Eric Adams spoke truth to Democrat Party power, and was punished for it

Mayor Eric Adams has bowed out of his reelection campaign, becoming the first mayor since David Dinkins to serve only one term. His exit is the first major step towards consolidating the opposition against 33-year-old socialist Zohran Mamdani.

Though much of the mayor’s recent attention has centered around his corruption charges and those of his close associates, his legacy should also consider his record of important accomplishments — for which he hasn’t always received credit.

Adams was elected in 2021 on a platform of restoring public safety to a city in the throes of a historic spike in crime and disorder.

Despite a rocky start to his administration, Adams has managed to reduce homicides and shootings to near record lows—thanks in part to the professionalism and excellence of his current police commissioner, Jessica Tisch.

In the first eight months of the year, the city experienced the fewest shooting incidents and shooting victims in recorded history. This July saw an 8% reduction in transit felonies, making it the safest on record.

Other serious index crimes haven’t declined as much, but Adams has had to contend with the state’s bail and discovery reforms, among others, that have crippled the criminal justice system’s capacity to keep violent offenders behind bars.

On top, progressive prosecutors like Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg won’t prosecute misdemeanor offenses like farebeating, making it harder to catch serious offenders with open warrants at the turnstile and reducing deterrence for disorderly behavior.

To remove the severely mentally ill from streets and subways, Adams repeatedly called on the legislature to expand involuntary commitment. Despite far-left lawmakers’ resistance, Adams and Gov. Hochul stood firm, securing a significant change that makes it easier for police and medical professionals to commit the seriously ill to mental hospitals.

He recently called on Albany to do likewise for those who abuse hard drugs in public, which would make the city safer and more orderly while getting the addicted the help they need.

Adams also proved to be a steadfast champion for the city’s Jewish population. In May, he launched the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism, a concrete sign of how seriously he took the threat of antisemitism.

In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s October 7th massacre, Adams stood as a voice of moral clarity, saying, “We are not all right when we still have hostages who have not come home to their family…Everything is not fine. Israel has a right to defend itself, and that’s the right that we know.”

Likewise, during the trial of Daniel Penny, Adams didn’t score cheap political points through sensationalism. He calmly acknowledged the mental-health system’s shortcomings and how it contributed to Jordan Neely’s demise, saying that Penny “was responding, doing what we should have done as a city in a state of having a mental health facility.”

On housing, the most significant issue of this mayoral race, Adams’s City of Yes for Housing Opportunity plan is the most important change to the city’s land-use rules since 1961.

Unlike socialist proposals to build more public housing, the mayor’s plan unlocks the private sector to build an estimated 82,000 new units over 15 years.

City of Yes showed that it’s possible to assemble political support in favor of housing growth, despite the interests and ideologies opposed to new construction. He recently followed up with a successful major rezoning of Midtown South, opening the way for more housing in an underutilized part of Manhattan.

His trash containerization initiative — another program spearheaded by Tisch in her previous role — also marked the city’s biggest shift in garbage management in modern history. The days of piling bags of rotting garbage on the curb are nearing an end.

And Adams had to contend with an unprecedented migrant crisis and the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. Between the spring of 2022 and this July, some 240,000 migrants made their way to New York City, requesting city services that the federal government refused to reimburse.

Despite his attempts to get the Biden administration to own up to the problem of its making, Biden simply dumped the problem in Adams’s — and the city’s — lap.

And his hands were tied by New York City’s arcane and antiquated right-to-shelter law, which required him to have beds available for everyone who requested them—not to mention meals and other city services.

At its peak, nearly 70,000 migrants were in city shelters, ultimately costing the city well over $7 billion in total.

The right to shelter meant that Adams couldn’t spend these funds on his priorities for resident New Yorkers. Many, including his black and Hispanic supporters, resented a city government that seemed to care more for foreign newcomers than for long-struggling residents.

To make matters worse, many migrants were part of gangs like the notorious Tren de Aragua from Venezuela, imperiling neighborhoods across the city with unchecked street prostitution, disorder, and violent crime, including alleged murders.

Adams knew that the crisis was destabilizing his mayoralty, and he wasn’t afraid to say that it would “destroy New York City.” His fellow Democrats lashed out at his pointed but fair criticisms of Biden’s open-border policies, which the mayor suspected was the motive behind former US Attorney Damien Williams’s indictment against Adams on corruption charges.

Of course, the mayor made some big mistakes along the way, driven by his loyalty to a fault. His close advisor Ingrid Lewis-Martin shouldn’t have had the power to allegedly steer shelter contracts to parties in exchange for kickbacks.

The same is true for many of Adams’s other cronies, most of whom resigned amid clouds of scandal and federal investigations. Had he shown them the door sooner — or, even better, not appointed them to offices in the first place — he would have had better chances at securing reelection.

Adams was a commonsense leader in nonsensical times.

But like a Shakespearean character, his tragic flaw — misplaced loyalty — proved his undoing.

John Ketcham is director of cities and a legal policy fellow at the Manhattan Institute. All views expressed are those of the author and not the Manhattan Institute.