Posted on Jul 7, 2021, 12:59 PMUpdated on Jul 7, 2021, 1:10 PM
Eric Adams won the Democratic primary for New York City mayor, with 50.5% of the vote versus 49.5% for Kathryn Garcia, former New York City sanitation commissioner between 2014 and 2020 and appointed to then by current New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. Maya Wiley, a lawyer backed by young congressional democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, finished in third place. Figures not yet official, but given as some by the major American media.
At the start of the primary, eight candidates were in the Democratic primary, before the votes of each candidate eliminated in a round went to the second preferred candidate of his constituents.
Eric Adams, 60 years old , is a Democrat committed to the promotion of minorities in the police, but while being attached to order. Last summer, he strongly opposed the positions of the Black Lives Matter movement and the left of the Democratic Party, for which it was necessary to stop funding the police (“defund the Police”).
A journey strewn with controversy
After growing up in the Brooklyn neighborhood, Eric Adams enlisted in the police force for just over twenty years, motivated by the assault he suffered when he was 15. At the time, he was beaten by the police. After retiring in 2006, he won a seat in the New York State Senate, allowing him to begin a modest career in politics. In 2013, he was elected president of the Brooklyn neighborhood, becoming the first African-American elected to this post.
However, several controversies have also erupted about it. In 1993, he denounced the marriage of Herman Badillo, a politician of Puerto Rican origin, to a Jewish woman and not of Latin American origin. In 2010, a report by the Inspector General of the State of New York accused him of being involved in a history of corruption. He allegedly accepted campaign contributions from a group linked to a gambling establishment whose tendering process he was to oversee to bring that establishment to Aqueduct Racecourse in Queens. Finally, he frequently defended Louis Farrakhan, leader of the African-American political organization Nation of Islam, accused in particular of racism and anti-Semitism.
In a predominantly Democratic city, Eric Adams is very likely to become the 110th mayor of New York, and the second African-American mayor after David Dinkins between 1990 and 1993. He will be opposed to the Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, who did not support Donald Trump in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.
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