Eric Adams is trying to talk his way out of the shadow cast by an ongoing federal corruption probe involving, among other things, the then Brooklyn borough president and Democratic mayoral nominee reaching out to the FDNY commissioner to see about waiving fire safety rules to let the new Manhattan consulate of great importance to Turkish President Recep Erdoğan open while he was in town, a few years after the strongman’s guards publicly beat up protesters and even attacked Secret Service agents during a visit to Washington.
Adams, who now takes open questions from reporters just once a week and has been limited and lawyerly in what he’s disclosed since the FBI’s raid of his 2021 chief fundraiser broke the news of its investigation, has said that “where there’s smoke there’s not always fire” in an investigation he’s fully cooperating with and where no one has to date been accused of wrongdoing. Making calls to commissioners, he’s said, was simply doing his job as a public official on behalf of his constituents in Brooklyn, a group that naturally would include campaign donors.
On weekends, the mayor who’s compared himself to Jesus Christ and who says God told him decades ago he’d be the city’s mayor and to testify about that but who didn’t actually start sharing that good news until after winning the office, has been visiting churches to vent about how he’s supposedly being persecuted.
But New Yorkers, the people who really did choose him as mayor, aren’t buying it.
That’s according to a dismal Marist poll that dropped the other day, showing just 37% approve or strongly approve of “the job he is doing as mayor” while 55% disapprove or strongly disapprove of it. That’s 18 points below even, and a staggering 55-point swing from the Marist poll last March, when 61% of New Yorkers approved and just 24% disapproved of how the city’s new leader was doing.
It gets worse for Hizzoner. A staggering 72% percent of New Yorkers say they think that he has “done something illegal” (33%) or “unethical but not illegal” (39%) as the FBI and federal prosecutors investigate “whether Eric Adams’s 2021 mayoral campaign conspired with Turkey to receive illegal donations.” Just 18% think he “has done nothing wrong,” which comes to four New Yorkers who see fire for every one who sees only smoke.
That’s the context in which to read the argument that Queens state Sen. Leroy Comrie and former Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. made in the Daily News on Saturday, about how ” in communities of color like ours, that concern [about the probe] quickly turned to skepticism.
“If you are skeptical that we are skeptical,” the Adams’ allies continue — before offering disgraced former Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin as “another African-American leader” supposedly mistreated by federal prosecutors and speculating that the Democratic mayor might be getting railroaded by the Democratic White House because he keeps publicly demanding more federal money for migrants in New York City — “perhaps you are not from where we are from. Where we are from, injustice is more common than justice.”
I’m very skeptical, given that the Marist poll shows Black voters are twice as likely as not (60% to 31%) to think that Adams has done something illegal or unethical, while Latino voters are six times as likely as not (81% to 14%) to think so. Those numbers are 74% to 14% in Queens, where Comrie’s district is, and 64% to 26% in the Bronx that Diaz, now a lobbyist, used to represent.
New Yorkers are skeptical after years of headlines about things like — take a deep breath — where Adams actually lived and what properties he owns, the exaggerations and fibs he’s told about his own life story, the numerous straw donors to his 2021 campaign, the dubious people he’s tied himself to including several convicted felons, the dubious appointments he’s made as mayor to powerful and profitable positions including a buildings commissioner charged with corruption, and the unanswered questions about how he’s footed the bill for travel over the years — including some of his numerous trips to Turkey as well as a flight to Puerto Rico as mayor-elect that he didn’t mention was on a cryptocurrency billionaire’s private jet and then said he paid for himself but refused to show receipts after the news came out while declaring his personal travel wasn’t the public’s business.
It’s an awful lot — and awfully Trumpy in its way — to take the city through all that and still demand the benefit of the doubt.
Siegel (harrysiegel@gmail.com) is an editor at The City and a columnist for the Daily News.
Harry Siegel: New Yorkers aren’t buying what Adams is selling
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03.12.2023
Eric Adams is trying to talk his way out of the shadow cast by an ongoing federal corruption probe involving, among other things, the then Brooklyn borough president and Democratic mayoral nominee reaching out to the FDNY commissioner to see about waiving fire safety rules to let the new Manhattan consulate of great importance to Turkish President Recep Erdoğan open while he was in town, a few years after the strongman’s guards publicly beat up protesters and even attacked Secret Service agents during a visit to Washington.
Adams, who now takes open questions from reporters just once a week and has been limited and lawyerly in what he’s disclosed since the FBI’s raid of his 2021 chief fundraiser broke the news of its investigation, has said that “where there’s smoke there’s not always fire” in an investigation he’s fully cooperating with and where no one has to date been accused of wrongdoing. Making calls to commissioners, he’s said, was simply doing his job as a public official on behalf of his constituents in Brooklyn, a group that naturally would include campaign donors.
On weekends, the mayor who’s compared himself to........
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