Eric Leroy Adams (1 September 1960-) was a Democratic member of the New York State Senate from 1 January 2007 to 31 December 2013 (succeeding Carl Andrews and preceding Jesse Hamilton), Borough President of Brooklyn from 1 January 2014 (succeeding Marty Markowitz), and Mayor of New York City from 1 January 2022 (succeeding Bill de Blasio).
Biography[]
Eric Adams was born in Brownsville, Brooklyn, New York City in 1960, and he was raised in Bushwick and in Jamaica, Queens. At the age of 15, he and his brother were arrested for criminal trespassing, and he was severely beaten by the NYPD and left with PTSD; this experience motivated him to join the NYPD and change the department from within. Adams both served as a patrolman and as a civil rights activist, but he was also controversial for attacking the 1993 Comptroller candidate Herman Badillo by claiming that, if the Puerto Rican Badillo cared about the Hispanic community, he would have married a Hispanic woman. Adams mounted an unsuccessful Democratic bid for the US House of Representatives in 1994, and he was a registered Republican from 1997 to 2001. In 2006, he ran for State Senate as a Democrat, serving until 2013, when he was elected Brooklyn Borough President. Adams supported gay rights, opposed "stop and frisk", advocated for making two-year CUNY colleges free, opposed gentrification (divisively telling new white residents to "Go back to Iowa. You go back to Ohio!", while saying that the city's original residents were there before Starbucks was. On 17 November 2020, he announced his candidacy for Mayor of New York City, and he became the frontrunner during the weeks before the June 2021 Democratic primary, overtaking Andrew Yang's early lead. However, he was again the subject of controversy when it was reported that he had lived in his Fort Lee, New Jersey co-op throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, rather than living at his Bedford-Stuyvesant home. On 6 July 2021, the Associated Press declared Adams the winner of the June 2021 Democratic mayoral primary, in a primary tantamount to election.
Under Adams, New York grappled with increased rates of homelessness and crime, with two NYPD officers being murdered while responding to a domestic disturbance in Harlem. Adams responded by recreating a plainclothes police unit that Bill de Blasio had disbanded amid the George Floyd protests of 2020, but his plans proved ineffectual throughout the first year of his tenure, as crime continued to rise. He later implemented a zero-tolerance policy for homeless people sleeping in subway cars or subway stations, while clearing homeless encampments. In March 2023, he oversaw plans to convert vacant office buildings into affordable apartments due to high office vacancy rates. 2023 saw New York City become plagued with a migrant housing crisis; in July 2023, Adams declared that New York had no more room or resources left to provide for the influx of 100,000 migrants moved from the southern border to New York by Republican governors, and he warned reporters that the crisis could "destroy" New York City in September 2023.