Eric Adams, a former police officer and anti-racist trade unionist, has been elected mayor of New York, the American channels CBS and NBC announced on Tuesday evening. He becomes the second black mayor in the history of the economic and cultural capital of the United States.
The 61-year-old Democratic elected official largely beat his Republican rival Curtis Sliwa, 67, as expected, according to the first results released by the New York Elections Office. He won 70% of the vote against around 23% for Curtis Sliwa, in a city classified on the left, but where economic and social inequalities between different communities are extremely marked.
This victory is a consecration for Eric Adams, a poor child from Brooklyn, who flirted with crime at a young age before spending 22 years in the police where he set up an anti-racist union. He then became a local elected official in the state and in the city of New York, a springboard to mayor.
Right wing Democrats
Attached to the right wing of the Democratic Party, Eric Adams presented himself during the election campaign as the defender of the middle and working classes, but also as close to the business community of New York, the world’s financial lung.
The successor to the unpopular Bill de Blasio will manage the largest municipal budget in the United States: 98.7 billion dollars for the 2021-2022 fiscal year.
Like his predecessors, Eric Adams will have control of the largest police force in the country (NYPD, 36,000 employees), whose reforms he will have to pursue, but without alienating his former powerful and unionized original body.
agencies/br
–
