayor’s security detail in the future, including having the Conflicts of Interest Board publicly release advice issued to elected officials about the use of city resources in connection with political activities.City officials acknowledged in 2019 that the New York Police Department executive protection unit assigned to guard Mr. de Blasio and his family had helped his daughter, Chiara, move her belongings from an apartment in Brooklyn to Gracie Mansion. They used a city police van to move some of her personal items, including a rolled-up futon mattress.Mr. de Blasio has also received criticism over using his security detail to drive his son, Dante, between New York City and Yale University in Connecticut. The report said that one detective recalled driving Dante de Blasio to or from Yale “approximately seven or eight times without the mayor or first lady present.”The mayor’s son continued to use of the security detail when he moved back to New York City. The report found that starting around January 2020, he began receiving rides from the police every weekday morning from Gracie Mansion to his job in Brooklyn. The mayor “denied knowledge of this arrangement,” the report said.The mayor’s office defended the trips at the time, saying that Mr. de Blasio and his family had followed ethical rules, and that his children were guaranteed police protection like the children of previous mayors.On Thursday, Mr. de Blasio’s office said that his immediate family was “always entitled to detail therefore all uses are proper” and argued that Mr. de Blasio and his family regularly received threats, pointing to a post on Twitter last year by Ed Mullins, the former police union leader who is under investigation, regarding Chiara de Blasio’s personal information.As for the security costs of his presidential campaign, the mayor’s office said that the city had appealed a decision by the Conflicts of Interest Board that he should pay for them and that “no final decision has been made.”The report faulted the Police Department for its failure to follow “any formal processes or procedures” or create formal records regarding the eligibility of the mayor’s two children for security detail protection. The report noted that Dante de Blasio “has not had an assigned detail since approximately August 2015,” yet often was given protection.The report also found that for about a year, the mayor’s detail has been making security checks at homes owned by Mr. de Blasio in Brooklyn — a practice that investigators focused on because the mayor does not currently live in them and because one home is used as an investment property with paying tenants. A sergeant told investigators that the practice began during protests last year after the homes of elected officials were vandalized.The city’s Department of Investigation previously found in a confidential and heavily redacted report that Mr. de Blasio had solicited contributions from people who had business pending with the city, an apparent violation of the City Charter’s ethics law.The department investigates city government, including the executive branch. Mr. de Blasio nominated its commissioner, Ms. Garnett, a former federal prosecutor, in 2018, and the City Council confirmed her. Mr. de Blasio had fired her predecessor, Mark G. Peters, after he produced a series of investigative reports that were embarrassing to Mr. de Blasio.Katie Glueck contributed reporting. More

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      Can You Imagine Bill de Blasio as Governor? He Can.

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      A run for higher office by New York City’s mayor might be viewed skeptically across the state, but he says he wants to remain in public life.Mayor Bill de Blasio has begun to tell people privately that he plans to run for governor of New York next year, according to three people with direct knowledge of his conversations with fellow Democrats and donors.Mr. de Blasio, who has been a polarizing figure during his two terms in office, has also sounded out trusted former aides about their interest in working on a potential campaign, according to two people who are familiar with those contacts, and has made other overtures to labor leaders about a possible bid. His longtime pollster conducted a private survey to assess Mr. de Blasio’s appeal beyond New York City. And publicly, too, he has increasingly made it clear that he wants to remain in public life.“There’s a number of things I want to keep working on in this city, in this state,” Mr. de Blasio said last week, noting his interest in public health, early childhood education and combating income inequality. “That is going to be what I focus on when this mission is over. So, I want to serve. I’m going to figure out the right way to serve and the right time to serve.”Mr. de Blasio’s move toward a possible run for governor comes even as the city he now leads faces extraordinary challenges and an uncertain future, and should he enter what may be a crowded and well-financed field, he would face significant hurdles.His approval ratings in New York City have been low, according to the sparse polling that is publicly available, and he faces deep skepticism elsewhere in the state — an environment similar to the one he confronted, unsuccessfully, in his 2020 presidential bid. A run for governor would be contrary to the better judgment of even some people he considers allies, as well as that of many party leaders across the state.“Osama bin Laden is probably more popular in Suffolk County than Bill de Blasio,” said Rich Schaffer, the chairman of the county’s Democratic committee, who endorsed Gov. Kathy Hochul on Monday. “De Blasio, I would say, would have zero support if not negative out here.”At a debate during New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary this year, the candidates were asked to raise their hands if they would accept Mr. de Blasio’s endorsement. Only one contender did so — a sign of the mayor’s standing in his own party.He could also face significant competition in the city, let alone the rest of the state. New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, who, like Mr. de Blasio, is from Brooklyn, is thought to be nearing a final decision concerning a possible campaign. Jumaane D. Williams, another Brooklyn Democrat and the city’s public advocate, has already begun exploring a potential run, and others in the party are also weighing whether to get into the race.Asked whether New York should have another white male governor — Ms. Hochul is the first woman to lead the state; Ms. James and Mr. Williams are Black, and Ms. James could be the first Black woman to govern any state in the country — Mr. de Blasio appeared to brush aside the question last week.“We need people of all backgrounds to be involved in government,” he said.His plans could change. Peter Ragone, the adviser who may be closest to Mr. de Blasio’s deliberations, insisted that the mayor had not made a determination.“The simple fact is that he hasn’t made any final decisions at all about what he’s doing next,” Mr. Ragone said. “The mayor believes in public service because he can do things like push universal pre-K and 3-K. That’s why millions of New Yorkers have voted for him in the past 12 years, to the dismay of political insiders.”Many New York Democrats are incredulous that Mr. de Blasio would run and, simultaneously, believe that he may do so, pointing to his failed presidential bid as proof that he has an appetite for challenging campaigns and a steadfast belief in his own political potential.Marc Molinaro, the Dutchess County executive and unsuccessful candidate for governor in 2018, said that many of his fellow Republicans, as well as independent voters around the state, blamed Mr. de Blasio for the “rise in crime and the deterioration of the economic and social strength of New York City.”Even so, Mr. Molinaro, who said he gets along well with Mr. de Blasio, warned that it would be unwise to discount the mayor’s political prowess.“I would not underestimate his ability to develop a coalition within his party,” Mr. Molinaro said. “He’s very skilled at that.”Mr. de Blasio’s allies, too, note that in his mayoral runs, he assembled a diverse coalition in the nation’s largest city, with strong support from Black voters, although that dynamic is hardly guaranteed to transfer to a potentially crowded field in a statewide race.The Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights leader, said that he had spoken with Mr. de Blasio about a potential run recently but that the mayor had not indicated whether he had reached a final decision.“He has some standing in the progressive community, he has some standing in communities of color,” Mr. Sharpton said. “He should not be taken lightly.”Other veterans of New York politics were less interested in discussing the mayor’s future prospects.“I very seldom pass, but I don’t want to get involved in anything that would be negative,” said Charles B. Rangel, the former congressman from Harlem, after laughing when asked for his thoughts on a potential run by Mr. de Blasio. “And I cannot think of anything positive.” More

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      Eric Adams Runs His First General Election TV Ad

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

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      Andrew Yang Says He Left Democratic Party to Become Independent

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

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      Eric Adams Has $7.7 Million to Spend, As Donations From Wealthy Pour In

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      With victory nearly assured, Mr. Adams has amassed a substantial war chest ahead of the general election for New York City mayor. His opponent lags far behind.Eric Adams is heavily favored to become the next mayor of New York City, but that hasn’t stopped him from amassing an intimidatingly large war chest ahead of November’s general election.Mr. Adams, the Democratic nominee, has raised another $2.4 million since late August, leaving his campaign with roughly $7.7 million to promote his message and to signal strength. Over the course of five weeks, some 700 donors gave him the legal maximum donation of $2,000, according to the latest campaign finance reports released on Friday.His Republican opponent, Curtis Sliwa, raised roughly $200,000 during the latest filing period and has $1.2 million on hand. Only two people gave him the maximum donation of $2,000.There has been no public polling, but Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly seven to one in New York City, and many are predicting a landslide for Mr. Adams. Mr. Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, has been struggling to gain momentum and recently released his first campaign ads, which showed him scratching the chin of a rescue cat and riding the subway.Curtis Sliwa, the Republican mayoral candidate, has $1.2 million on hand.Stephanie Keith for The New York TimesMr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, has spent much of his summer focused on fund-raising, traveling to the Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard and courting wealthy donors who favor his brand of centrism. His travels appeared to have paid off: He raised more than $950,000 from donors outside New York City during the latest filing period — about 40 percent of his haul.His donors ran the gamut, from billionaires to a plumber from the Bronx.The billionaires included the Mediacom Communications chief executive, Rocco Commisso; the Estée Lauder heir William Lauder; Laurie Tisch, the Loews Corporation heiress, and her brother, Steve Tisch, the chairman of the New York Giants.Mr. Adams raked in handsome donations from the hedge fund industry, too, including from John Griffin, the founder of Blue Ridge Capital; Lee Ainslie, the founder of Maverick Ventures; and the New York Mets owner, Steven A. Cohen, the chief executive of Point72, who donated $1,800 to Mr. Adams, and whose employees donated an additional $26,500.Mr. Adams has said in recent weeks that he would swing open New York’s doors to businesses big and small and use incentives when necessary to lure them here. In his rhetoric, he is drawing a sharp contrast with the outgoing mayor, Bill de Blasio, who has openly quarreled with the city’s business elite.“The support for our campaign from every corner of the city continues to be overwhelming and humbling,” Mr. Adams said in a statement on Friday.Early voting in the general election begins on Oct. 23. Mr. Adams and Mr. Sliwa are expected to participate in two debates this month on WNBC and WABC. Mr. Sliwa, who is fighting for exposure, is pushing for more debates.Mr. Sliwa recently qualified for public matching funds and has sought to capture attention with dog-and-pony media events, like crossing the George Washington Bridge to New Jersey in a showy effort to find out where Mr. Adams lives. But Mr. Sliwa’s proclivity for drama backfired last week when his campaign claimed on Twitter that he had found a gun at a crime scene on the Upper West Side when, in fact, he had not.Mr. Sliwa’s campaign released a statement on Friday trumpeting his recent fund-raising and said it believes “this will be a very competitive and close race.”But even Mr. Sliwa has acknowledged that he is facing an uphill battle. As a sign of Mr. Adams’s broad appeal, both Mr. de Blasio, a self-described progressive, and Michael R. Bloomberg, a pro-business centrist, have embraced him.Mr. Adams’s most recent campaign finance filings indicate that special interests from a cross-section of New York labor and industry are eager to make his acquaintance. Many of his donations came from landlords and developers, including William Blodgett, the co-founder of Fairstead; the Durst Organization executive Alexander Durst; Anthony Malkin, chairman of the company that owns the Empire State Building; and Joseph Sitt, chairman of Thor Equities Group.Eric Adams’s campaign has raised more than $7.7 million heading into the general election.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesThere were also donations from the philanthropists David Rockefeller Jr. and Susan Rockefeller; Jeffrey Gural, a major landlord and the owner of the Tioga Downs casino in the Southern Tier; and members of the Rudin family, who are prominent in commercial real estate.With New York gearing up to sell recreational marijuana, cannabis investors sought Mr. Adams’s good graces, too, including the LeafLink CEO, Ryan Smith, and Gregory Heyman, the managing partner of Beehouse.The Adams campaign has spent about $630,000 since late August — on consultants, polling and other expenses — and appears to saving the bulk of its money for advertising in the final weeks before Election Day. Mr. Sliwa spent $1.5 million during the latest filing period, including about $1 million on television and radio ads.Bruce Gyory, a veteran Democratic strategist, said Mr. Adams most likely plans to spend his campaign war chest “not just to promote interest in his candidacy, but to build a mandate for his approach to governing New York.”“At every turn in this mayoral race, Adams and his campaign have been strategic,” he said. “So my hunch is that Eric Adams will use this spending advantage purposefully.”Mr. Adams has already started to plan his transition ahead of Inauguration Day in January. In recent weeks, he has released a series of broad-based proposals about how he would address climate change and the affordable housing crisis.Now that Mr. Adams can devote less time to fund-raising, he is planning a trip that he hopes will benefit him as mayor: visiting the Netherlands to examine its solutions to flooding.A firm date for the trip has yet to be determined. More

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      ‘We’ve Become Too Complicated’: Where Eric Adams Thinks Democrats Went Wrong

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      In July, Eric Adams narrowly won the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York, making him the odds-on favorite to win in November. And he won the nomination by running directly against the verities of today’s progressives: asserting that the police are the answer, not the problem; that “defund the police” misjudged what communities of color actually want; that Democrats had lost touch with the multiracial working-class voters they claim to represent.Adams won on that message. He won in deep-blue New York City. It’s made him a national figure, and he’s been emphatic on what that means. “I am the face of the new Democratic Party,” he said. And “if the Democratic Party fails to recognize what we did here in New York, they’re going to have a problem in the midterm elections and they’re going to have a problem in the presidential election.”[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]When politicians become national stories, they often release, or rerelease, a book. Adams is no exception. But instead of a campaign manifesto or an autobiography, “Healthy at Last” is a book about the health benefits of plant-based eating. “Outspoken vegan” isn’t a political identity I tend to associate with ambitious politicians at odds with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, but that’s Adams for you. He doesn’t shy away from a fight.In this conversation, Adams and I talk about the fights he is picking, or will have to pick, in the coming years: with progressives who he thinks have lost their way, with police unions he wants to reform, with wealthy communities where he wants to build more housing, with critics who think plant-based eating is a hobby for foodie elites and with voters who may not be willing to wait for Adams’s “upstream” approach to social problems to pay off.You can listen to our whole conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Tommy Thomas“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin. More