New York City

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      What Kind of Mayor Might Eric Adams Be? No One Seems to Know.

      by

      Eric Adams could not resist the story.In a 2019 commencement address, Mr. Adams complained that a neighbor’s dog kept befouling his yard — no matter how polite he was to the owner, no matter his standing as Brooklyn’s borough president. Then a pastor gave him an idea. Mr. Adams slipped on a hoodie and Timberland boots, rang the neighbor’s doorbell and reintroduced himself a little less politely, he said. After that, the dog stayed away.“Let people know you are not the one to mess with,” he advised the predominantly Black graduating class at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn. He closed with a prediction for those who said he would never be mayor: “I’m going to put my hoodie on, and I’m going to make it happen.”That electoral prophecy might well hold up. The story does not.It was the pastor, Robert Waterman, who actually had the neighbor with the dog and the confrontation at the door, both men said in interviews. Mr. Adams just liked how it sounded. “It was a great story I heard,” he told The New York Times recently. “I heard him preach, and I told him, ‘I’m going to tell that story.’”With Mr. Adams, 61, now poised to become New York City’s next mayor, the episode at once reflects his political superpower and greatest potential vulnerability: a comfort with public shape-shifting that would make him the biggest City Hall wild card in decades. He propagates and discards narratives about himself, rarely sweating the details.His highest principle can appear to be the perpetuation of the Eric Adams story, one that he hopes will deliver him from a streetwise childhood in Brooklyn and Queens to the seat of power in Lower Manhattan. He speaks with almost spiritual zeal about his personal evolution — he is a meditating, globe-trotting, vegan former police officer — but can slide into vague aphorisms on policy matters.“I am you,” he tells voters.That this slogan has rung true across multiple constituencies — police critics and police officers, service workers and real estate barons — speaks forcefully to Mr. Adams’s embrace of ostensible contradictions: He can be, and prefers to be, many things at once, presenting himself as living proof that they are not mutually exclusive.Primary voters responded to Mr. Adams’s message that police reform and public safety did not have to exist in tension. Jordan Gale for The New York TimesHe has alternately referred to himself as a “pragmatic moderate” and “the original progressive.” He claims to take bubble baths with roses and has said he would carry a handgun in church. He is openly self-aggrandizing and self-critical, appraising himself as a transformative leader while insisting he ends each day with a self-flagellating diary entry: “How did you drop the ball today, Eric? How did you blow it?”He is, perhaps most bewildering of all to his primary opponents in the spring, a Democrat celebrated by the right-leaning New York Post. He dined in Manhattan earlier this year with Rupert Murdoch, the executive chairman of News Corp, the paper’s parent company, and others from the organization. “Good conversation,” Mr. Adams said. (His campaign noted that Mr. Adams has also met with the leaders of other major daily newspapers in the city, including The Times.)Such world-straddling dexterity has served Mr. Adams well as a candidate. Primary voters warmed to his core message that public safety and police reform could coexist. Benefactors as distinct as Mayor Bill de Blasio, a professed progressive, and Michael R. Bloomberg, his billionaire technocrat predecessor, have allowed themselves to see validation in his success.But the mayoralty is about choices: the priorities to pursue, the compromises to accept, the company to keep. By his own account, Mr. Adams — who is expected to win election next month — has been plotting a path to City Hall since at least the 1990s.It is far less clear how he might proceed once he gets there.While he has produced a raft of proposals, some more detailed than others, on subjects ranging from expanded child care to affordable housing, Mr. Adams has defaulted most often in public forums to a broad emphasis on keeping the streets safe, reversing government dysfunction and being business-friendly as the city emerges from the pandemic.Across 130 interviews with friends, aides, colleagues and other associates, the only consensus was that the range of possible outcomes in an Adams administration is vast. Relentless reformer or machine politician? Blunt truth-teller or unreliable narrator?“This should be a very interesting experience for us, having him as mayor,” said David Paterson, the former New York governor and a longtime friend.Even Mr. Adams can seem unsure precisely what to expect of himself. Speaking at the White House in July, as part of a national introduction that found him anointing himself the “face of the new Democratic Party,” Mr. Adams took a moment to dwell on his uncommon résumé.He was a former officer, he said before the assembled cameras. A former Republican. A former juvenile scofflaw assaulted by the police.He held for a beat.“I’m so many formers,” Mr. Adams said, smiling a little. “I’m trying to figure out the current.”The Mythmaker“His story won the election,” said Mark Green, the former New York City public advocate and 2001 Democratic mayoral nominee.James Estrin/The New York TimesEvery politician curates. But few can seem as dedicated to the craft as Mr. Adams.He has a deftly embroidered anecdote for every city occasion, as if his ups and downs were interwoven with New York’s: born in Brownsville, Brooklyn; raised in South Jamaica, Queens; the son of a single mother, Dorothy, a house cleaner and a cook — a union woman, he reminds union audiences.When Mr. Adams speaks about homelessness, he says he grew up on the verge of it himself, taking a bag of clothes to school in case of sudden eviction and caring for a pet rat named Mickey. When he pushes a plan for universal dyslexia screening, he describes his own long-undiagnosed learning disability and the teacher who smacked him so hard “it left a handprint on my face.” Weeks before the primary, Mr. Adams said that he had been a teenage squeegee man — and was thus best equipped to handle any resurgence in squeegee men.Many of these accounts are difficult to verify. They have also proved irresistible to voters: No candidate was as determined, or effective, in placing the personal at the center of the campaign. “I wanted to tell my narrative,” Mr. Adams said, sipping peppermint tea last month during a wide-ranging interview at a diner near Borough Hall. “People could say, ‘Hey, this guy is one of ours.’”In Mr. Adams’s telling, the signal event of his young life came at 15, when he and his older brother were arrested for trespassing and beaten in custody. Rather than embittering him, Mr. Adams has said, the trauma helped coax him to become a police officer and change the profession from within.His 22 years in law enforcement, until his retirement from the New York Police Department in 2006, ran parallel to a career as an activist and a burgeoning interest in politics.In 1995, Mr. Adams helped form an advocacy group, 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, that pushed for racial justice and burnished his reputation as an irritant to police leadership. (Mr. Adams has suggested that he may have been targeted for his outspokenness — perhaps by another police officer — when, he said, an unknown assailant once shot at his car. The car had a shattered back window, but no other evidence corroborated his speculation about the shooter.)Around the same time, Mr. Adams began speaking with Bill Lynch, a top adviser to David N. Dinkins, the city’s first Black mayor, about what it might take to become the second.Mr. Adams said Mr. Lynch had four pieces of advice: get a bachelor’s degree (John Jay College, 1998); rise in management ranks in the department (he retired as a captain); work in Albany (he joined the State Senate in 2007); and become a borough president.“He wanted to be mayor as much as I wanted to be borough president,” said Marty Markowitz, his Borough Hall predecessor, who served three terms as an enthusiastic booster for Brooklyn.Mr. Adams, seen here in 2008, helped form 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, frequently speaking about racial issues.Nicole Bengiveno/The New York TimesFor Mr. Adams, the 2021 primary campaign amounted to the triumphant melding of meticulous planning and finely tuned biography. He likes to say that his opponents hoped voters would “hear” their message; he wanted them to “feel” his. He is now heavily favored next month against Curtis Sliwa, his Republican opponent.Yet like any worthy storyteller, Mr. Adams has made choices about what to emphasize and what to elide, carefully guarding certain pieces of himself and working to recast others.When his mother died earlier this year, he surprised friends by not publicly revealing it for months, even as he continued speaking about her on the campaign trail. He instructed siblings not to write about her on social media because it might create a “circus,” according to a comment on Facebook from one of his brothers.He speaks little of his first campaign: a congressional run in 1994, when he did not make the ballot, claiming his petition signatures had been stolen. Police said at the time that they had turned up no evidence of this. Mr. Adams also jumped to the Republican Party during the Giuliani administration and has strained to explain why, by turns calling the move a protest against failed Democratic leadership and saying he ultimately regretted the whole thing.Even his political origin story, his teenage arrest, has shifted over time. He had long said that he and his older brother entered the home of a prostitute to take money she owed them for running errands. “We went into this prostitute’s apartment,” Mr. Adams said in 2015.In his interview with The Times, the woman had been refashioned to “a go-go dancer who we were helping that broke her leg.” If she had been a prostitute, he added, “I don’t know about that.”Other amendments to, and exclusions from, Mr. Adams’s autobiography have ranged from the procedural to the absurd. His political runs have prompted inquiries from election authorities and assorted fines. For years, he did not register his rental property in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, with the city, as required. He also failed to report rental income to the federal government and blamed his accountant, whom Mr. Adams said last year he had had difficulty finding because the man was living in a homeless shelter.The last days of the primary were shadowed by questions of whether Mr. Adams even lived in New York: After a Politico article chronicled confusion about where he spent his nights, Mr. Adams invited cameras into the Brooklyn property, where he said he resided. The campaign hoped the tour would quell suspicions that Mr. Adams actually lived in Fort Lee, N.J., where he owns a co-op with his longtime companion, Tracey Collins. It did not. Reporters noted the Brooklyn space included non-vegan food and sneakers that appeared to belong to Mr. Adams’s adult son, Jordan Coleman.Mr. Adams took reporters on a tour of a Brooklyn apartment where he said he lived after questions emerged about his residency. Dave Sanders for The New York TimesOften enough, Mr. Adams has stayed in neither residence. He made a show of sleeping at the office in the early days of the pandemic last year, in a performance of total job commitment. But former aides say this image belied a more peculiar reality: Mr. Adams created a home of sorts at Borough Hall well before the pandemic, walking the grounds in his socks, stocking the fridge with pre-cut vegetables, working out on exercise machines, meditating to Middle Eastern music and sleeping on a couch in the office (he later put a mattress on the floor).In the interview, Mr. Adams said he might continue the practice at City Hall. “Probably have a little cot there,” he said, “getting up in the morning and just hopping right to work.”Mr. Adams’s sleeping arrangement is the most public expression of what people around New York politics have long said quietly: He is, plainly, an unusual man.He says his favorite concert was a 1990 Curtis Mayfield show in Brooklyn, where a stage collapse left Mr. Mayfield partially paralyzed before he ever sang a note.He unsettled a New York official in a conversation around 2015 by praising the physical prowess of Vladimir Putin while making small talk and claiming he had a Putin book at his bedside, according to a person present.He has appeared to suggest that holding office enhanced his romantic prospects.“As the state senator and borough president, I’ve had the opportunity to date some of the most attractive women in this city,” Mr. Adams said in a 2015 graduation speech, discussing the importance of presentation. “And I’m not taking you anywhere with me to a $500 dinner if you’ve got two tattoos on your neck saying, ‘Lick me.’” (A spokesman, Evan Thies, said that the candidate had misspoken in implying that he had dated widely as borough president, adding that Mr. Adams was in a “committed relationship” with Ms. Collins.)Some tend to conflate Mr. Adams’s eccentricities with his veganism — a disservice, healthy-eating advocates say, to the plant-based regimen that has come to define his worldview.His health journey began with a diabetes diagnosis in 2016, he has said, after he experienced vision issues and nerve damage. He has credited diet and exercise with erasing the diagnosis, sparing him possible blindness and amputation and ushering him, he has suggested, to an elevated psychological plane.“That atom stuff and Newton stuff, that is so old news in comparison to what is real,” he said at a 2019 event about food and education, describing the underdeveloped “intellectual digestive system” of others. “I tap into that in my life, and people just can’t really get it.”The transformation has intimately informed his governance: Asked to cite accomplishments over his two terms, Mr. Adams was quickest to highlight a partnership with Bellevue Hospital to promote plant-based diets, before plugging a “Meatless Mondays” initiative in schools.But just as important politically, Mr. Adams and his allies have adopted the language of destiny to explain his health reversal and subsequent successes, suggesting that higher forces were steering his story.“The hand of God,” Laurie Cumbo, a Brooklyn councilwoman, said of his primary victory.“That’s a new lease on life,” Mr. Adams said of his recovery. “Everything becomes possible.”The OperatorMayor Bill de Blasio did not publicly endorse a candidate in the Democratic primary but spoke privately with labor leaders to boost Mr. Adams. Dieu-Nalio Chéry for The New York TimesMr. Adams has a talent for making friends with the politically friendless.During the primary, he was the only mayoral candidate to reach out privately to Scott Stringer, a competitor, after Mr. Stringer was accused of sexual harassment, people close to Mr. Stringer said.In Mr. de Blasio’s case, the bond was strengthened in tragedy. In late 2014, the murder of two police officers plunged the mayor into political crisis. He had campaigned on a pledge to remake the department. Now, rank-and-file officers were turning their backs to him in public. Union leaders said he had blood on his hands. City Hall aides struggled to find surrogates to defend him. Mr. Adams did not hesitate.“Blood is not on the hands of the mayor,” he said on “Meet the Press,” giving Mr. de Blasio a measure of cover from a former lawman.Seven years later, Mr. de Blasio’s choice of successor surprised few who knew the mayor well: While he did not endorse in the primary, he communicated privately with labor leaders to boost Mr. Adams and undercut his rivals, including former members of the de Blasio administration and those with whom the mayor appeared more ideologically aligned.“During the low moments,” Mr. Adams said in the interview, “people remember who was there.”To the extent that Mr. Adams has been underestimated, as he often says, this skill has been most overlooked: He is a canny builder and keeper of relationships, a long-game player in a short-attention-span business, rarely rushing to call in a chit but always mindful of the historical ledger. He has spent years cultivating bonds with power brokers — lawmakers, developers, religious leaders — who proved crucial to his primary victory.Public visibility at street festivals and block parties has been paramount in his borough presidency. Mr. Adams once asked staff for the names of every Turkish restaurant in South Brooklyn to help him build ties with that community, a former aide said.“You know who was ringing my phone saying, ‘You’ve got to endorse Eric’?” recalled Mr. Paterson, the former governor. “It wasn’t African Americans. It was people I knew in the Orthodox community in Brooklyn.”Yet there is a flip side to such savviness, friends say. Mr. Adams has been known to keep politically unsavory company: the scandal-tarred, the lobbyist class, the donor with business before his office. He says he makes his own determinations about people, never judging others by their lowest moments, even when colleagues think he probably should.Mr. Adams’s first exposure to elected power — his seven years in Albany — is perhaps the most telling barometer of how he might operate in higher office, a testing ground for the kinds of alliances and ethical temptations likely to surround him at City Hall.Mustachioed and burly back then, shuttling to the capital in a BMW convertible, Mr. Adams could be known more often for his forcefulness at a news conference than his follow-through on a policy.He pushed for legislative pay raises as a freshman in 2007 (“Show me the money!” he thundered from the Senate floor), lamented the low-slung pants of Brooklyn’s male youth (“Stop the Sag!” read his neighborhood billboards, placing Mr. Adams’s headshot beside the backsides of the belt-averse) and filmed an instructional video showing parents how to uncover contraband in their own homes.“Behind a picture frame, you can find bullets,” Mr. Adams said, finding bullets behind a picture frame in what appeared to be his own home.Mr. Adams, then a Democratic state senator, during a contentious argument on the floor of the State Senate in 2011.Nathaniel Brooks for The New York TimesBut such stunt work and media baiting could obscure his growing clout. When two Democratic senators imperiled the fragile majority the party had won in 2008 by aligning with Republicans, Mr. Adams helped negotiate an end to the standoff and worked to install a new leader, John Sampson.Mr. Adams became chairman of the Senate’s committee on racing, gaming and wagering, where he raised money prodigiously from the industry. Lawmakers and lobbyists praised him as curious and engaged, willing to spend hours on the road visiting racetracks and conveying deep interest in his audience. “I was really impressed with how smart and inquisitive he was,” said Rory Whelan, a Republican lobbyist who hosted fund-raisers for him. “Then I realized, ‘OK, of course, he’s a former police officer. He asks a lot of questions.’”Mr. Adams sponsored some 20 bills that became law. These included expanding affordable housing access for veterans and requiring greater disclosure of refund policies at stores.His most enduring contribution while in the Legislature did not involve legislation: As the police tactic of stop-and-frisk proliferated under Mr. Bloomberg, with stops overwhelmingly ensnaring Black and Latino men, Mr. Adams supplied key testimony against the department. The judge cited him favorably in her 2013 ruling that police had targeted such New Yorkers unconstitutionally.Mr. Adams also focused on matters of race more particular to the capital. He pushed people with interests before his committee to hire Black lobbyists, people who worked with him said. And he demonstrated unfailing loyalty when allies succumbed to scandal, telling fellow Democrats that some charges against legislators of color were a racially motivated plot, according to people present.When one friend, Hiram Monserrate, a former police officer, was expelled from the Senate in a lopsided vote after being convicted of misdemeanor assault for dragging his girlfriend down a hallway, Mr. Adams opposed the measure.When Democrats moved to replace Mr. Sampson, who was later convicted of trying to thwart a federal investigation, over questions of ethics and ineffectiveness, Mr. Adams tried in vain to keep him in charge.Mr. Adams’s own conduct in Albany often troubled watchdogs and good-government groups.He was criticized in a 2010 inspector general’s report for fund-raising from and fraternizing with bidders for a casino contract. Mr. Adams told investigators that staff memos on the bids were “just too wordy,” and he educated himself by talking to lobbyists and looking at a summary document. The matter was referred to federal prosecutors, but no action was taken.Mr. Adams also drew unwelcome attention for traveling to South Korea in 2011 with Ms. Collins, Mr. Sampson and an Albany lobbyist, among others, nominally to learn about renewable energy. Mr. Adams would say little when questioned about the trip, which was paid for in part by campaign funds and described by people familiar with it as a junket.Mr. Adams, right, is known for sticking by his allies, including former State Senator Hiram Monserrate, left, who was eventually expelled from the Legislature. Here, the men walk together at the State Capitol in 2009.Nathaniel Brooks for The New York TimesHe has continued to travel widely as borough president, taking several official trips that extended well beyond the typical purview of a local politician. He has made at least seven foreign trips under the banner of his office, some of which were paid for in part by foreign governments or nonprofits, to destinations that included Senegal, Turkey and Cuba. Presenting himself as a global wheeler-dealer to voters in his multicultural borough, Mr. Adams signed at least five sister city agreements on Brooklyn’s behalf in countries he visited, including two in China.A proposed “friendship archway” partnership with the Chinese government, planned under his predecessor, became a major governing priority: Mr. Adams allocated millions of dollars toward a plan to build a 40-foot structure in the heavily Chinese neighborhood of Sunset Park, flummoxing some city officials who wondered why he had invested so much time and travel in the venture.Other locations were likewise dear to him. Mr. Adams has said he would like to retire in Israel someday. Also Lebanon. And Azerbaijan.“When I retire from government, I’m going to live in Baku,” he said in 2018 at the Baku Palace restaurant in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.Mr. Adams also made personal trips in recent years to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, according to his campaign and people familiar with his travel.Mr. Adams can vacillate between secretive and swaggering when discussing his travel, refusing to tell reporters where he vacationed recently (it was Monaco) but often maintaining that his air miles serve an official purpose.“I’ve been back and forth to China seven times, back and forth to Turkey eight times,” he said in a 2019 speech. “I’m not a domesticated leader. I’m a global leader.”But global leadership has its limits: The Chinese friendship archway was never built.The CandidateMr. Adams is widely expected to defeat his Republican opponent, Curtis Sliwa.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesMr. Adams would enter City Hall with an unusually strong hand. Almost no one — including, it can seem, Mr. Adams — knows how he might play it.Unlike most mayors, who suffer from a little-sibling power deficit with state government, Mr. Adams can expect considerable deference from Gov. Kathy Hochul, who is running for a full term next year. Her success in a statewide primary will depend largely on her performance with Mr. Adams’s coalition of nonwhite voters in the city, boosting his leverage in any negotiation.“He’s finally gotten to the point in his life where he has some juice,” said Norman Siegel, the former leader of the New York Civil Liberties Union and a longtime supporter. “Now that you have the power, are you going to use it?”He most certainly will, allies say. They are just not sure to what end.“People will make a mistake if they think they know what he will do,” said Bertha Lewis, a veteran activist who has known Mr. Adams for decades. “But I believe he will actually do something about this tale of two cities.”Early evidence is mixed. Since the primary, Mr. Adams has readily embraced the wealthy and powerful New Yorkers hoping to woo the presumptive next mayor, suggesting a tension between a campaign that stresses his blue-collar bearing and a candidate, associates say, who can relish the perks of his position.He has collected fund-raising checks in the Hamptons, on Martha’s Vineyard and at exclusive addresses across the city, enough that he recently chose to forgo public matching funds. He has been a nightlife regular at a private club in NoHo, gabbing merrily with Ronn Torossian, a publicist with past ties to former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Adams also caused a minor social media sensation this summer after dining at Rao’s, East Harlem’s gleefully decadent purveyor of red sauce and Mafia stories, with Bo Dietl, a roguish former police detective, and John Catsimatidis, a billionaire friend of Mr. Trump’s.“I’m concerned people could use him,” Mr. Siegel said of Mr. Adams. “He needs to have people around him that are guardrails.”“I believe he will actually do something about this tale of two cities,” Bertha Lewis, a longtime activist in New York, said of Mr. Adams. Jose A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York TimesThe Rao’s outing, at least, prompted a scolding from an old friend. “You’re going to be mayor now,” the Rev. Al Sharpton recalled telling him: Appearances matter.“He says, ‘Well, I hear you,” Mr. Sharpton said, laughing. “‘But you know me. I’m going to do me.’”Some supporters suggest that Mr. Adams has grown more serious through the years, especially since his time in Albany.For the past two years, he has been putting himself through what he calls “mayor school,” a series of study sessions with civic leaders and municipal experts. His campaign has been generally disciplined despite Mr. Adams’s freewheeling reputation, allowing him to edge out his primary rivals in what was effectively the first competitive race of his life.Mr. Sharpton said Mr. Adams has occasionally asked to be reminded of an axiom from James Brown, the famed soulster who was Mr. Sharpton’s mentor. In the story, Mr. Brown points at a ladder. “He said, ‘The higher you go, the more you better watch a misstep,’” Mr. Sharpton remembered. “And Eric has asked me at least 10 times, ‘What’s that misstep thing?’ And I think he understands: You’re at the top of the ladder now.”Mr. Adams amended the analogy. “The higher you rise,” he said in the interview, “the more people can shoot at your butt.”But his fund-raising has again invited ethical concerns. The campaign sometimes failed to disclose the identities of people who raised money for him or to list fund-raisers thrown for him as in-kind contributions, in apparent violation of city campaign finance law.Asked whether a pattern of missteps in his own dealings with the government should give voters pause, Mr. Adams said he would not “apologize for being a human.”“It’s going to be a joy knowing I don’t have to manage the $98 billion budget — I have an O.M.B. director,” he said. “I don’t have to manage the Police Department. I have a commissioner.”Mr. Adams has been a prolific fundraiser since winning the primary. Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesStill, former aides questioned Mr. Adams’s willingness to delegate, especially on policing.While he has said he surrounds himself with people who are “brutally honest,” some employees say he does not always appreciate dissent. “This is my ship,” he would say when challenged, according to one of them. “I am the captain of the ship.”Mr. Adams has long argued that Black leaders are held to a different standard, and former colleagues expect he will do the same at City Hall.Confronted at a community meeting in 2019 about employees parking illegally around Borough Hall, Mr. Adams said that if other officials were abusing their placards, he would not chastise his own team. “I fought my entire life to make sure men that look like me don’t have different rules than everyone else,” he said. “It’s not going to be a rule just for Eric Adams.”While he calls himself thick-skinned, Mr. Adams retains a mental archive of slights and grievances, describing in one breath those who were “mean” to him during the primary and insisting in the next that he holds no grudges.For a man who seems to appreciate his own idiosyncrasies, often speaking about himself in the third person as if admiring his story at a remove, Mr. Adams can at times reduce the world around him to binary categories: winners and losers, lions and sheep, doers and haters.“Turn your haters into your waiters,” he has told audiences, “and give them a 15 percent tip.”At one point in the interview, Mr. Adams was asked why some doubt his capacity to surround himself with good people, to rise to the job he is likely to claim.He laughed. He smiled. He stared straight ahead.He had his own question.“Why do I keep winning?”“I am the face of the new Democratic Party,” Mr. Adams said when he was leading in the primary. “I’m going to show America how to run a city.”Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesSusan C. Beachy contributed reporting. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      How to Vote Early in New York City

      by

      It’s Friday. We’ll look at the election in New York City, where early voting begins tomorrow, a prelude to Election Day on Nov. 2. Karsten Moran for The New York TimesThis is a week for election rituals: the candidates for mayor faced off in a debate on Wednesday, and tomorrow, early voting begins in New York City. Here is a guide to navigating the 11 days between now and Election Day on Nov. 2.Where can I vote early, and when?You can early vote on any of nine consecutive days starting tomorrow. Your early voting polling place may be different from your Election Day polling place: Only 106 will be open for early voting, not quite 9 percent of the 1,220 that will be open across the city on Nov. 2.This poll site locator from the Board of Elections will tell you where you can vote early and when, because the hours for early voting begin earlier some days than others.The locator also tells you where your Election Day polling place will be, along with enough numbers to call a play at the Meadowlands: your assembly district, your City Council district, your election district and your judicial district, among others.You don’t need to take identification to vote — unless you are a first-time voter and did not register in person.Will there be long lines, as there were last year?Maybe, maybe not. “The nature of the election event this year is different from last year,” said Jarret Berg, a voting rights advocate and a co-founder of the group VoteEarlyNY. “In a year after the presidential, we just won’t see the same volume.”And many races, like the contest for mayor, were largely decided in the June primary, because registered Democratic voters outnumber Republicans in the city by nearly seven to one. The Democratic nominee for mayor, Eric Adams, is considered the clear front-runner against the Republican nominee, Curtis Sliwa.There are two other citywide races (for public advocate and comptroller); a borough president’s race in each borough; and City Council races in each district.There are no national races, as there were last year. Nor are there congressional races.But there are five ballot proposals this time around. You can give your thumbs-up or thumbs-down to same-day voter registration (which could allow registration less than the current 10 days before Election Day) and to no-excuse absentee voting (which would mean that you could vote by mail without having to say you cannot vote in person because you are out of town, ill or physically disabled).Will there be ranked-choice voting, as in the June primary?No, except in two special elections — and it won’t matter in one, because only one candidate is running.That is in the Bronx, where Yudelka Tapia is running for the remaining year of Assemblyman Victor Pichardo’s term. Pichardo, a Democrat, resigned last month. Tapia lost a bid for the City Council in June.Three candidates are on the ballot in the other special election, to fill the State Senate seat vacated when Gov. Kathy Hochul picked Brian Benjamin to be lieutenant governor.Will my absentee ballot be counted?So far, this election does not look like a rerun of last year — when the Board of Election sent out nearly 100,000 ballot packages with the wrong names and addresses — or the June primary, when the board accidentally released incorrect vote totals for the mayoral primary. (It had to retract and recount.)“Our lovely Board of Elections — let’s hope they get it right this time,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Thursday. He has long complained about the Board of Elections, going back at least to problems with voting machines in the 2010 primary.John Kaehny, the executive director of the watchdog group Reinvent Albany, said there had been “no early warning signs of hurricane-type election failure.” But he said the board had had trouble recruiting people to work at the polls. Understaffing could cause problems once voting begins, he said.Is Curtis Sliwa the only member of his household running for office?No. His wife, Nancy, is the Republican candidate for City Council in a district on the Upper West Side. The Democratic candidate is Gale Brewer, the Manhattan borough president, who could not run for a third term because of term limits.The district is heavily Democratic, but Nancy Sliwa said during a debate with Brewer that she was not “a traditional Republican” and had once supported Senator Bernie Sanders.The debate was conducted remotely, and as she spoke two cats leapt onto a ledge behind her in the 320-square-foot apartment where the Sliwas live with more than a dozen cats. In 2018, when she ran for state attorney general, Newsday and The New York Post said that her platform revolved around animal rights.WeatherIt’s a mostly sunny fall day, New York — cooler than yesterday, with temps only reaching the 60s. They will drop to the mid-50s on a mostly cloudy evening. Watch out for a chance of showers over the weekend.alternate-side parkingIn effect until Nov. 1 (All Saints Day).The latest New York newsMiss the mayoral debate on Wednesday? Need a refresher before early voting begins? Here are five takeaways.A former pain doctor faces federal charges in New York and state charges in both New York and New Jersey for illegal sexual activity over the course of 15 years.Lev Parnas appeared to parlay donations to Republican candidates into influence and access — and money from a Russian tycoon.What we’re readingThe New York Post reported on why a $100 million Staten Island Ferry boat, the first new ship in 16 years, is docked without a crew.Bleach-cracked hands, second jobs and takeout service: Grub Street looked into how one Bushwick restaurant stayed afloat during the pandemic.What we’re watching: Alvin Bragg, former federal prosecutor and now Manhattan’s potential first Black D.A., will discuss the challenges he’ll face and his plans for Day 1 in office on “The New York Times Close Up With Sam Roberts.” The show airs on Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 1:30 p.m. and Sunday at 12:30 p.m. [CUNY TV] METROPOLITAN diaryLittle pink teapotsDear Diary:In the mid-2000s, I worked for a company with offices on Park Avenue. I lived in Denver then and would fly to New York for meetings several times a year, staying at the company’s suites at the Waldorf Towers.I often had breakfast at the hotel’s Coffee House, at 50th Street on the Lexington Avenue side. My usual order was tea and toast. The tea was served in a small pink teapot with a silver rim, a Waldorf signature.The little teapots became a comforting morning staple on these trips. I was served by the same waitress over a period of years, and I often mentioned to her how I loved the teapots.In October 2014, I read that the Waldorf had been sold. Then, while on my next trip to New York, I was notified that my company would be merging my division with one in Fort Worth and that I, along with 300 others, would be laid off. The trip would be my last.The next morning I had my usual breakfast at the Coffee House. My waitress had also been told that she would soon be laid off. I said I would miss her and, of course, my little pink teapots.It was my last morning at the hotel and I had already checked out. My travel bag was open on the floor next to the booth where I was sitting. I stepped away for a few minutes, returned, tipped the waitress and left for the last time. It was a sad morning.When I got home to Denver and unpacked my bag, I found a little pink teapot wrapped in a hotel napkin along with a note. It said all of the old Waldorf china and silver was to be sold and that this was a souvenir from my many breakfasts there, compliments of a longtime friend.— Mary F. CookIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you on Monday. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Melissa Guerrero, Isabella Paoletto, 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

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      5 Takeaways From the First N.Y.C. Mayoral Debate

      by

      Eric Adams and Curtis Sliwa offered different visions for New York City in their first debate on Wednesday night, disagreeing over everything from vaccine mandates to keeping a statue of Thomas Jefferson at City Hall.Mr. Adams, the Democratic nominee, tried to remain calm while Mr. Sliwa, his Republican opponent, lobbed a barrage of attacks and tried to tie Mr. Adams to Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is deeply unpopular among many New Yorkers. Mr. Adams criticized Mr. Sliwa for admitting to faking crimes for publicity as the leader of the Guardian Angels — and for not following the rules of the debate, calling Mr. Sliwa’s confrontational and often random debate style “buffoonery.” Beyond trading barbs, there were some substantial policy differences between the candidates ahead of the general election on Nov. 2. Here are five takeaways from the debate:A disagreement over a vaccine mandate for city workersMr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, said he supports Mr. de Blasio’s new vaccine mandate for public workers that was announced on Wednesday. But Mr. Adams said he would have worked more closely with labor leaders to figure out a way to reach an agreement together.“I believe the mayor’s action today was correct,” Mr. Adams said. “I would have handled it differently.”Mr. Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels and a former radio host, said he opposed the mandate and worried that it could lead to the loss of some police officers.“I disagree with Eric,” Mr. Sliwa said. “I feel that we don’t have enough police officers as it is.”Attacks over past lies and a Brooklyn apartmentMr. Adams repeatedly sought to depict Mr. Sliwa as a liar and criticized him for interrupting and not following the debate rules.“Can he please adhere to the rules?” Mr. Adams asked one of the moderators.Mr. Sliwa said that he had apologized for making up crimes during the 1980s to try to attract more attention.“I made mistakes,” he said. “I was immature at the age of 25 and did things I should not have done. I know my opponent, Eric Adams, similarly has done things that he’s apologized for.”Mr. Sliwa sought to rattle Mr. Adams and was mostly unsuccessful. When questioned by one of the moderators, Mr. Adams refused to say how many nights he had slept at the Brooklyn apartment where he claims to have lived during the last six months. Mr. Adams, who has faced questions over his residency, said he sometimes works at Brooklyn Borough Hall until 4 or 5 a.m.“I don’t jot down the number of days I’m there, but that’s where I lay my head,” Mr. Adams said of his apartment. The men disagreed on another hot topic — the planned removal of the Jefferson statue from City Council chambers. Mr. Adams wants it gone; Mr. Sliwa said it should stay.Different visions for schoolsThe candidates offered opposing plans for the city’s schools. Mr. Adams wants to set a vaccine mandate for public school students — a departure from Mr. de Blasio. Mr. Adams said that schools already require vaccines for diseases like measles and that a mandate would help protect students from the coronavirus. For families who decide to keep children at home, Mr. Adams said he was “open to a remote option.”Mr. Sliwa, who noted that he has three sons in public schools, said he opposes a vaccine mandate for students because it could cause some students to stay home. “We need them in school learning,” Mr. Sliwa said. Both candidates have concerns over Mr. de Blasio’s decision to end the gifted and talented program for elementary school children and said they want to expand the program.Mr. Adams said that the city should re-examine the admissions exam for the program while increasing opportunities for so-called “accelerated learning” to every ZIP code in the city.“I made it clear that we need to look at that exam,” he said. “I don’t believe a 4-year-old taking the exam should determine the rest of their school experience. That is unacceptable.”.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-k59gj9{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;width:100%;}.css-1e2usoh{font-family:inherit;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;border-top:1px solid #ccc;padding:10px 0px 10px 0px;background-color:#fff;}.css-1jz6h6z{font-family:inherit;font-weight:bold;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;text-align:left;}.css-1t412wb{box-sizing:border-box;margin:8px 15px 0px 15px;cursor:pointer;}.css-hhzar2{-webkit-transition:-webkit-transform ease 0.5s;-webkit-transition:transform ease 0.5s;transition:transform ease 0.5s;}.css-t54hv4{-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-1r2j9qz{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-e1ipqs{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;padding:0px 30px 0px 0px;}.css-e1ipqs a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.css-e1ipqs a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1o76pdf{visibility:show;height:100%;padding-bottom:20px;}.css-1sw9s96{visibility:hidden;height:0px;}.css-1in8jot{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;font-family:’nyt-franklin’,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;text-align:left;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1in8jot{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1in8jot:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1in8jot{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}What to Know About Covid-19 Booster ShotsThe F.D.A. has authorized booster shots for millions of recipients of the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. Pfizer and Moderna recipients who are eligible for a booster include people 65 and older, and younger adults at high risk of severe Covid-19 because of medical conditions or where they work. Eligible Pfizer and Moderna recipients can get a booster at least six months after their second dose. All Johnson & Johnson recipients will be eligible for a second shot at least two months after the first.Yes. The F.D.A. has updated its authorizations to allow medical providers to boost people with a different vaccine than the one they initially received, a strategy known as “mix and match.” Whether you received Moderna, Johnson & Johnson or Pfizer-BioNTech, you may receive a booster of any other vaccine. Regulators have not recommended any one vaccine over another as a booster. They have also remained silent on whether it is preferable to stick with the same vaccine when possible.The C.D.C. has said the conditions that qualify a person for a booster shot include: hypertension and heart disease; diabetes or obesity; cancer or blood disorders; weakened immune system; chronic lung, kidney or liver disease; dementia and certain disabilities. Pregnant women and current and former smokers are also eligible.The F.D.A. authorized boosters for workers whose jobs put them at high risk of exposure to potentially infectious people. The C.D.C. says that group includes: emergency medical workers; education workers; food and agriculture workers; manufacturing workers; corrections workers; U.S. Postal Service workers; public transit workers; grocery store workers.Yes. The C.D.C. says the Covid vaccine may be administered without regard to the timing of other vaccines, and many pharmacy sites are allowing people to schedule a flu shot at the same time as a booster dose.Mr. Sliwa reiterated his support for bringing the gifted program to all schools, noting that his son was one of thousands of students who took the test and “lost out.”Sliwa ties Adams to de Blasio and rich New YorkersTo hear Mr. Sliwa tell it, Mr. Adams is spending his time hanging out with high rollers, and also Mr. de Blasio.“I am the people’s choice,” Mr. Sliwa said. “Eric Adams is with the elites in the suites, the TikTok girls, trying to sort of live up to the Kardashians.” Mr. Adams does in fact seem to enjoy New York City’s nightlife. Just days after he won the primary, he was spotted at Rao’s in East Harlem, one of the city’s most exclusive restaurants, dining with a Republican billionaire. In September, Mr. Adams reportedly spent two nights in a row at Zero Bond, a private club in SoHo. And he has spent much of the post-primary season raising money from the donor class, including from several billionaires. He also took an undisclosed vacation to Monaco, which is known for its high-end casinos and idle rich.“Who goes to Monaco?” Mr. Sliwa asked in disbelief.Mr. Sliwa also sought to tie Mr. Adams to Mr. de Blasio, whose approval rating dropped after his failed presidential run. Mr. de Blasio is, in fact, an ally of Mr. Adams after quietly supporting him during the primary.“How about we do something novel and stop trusting these politicians like Eric Adams and de Blasio?” Mr. Sliwa said.Adams wants to close Rikers; Sliwa says he would move thereThe next mayor will take office with the city’s jail system in crisis. The Rikers Island jail complex has descended into violent chaos, with many correction officers refusing to show up to work. Fourteen detainees have died in city custody so far this year.Mr. Adams reiterated his support for Mr. de Blasio’s plan to close the jails on Rikers Island and replace them with smaller jails in different boroughs. But Mr. Adams also suggested uncertainty about the sites where those jails are supposed to go. Mr. Sliwa opposes the de Blasio plan outright.But replacing Rikers is a long-term plan. More immediately, Mr. Adams said he would “stop the bottleneck” and get detainees to court so they can be freed or serve their time. He would also tell the officers who are not reporting to duty to return to work, where he would offer a safe environment. He did not specify how.Mr. Sliwa suggested that he would take a hands-on approach as mayor. He said that on Jan. 2, he would move to the warden’s house on Rikers Island and personally supervise the jails and offer support to the correction officers working there. He said he would also hire 2,000 additional officers, relocate emotionally disturbed inmates to state facilities and break up the gangs inside the jail.“I can say that, because I’ve been on Rikers Island,” said Mr. Sliwa, who claims to have been arrested more than 70 times.In 1994, for example, the police arrested Mr. Sliwa after he prepared to paint over an art exhibition in a Brooklyn park that depicted assassinated police officers. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      In Debate, Adams Acts Like Front-Runner, While Sliwa Goes on Attack

      by

      Eric Adams, the Democratic nominee in the New York City mayor’s race, and Curtis Sliwa, his Republican opponent, clashed on vaccine mandates and congestion pricing.For the better part of an hour on Wednesday, Eric Adams was accused of spending too much time with “elites,” losing touch with working-class New Yorkers and being a carbon copy of Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose popularity has steadily waned during his tenure.Yet when he was given openings to respond during the first general election debate of the New York City mayoral contest, Mr. Adams — the typically voluble Democratic nominee for mayor — often flashed a placid smile instead.Mr. Adams, the overwhelming favorite in the race, seemed to approach the matchup against his Republican foe, Curtis Sliwa, as if it were an infomercial for a mayoralty he had already secured.“I’m speaking to New Yorkers,” Mr. Adams said. “Not speaking to buffoonery.”Mr. Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels and an animated orator, worked to knock the front-runner off balance and strained to sow the kind of doubts about his opponent that could alter the trajectory of the race. There was little evidence he succeeded.Mr. Adams cast himself as a steady former police captain who is preparing to move past Mr. de Blasio and his divisive eight years in power and sought to chart a vision for a city still reeling from the pandemic and its consequences. He relied heavily on his biography as a blue-collar New Yorker with firsthand experience grappling with some of the most significant challenges facing the city.The debate, hosted by ​​WNBC-TV and unfolding three days before early voting is to begin, marked the most direct engagement to date between the candidates as they vie to lead the nation’s largest city.For an hour, Mr. Adams and Mr. Sliwa — both longtime New York public figures with colorful pasts — clashed over wide-ranging issues that the city confronts, from a new vaccine mandate for city workers (Mr. Adams backs the mandate, Mr. Sliwa does not) to a congestion pricing plan (again largely backed by Mr. Adams, with Mr. Sliwa expressing strong concerns) to whether outdoor dining structures should stay. (Mr. Adams said yes, Mr. Sliwa said they should be reduced in size.)At every turn, Mr. Sliwa sought to undercut Mr. Adams’s working-class credentials, criticizing his opponent’s support from real estate developers and the endorsement he has earned from former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, even as he also tried to link Mr. Adams to Mr. de Blasio, casting them both as career politicians.“How about we do something novel and stop trusting these politicians, like Eric Adams and de Blasio?” Mr. Sliwa said, as he expressed his objections to congestion pricing.Mr. Adams, for his part, noted his differences with Mr. de Blasio in his first answer to a question, suggesting that while he supported the mayor’s new vaccination mandate for municipal workers, he would have taken a more collaborative approach to implementing it.Mr. Adams sought to portray Mr. Sliwa as a candidate unfit and and unqualified to be mayor.WNBC-TV and the New York City Campaign Finance BoardMr. Adams, who has a meditation routine, appeared keenly focused on rising above many of Mr. Sliwa’s attacks. But he also sought to define his Republican opponent early in the evening as an untrustworthy public figure who does not have a significant record of accomplishments. He repeatedly referenced Mr. Sliwa’s own admission that he had fabricated crimes for publicity.“New Yorkers are going to make a determination of a person that wore a bulletproof vest, protected the children and families of the city and fought crime, against a person who made up crimes so that he can be popular,” Mr. Adams said. “He made up crime, New Yorkers. That in itself is a crime.”Given New York’s overwhelmingly Democratic tilt and Mr. Sliwa’s reputation as something of a celebrity gadfly, Mr. Adams is seen as far more likely to prevail in the Nov. 2 election, and he is poised to be New York’s second Black mayor. He has spent much of his time since winning the Democratic nomination in July focused on fund-raising and transition-planning and has only begun to accelerate his public events schedule in the last week, reflecting his front-runner status.Mr. Sliwa worked at every turn of the debate to goad Mr. Adams into a confrontation. At best, he managed to coax an occasional complaint from Mr. Adams that Mr. Sliwa was breaking the rules of the debate by speaking for too long.But while Mr. Adams tried to avoid engaging extensively with Mr. Sliwa, he found himself on the defensive at other times, especially when pressed on questions of his residency. He has said that his primary residence is an apartment in a multiunit townhouse he owns in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn — but he has had to refile his tax returns in part because of irregularities concerning his residency, among other issues, the news outlet The City reported. Mr. Adams said, as he has in the past, that he takes responsibility for omissions on his tax returns, even as he faulted his accountant, who he said was homeless.“He went through some real trauma,” Mr. Adams said of his accountant. “And I’m not a hypocrite, I wanted to still give him the support that he needed.”He pledged that the mistake would not be repeated.Mr. Adams also co-owns a co-op in Fort Lee, N.J., with his partner, and he has said that he moved into Brooklyn Borough Hall for a time after the pandemic arrived. Mr. Sliwa recently led a journey from Manhattan to Fort Lee “to find out where Eric Adams really lives.”Mr. Adams declined to specify how many nights he has spent at the Brooklyn apartment in the last six months, but did say again that it was his primary residence.Mr. Sliwa was also pressed on issues of transparency and trustworthiness.“I made mistakes,” he said, when asked about faking crimes — a practice he cast as a youthful folly. “I’ll continue to apologize for it, but I’ve earned the trust of New Yorkers. Just follow me in the streets and subways, I’m there, I’m the people’s choice. Eric Adams is with the elites in the suites.”For all of the stark differences between their candidacies, Mr. Sliwa and Mr. Adams have some political commonalities, reflecting Mr. Adams’s position as a relatively center-left Democrat and Mr. Sliwa’s more populist instincts. Indeed, the debate was far more civil than the matchup Mr. Sliwa had during the Republican primary. It was also less of a brawl than some of the multicandidate debate stage clashes that defined the crowded Democratic primary earlier this year, where Mr. Adams often found himself under fire on several fronts.Mr. Sliwa and Mr. Adams are both keenly focused on issues of public safety and support expanding access to the gifted and talented program in New York City schools, though they did not offer clear prescriptions for the fate of the controversial admissions test that governs the initiative.But they did not appear eager to dwell on any common ground. Mr. Sliwa even turned a prompt designed to elicit a positive response — to pitch those New Yorkers who left during the pandemic to return — into an attack on Mr. Adams, questioning whether he really intended to fly to Florida and collect wayward New Yorkers as he has pledged.Mr. Adams, in contrast, promised a safe, exciting and diverse city.“You will be bored in Florida,” he warned. “You will never be bored in New York.” More

    • 75 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Where Does Eric Adams Really Live?

      by

      Throughout the race, there has been a significant degree of confusion surrounding the question of where Eric Adams resides.Given the confusion surrounding his residency, and how he accounts for his real estate on his tax returns, a moderator asked Mr. Adams how the electorate could trust him.Mr. Adams said, as he has in the past, that he takes responsibility for omissions on his tax returns, and then blamed his accountant, who he said was homeless.“He went through real trauma,” Mr. Adams said of his accountant. “And I’m not a hypocrite, I wanted to still give him the support that he needed.”Mr. Adams also insisted, again, that his primary residence is in Brooklyn.Mr. Adams owns a multi-unit townhouse in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn in which he says he keeps an apartment. In one of the more bizarre moments of the mayoral primary, he gave a media tour of that apartment, with reporters observing non-vegan food items apparently belonging to Mr. Adams’s son. (Mr. Adams has been a vegan for years.)But Mr. Adams also co-owns a co-op in Fort Lee, N.J., with his partner, and he has said that he moved into Brooklyn Borough Hall for a time after the pandemic arrived. During the primary, Politico New York reported that Mr. Adams used conflicting addresses in public records and that he was still spending nights at Borough Hall.He has had to refile his tax returns in part because of irregularities concerning his residency, the news outlet The City reported. The outlet also reported that the city is seeking to inspect his Brooklyn residence following an allegation of an illegal apartment conversion on the property. His campaign has said he intended to rectify those issues, though the complaint remains active.Mr. Sliwa recently led a journey from Manhattan to Fort Lee “to find out where Eric Adams really lives.” More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Adams vs. Sliwa: How to Watch the First N.Y.C. Mayoral Debate

      by

      Eric Adams, the borough president of Brooklyn, will face Curtis Sliwa, a founder of the Guardian Angels and a radio host, for an hour on Wednesday night.For much of the mayoral campaign that followed Eric Adams’s highly contested Democratic primary victory, most of his focus has been spent on fund-raising, vetting potential administration officials and preparing for his likely transition to the mayoralty.But for at least one hour, Mr. Adams will be forced to devote some attention to his Republican opponent, Curtis Sliwa, as they go head-to-head on Wednesday at 7 p.m. in the first of two official debates among the two leading candidates for mayor of New York City.Both men say they are friends. But Mr. Adams — who is widely favored to win the Nov. 2 election because Democrats far outnumber Republicans in the city — has largely avoided engaging Mr. Sliwa since the June 22 primary. The debate will be one of the first chances for the public to see the two men together.Mr. Sliwa, 67, a founder of the Guardian Angels and a radio host, has appeared at places where Mr. Adams was holding a news conference to speak with the gathered reporters and has criticized his opponent’s policies.“Eric Adams has cast himself as the blue-collar guy and now all we see him with is the hedge-fund people and the developers,” Mr. Sliwa said. “I’m in the subway, the streets and the projects.”Mr. Adams, responding to Mr. Sliwa’s criticisms, has said that his opponent can’t be taken seriously.“We need a serious person to deal with serious problems in our city,” Mr. Adams, 61, said recently.In order to qualify for the debate, candidates had to have spent 2.5 percent of the expenditure limit for the mayor’s race, or $182,150, by Sept. 27, according to officials from the New York City Campaign Finance Board.Here’s how to watch the debate:A team of reporters from The New York Times will provide live commentary and analysis.The one-hour debate will be aired on WNBC-TV Channel 4 and also on Telemundo, Channel 47, in Spanish.NYC Life TV will offer a simulcast on Channel 25.1.The debate will also be live-streamed on NBCNewYork.com, Telemundo47.com and Politico New York. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Adams Commits to Keeping Gifted and Talented, But Leaves Details Unclear

      by

      Eric Adams, New York City’s likely next mayor, rebuked Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to scrap the current system as he prepares to leave office. Eric Adams said on Friday that he would keep New York City’s elementary school gifted and talented program if, as expected, he wins the general election for mayor next month — a clear rebuke to Mayor Bill de Blasio, who recently announced plans to eliminate the program.“There’s a new mayor next year, that mayor must evaluate how he’s going to deal with the gifted and talented program,” Mr. Adams, the Democratic nominee for mayor, said in an interview with CNN. “He can’t get rid of it until next year,” he added of Mr. de Blasio.Asked directly whether he would eliminate the gifted program, Mr. Adams replied, “no I would not, I would expand the opportunities for accelerated learning.”In another break with Mr. de Blasio, Mr. Adams said in a radio interview on Friday that he supported requiring students to receive a coronavirus vaccine to attend class — an action the mayor has steadfastly resisted over concerns it could motivate some parents to keep their children home.“I say yes, if it’s F.D.A.-approved, we should also mandate it as we mandate with other vaccinations,” Mr. Adams said in the interview, with WCBS.As to the gifted program, Mr. de Blasio said last week that he wanted to scrap the current system, including an admissions exam for 4-year-olds that has been heavily criticized, and start over with a new one that offers an accelerated education to every elementary school student. Mr. Adams has yet to release his own plan for the city’s schools, and he has reversed course previously on at least one contentious education issue. But he made it clear on Friday that he was not going to let the outgoing mayor dictate a policy that has major implications for the nation’s largest school system. And although Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president and an ally of Mr. de Blasio’s, avoided directly criticizing the mayor during the CNN interview, his comments appeared to betray some irritation that the plan had been announced barely a month before the election. Mr. de Blasio did not consult with Mr. Adams before releasing it. “There’s nothing to put back in place, because the next mayor must make the determination,” Mr. Adams said in the interview.Mr. de Blasio’s plan has elicited outrage among some parents who see the gifted program as a way of keeping their children enrolled in the public school system and as an alternative to struggling neighborhood schools. Many other families, as well as activists pushing to integrate the system, have strongly endorsed ending or overhauling the program, saying that it excludes too many Black and Latino students while weakening instruction for children in regular classes by removing strong performers.Mr. de Blasio is considering running for governor next year. Having won election in 2013 on a pledge to broadly reduce inequality in the city, he has been criticized for not doing more to reduce segregation in the schools and, more specifically, for not addressing inequities in the gifted program until the end of his tenure.About 75 percent of the 16,000 students enrolled in gifted classes are white or Asian American while 70 percent of the students in the overall system are Black and Latino, according to Department of Education data. The gifted program, which puts students on a separate academic track even before they enter the public schools, has exacerbated segregation in the city’s schools. Mr. Adams acknowledged the problem on Friday.“The gifted and talented program was isolated only to certain communities,” he said. “That created segregation in our classrooms.” Mr. Adams also said on CNN that all children should be assessed to determine whether accelerated classes were right for them. But he said such assessments would be a part of a broader plan to evaluate all students frequently, not just for academic strengths but also for challenges that might cause them to struggle in school. “We’re focusing on the gifted students,” he said. “They are going to be all right. How come we’re not focusing on those children with dyslexia, learning disabilities? We should be testing them periodically. That feeds our prison population. Fifty-five percent of Rikers inmates have learning disabilities.”Mr. Adams’s aides said he was considering delaying or altering next year’s test for screening 4-year-olds for the gifted program, and then seeking broader changes to the program the following year. His transition team will announce more details after the election, according to a person with direct knowledge of the work who was authorized to discuss it publicly. At the moment, there is no contract for administering a gifted exam in 2022 because an advisory board rejected the last one in a surprise decision. If Mr. Adams wanted to restore the test, he would need approval from the panel, which could again reject the contract.He would also have to move very quickly: If elected, he would take office on Jan. 1. His Republican opponent, Curtis Sliwa, has said that he would keep the gifted program.Under Mr. de Blasio’s plan, New York City would no longer admit rising kindergarten students into separate gifted classes or schools starting next fall. Instead, the city would train all of its roughly 4,000 kindergarten teachers to accommodate students who need accelerated instruction within their general education classrooms. Students who are already enrolled in the program would be allowed to finish, and the program would be phased out over five years.The National Association for Gifted Children criticized Mr. de Blasio’s plan in a recent statement, but praised his action on the test. The association said it was “supportive of the mayor’s plan to eliminate the one-size-fits-all standardized test to identify gifted students, as it often fails to recognize a significant number of Black, Brown and impoverished gifted students.” Many parents, including those whose children are enrolled in gifted classes or who support the program, have said the test causes unnecessary anxiety for young children, and has benefited some wealthy parents who can pay for test preparation for their 4-year-olds. Mr. Adams has been clear throughout the campaign that he did not plan to eliminate the gifted program. But he has appeared to take clear positions on education issues before, only to change his mind. As Brooklyn borough president, he was among the strongest supporters of a plan to eliminate the high-stakes admissions exam for the city’s so-called specialized high schools. The schools enroll tiny numbers of Black and Latino students, something that Mr. Adams has said infuriates him. A few weeks after standing alongside Mr. de Blasio to call for an end to the test, Mr. Adams reversed his position amid an outcry from some parents. He now says he wants to keep the exam in place. Researchers who study gifted education, including those who support the city’s current program, have said Mr. Adams’s call to expanding gifted classes would do little to diversify the program unless fundamental changes are made to the admissions process. Gifted programs in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods all but disappeared in many parts of the city after former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg introduced a citywide test-based threshold for admission into gifted classes. Today, there are nearly twice as many gifted programs in Manhattan’s District 2, one of the city’s whitest and wealthiest districts, as there are in all of the Bronx, the city’s poorest borough. In order to change that dynamic, Mr. Adams would almost certainly have to make big changes to the admissions system. Mr. de Blasio defended his plan during a radio appearance on Friday, although he was not asked about Mr. Adams’s comments. The current system, he said, is “incredibly exclusive and unhelpful.” Emma G. Fitzsimmons contributed reporting. More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Adams Is Keeping a Low Profile as Election Day Nears

      by

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

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