Barring a twist, a former black and anti-racist policeman from New York, Eric Adams, should be elected mayor of the American megalopolis on Tuesday, an extraordinary journey for this poor child from Brooklyn, a young delinquent who became a politician with the grip of the Democratic Party.
The post is deemed to be the most perilous after that of President of the United States: in fact, the Democrat Bill de Blasio will go on December 31 to heights of unpopularity although he has, among other things, managed to release a city of more than eight million inhabitants of the chaos of the pandemic (more than 34,000 dead).
If Democrat Eric Adams, 61, defeats his Republican rival Curtis Sliwa, 67, as planned at the polls, he will be only the second black mayor in the history of the economic and cultural capital of the United States, after David Dinkins ( 1990-93).
Polling stations will be open in New York’s five boroughs from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. for some 5.5 million voters. According to the election office, nearly 170,000 people have already voted early from 23 to 31 October. The participation rate, which is difficult to predict, is generally low for local elections.
– Militia –
In the last days of the campaign focused on insecurity, the likely future mayor hung on television with his Republican rival Curtis Sliwa, a colorful character, still wearing a red beret and who in 1979 created a a sort of militia, the “guardian angels”, voluntary patrols supposed to fight against attacks in the streets, alongside the police.
Mr. Sliwa criticized Mr. Adams for not having met the police unions, the main one of which is standing against the mandatory anti-Covid vaccination of municipal employees, and for having instead discussed the fight against crime with former New York gang leaders.
However, the former police officer has pledged to be intractable against crimes and offenses whose indicators have turned red in 2020, before a lull this year. Eric Adams is also displayed as a determined leader, defender of the middle and popular classes, at the forefront against racial discrimination.
Attached to the right wing of the Democratic Party – unlike the far left New York representative in Congress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – he also declares himself close to the business circles of “Big Apple” (“Big Apple”), the financial lung of the planet.
The mayor of New York manages the largest municipal budget in the United States – 98.7 billion dollars for the fiscal year 2021-2022 – devoted in part to the exit from the health crisis.
Like his predecessors, Eric Adams will control 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 body of origin.
– Finally –
Because the next mayor keeps his old job at heart: he has been telling for years that, as a young 15-year-old delinquent, he was violently challenged and then decided to “change the system from within”.
Become a police officer when New York was a cutthroat in the 1980s, he spent 22 years there and reached the rank of captain. In 1995, he founded a union that fights against racism.
In their history, the New York police have often been accused of turning a blind eye to violent, racist and corrupt agents. And she was again singled out, including through legal complaints, for the crackdown on anti-racist protests by the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, following the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis.
In a city that has paid a heavy price for the pandemic, Eric Adams will also have to manage the return to normal of schools, offices and businesses. Also fight against glaring social inequalities, poor housing, poor infrastructure, climate risks. Finally shut down Rikers Island, a terrible overcrowded, ultra-violent and unsanitary prison.
After leaving the police in 2006, he was elected senator for the State of New York, then president of the borough of Brooklyn, stepping stone to New York City Hall. Eric Adams is also proud to have gone vegan in 2016 to treat his diabetes and wrote a cookbook to convince African Americans to do the same.
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