In the early days of 2022, when Eric Adams had just been sworn in, I speculated on whether Brad Lander, the newly-elected city comptroller, would run for mayor someday soon. “If Adams continues to insist on not implementing any kind of transformative policy agenda and governs in a way that is plainly dismissive of ambition—both Bloomberg and de Blasio had great visions for what New York should be—the lane will open anew for someone very much unlike him to seize power in the future,” I wrote that February. I thought Lander would run for mayor and be a formidable candidate, but I was not yet willing to entertain the possibility of Lander directly challenging Adams. For one, it was early. As skeptical as I already was of Adams, the reality remained that incumbents usually breeze to re-election. I was never certain—and I’m still not—that Lander, a white progressive from Park Slope, would risk his safe re-election to enter a bitter, racially-charged primary against the city’s second Black mayor.
But Lander, who is as savvy a political operator as they come, smells blood in the water. Politico reported this week that Lander is assembling a campaign team and seriously considering a primary against Adams. He has major operatives and consultants around him. Already a formidable fundraiser, he can afford to take his time and mull whether running against Adams is worth it. The Democratic primary isn’t until one year from now. He can sit back, wait, and see if Adams’ standing deteriorates further. (Or see if Adams is somehow forced from office in scandal.)
It increasingly looks like 2025 will resemble 1977, when a beleaguered, first-term incumbent faced a pile-on from the city’s ambitious Democrats. Abe Beame, like Adams, was from Brooklyn and was closely bound to the outer borough Democratic machines. Both were charged with leading the city out of unprecedented crises—a fiscal collapse for Beame, a pandemic for Adams—and both encountered, by the time their first term wound down, great resistance from the political class and ordinary voters alike. Beame, to me at least, was a more sympathetic figure, straining to manage New York City through white flight, the crumbling of the industrial tax base, hostile governments in Washington, and the predations of the banking class. (For as good a summary of the 1970s fiscal crisis as any out there, read Doug Henwood.) Ed Koch, Mario Cuomo, Bella Abzug, Herman Badillo, and Percy Sutton all ran to defeat Beame, and the primary was topsy-turvy enough to make front-runners out of several of them. In the end, Koch and Cuomo reached the runoff, and Koch won the election on the strength of his support for the death penalty. Unlike Beame, Koch readily embraced the austerity imposed by the banks and was much more enthusiastic about the dawning neoliberal era.
Adams was dealt a much stronger hand than Beame. Covid ravaged New York but state and federal funds kept the municipal budget relatively flush. Crime ticked down from its pandemic peak. The new governor, Kathy Hochul, was eager to make herself an Adams ally. The local press treated Adams much more gently—at least compared to his predecessor, the oft-maligned Bill de Blasio. Adams had backing from the Biden White House, Wall Street, the real estate industry, leading labor unions, and an influential pundit class excited for a Black moderate willing to talk tough to the left. Adams himself, as a former police captain, had a compelling backstory that appealed to a broad swath of voters. He was poised to succeed.
What happened? The short answer is that Adams has governed very poorly. De Blasio, in part, coasted to a second term because he could go to Democrats and tell them he built a new universal prekindergarten program. He could point to other tangible victories, like guaranteed paid sick days for all city workers, new municipal ID cards, and an expanded ferry service. He froze rents on rent-stabilized apartments. For all his foibles, he got much done, and the Democrats who wanted to challenge him couldn’t find many openings. It helped that crime was declining and the economy was improving. Inflation was low. If Adams has had it tougher in some respects—the migrant crisis, skyrocketing housing costs, higher crime—he has utterly failed to offer New Yorkers any kind of coherent governing vision. Unlike de Blasio, who could retain talented bureaucrats like Tony Shorris, Alicia Glen, and Polly Trottenberg, Adams has opted for patronage, handing off City Hall to ethically dubious operators. Municipal government has undergone a brain drain and entire departments have been turned over to the unqualified or the corrupt. Adams is already on his second police commissioner, his housing head is gone, and his first Buildings commissioner was indicted. It’s not impossible that federal prosecutors, in an unrelated case, might indict Adams himself, or those very close to him. The corruption clouds are thick.
Adams’ problem is that he has managed to alienate both the left and the right—his base, narrow to begin with, has continued to shrink. Conservatives and moderates see a flailing mayor who has allowed the city’s quality-of-life to deteriorate. They blame Adams for the migrant crisis and they don’t believe crime has fallen; it’s possible Adams’ own fear-mongering, along with that of a right-coded media that used to aggressively support him, has played a role, along with the reality that random, unsettling crimes haven’t vanished. Visible homelessness remains. Pro-business moderates don’t believe Adams is properly managing the government. And liberals and progressives revile him for a host of reasons, including his attempts to cut the library budget, his steadfast defense of the NYPD, and his support for rent hikes. Black, middle-class voters have continued to back Adams, but most others are casting about for alternatives.
Adams has the worst polling of any mayor in modern times. There is a sense, across the ideological spectrum, that he is ill-equipped for one of the toughest jobs in America. If the question is to keep Adams or dump him, most New Yorkers, in June 2024, would choose dump.
But can Brad Lander actually beat him?