The 61-year-old Democratic elected official crushed his Republican rival Curtis Sliwa, 67, as expected, according to preliminary results from the city’s elections office. Eric Adams thus won 70% of the votes cast against around 23% for his opponent, 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, born into a poor family in Brooklyn, raised in Queens where he experienced delinquency and violent police arrests before becoming a police captain and creating an anti-racist union there. He then entered politics, elected local Democrat of the State and the city of New York, a springboard to mayor.
Supporters of Mr. Adams were gathered in a Brooklyn hotel awaiting a speech from their champion. It was time. I believe workers now have a voice
launched Jakwan Rivers, black American president of a neighborhood association and friend of the new mayor.
The latter presented himself during the campaign as the defender of the middle and working classes, but also as close to the business circles of Manhattan, the world’s financial lung.
social revenge
Very moved after having voted Tuesday morning in his native district, Eric Adams considered that this election represented a social revenge for the little guy
that he was in his youth and therefore for working-class New Yorkers.
We already won
he said, drying his tears, without letting go of a portrait of his mother. I’m not supposed to be here. But since I’m here, New Yorkers will realize every day that they deserve to be in this city too.
eight million people.
It’s historic
exclaimed Anthony Williamson, a 58-year-old worker, after voting Adams. That’s great. It shows that we all have a chance to make it in New York and America, regardless of skin color.
In the last days of the campaign focused on insecurity, the new mayor clung to television with Curtis Sliwa, a colorful character, always wearing a red beret and who in 1979 created a kind of militia, them Guardian Angels
voluntary patrols supposed to fight against attacks in the streets, alongside the police.
Former police officer Eric Adams has pledged to be tough on crimes and misdemeanors whose indicators have turned red in 2020.
The successor to the unpopular Bill de Blasio will manage the largest municipal budget in the United States, at $98.7 billion for the 2021-2022 fiscal year.
Eric Adams will also 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 body of powerful and unionized origin.
