New York City is Already Tired of Mayor Adams Scandals

Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York Times

 

By Mara Gay

Ms. Gay is a member of the editorial board.

No sooner did Mayor Eric Adams of New York land in Washington, D.C., on city business Thursday than he had to turn right back around to take care of his own.

The F.B.I. had raided the Brooklyn home of Mr. Adams’s top fund-raiser, Brianna Suggs. Parts of a search warrant obtained by The Times suggest that federal prosecutors in Manhattan are trying to determine if the mayor’s 2021 campaign conspired with the Turkish government and a Brooklyn construction company to direct foreign money into the campaign through straw donations.

A spokesman said Mr. Adams had rushed back to New York from Washington “to deal with a matter.” You don’t say.

Mr. Adams so far has not been accused of any wrongdoing. But this kind of drama and foolishness doesn’t serve the city, or him. Though he will have to answer for it, a fund-raising scandal engulfing the mayor is about the last thing New York needs. 

The city, home to large Jewish and Muslim communities, is reeling from the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza. Hate crimes against both groups are on the rise. Posters of missing loved ones kidnapped by Hamas line the city streets. Palestinian American New Yorkers are getting word of relatives killed in Israeli airstrikes.

More than 130,000 migrants have arrived in the city over the past year and a half, and the city has run out of places to put them. That’s the very issue that led Mr. Adams to visit the nation’s capital on Thursday to seek federal help.

Thanks to the city’s continuing housing crisis, more than 119,320 students enrolled in New York’s public schools are homeless, according to new data released this week. That figure is based on last year’s enrollment and is likely roughly 30,000 higher. The city is also still struggling to recover from the pandemic, in myriad ways.

Mr. Adams is working on all of these issues. So I’m hopeful that the mayor, who is up for re-election in 2025, can take this moment to think carefully about the people he wants to surround himself with while running America’s biggest city. This seems to be a blind spot for him, as he has formed an inner circle that often appears to be particularly shaped by loyalty, sometimes at the expense of ethics or the interest of taxpayers.

It isn’t just Ms. Suggs. Eric Ulrich, Mr. Adams’s former building commissioner and a former campaign adviser, was indicted on bribery charges in September. In July the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, charged six people — including a former N.Y.P.D. inspector who is also a friend of the mayor — with campaign finance violations, accusing them of being part of a conspiracy to direct public matching funds to Mr. Adams’s campaign through straw donors in a bid to seek political favors.

 

More often, though, the mayor’s personnel decisions have simply raised questions about his judgment. There’s Timothy Pearson, a senior adviser and friend who is under review by the city’s Department of Investigation for an altercation in which he shoved a security guard at a migrant center and threatened her job, according to reports. The mayor appointed his brother Bernard Adams to a senior position at City Hall, leading to public concerns about nepotism. An agreement with the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board prevented the mayor’s brother from receiving a $210,000 salary for the position. He received a salary of $1 per year and resigned in February.

And far more alarming than nepotism was the mayor’s decision this week to promote the commissioner of the corrections department, Louis Molina, to a job at City Hall. Mr. Molina has run the Rikers Island jail complex since January 2022, and it is verging on collapse. In September, as the violence and chronic staff absenteeism continued at the jails, Mr. Molina and his top aides took a taxpayer-funded trip to Europe to visit jails in London and Paris, according to The New York Daily News. Instead of holding Mr. Molina accountable for this questionable use of city funds, Mr. Adams announced on Oct. 31 that Mr. Molina would serve at City Hall as the assistant deputy mayor for public safety. “Lou has demonstrated exceptional leadership,” the mayor said of Mr. Molina in a statement this week.

Maybe I’m naïve to expect more from the mayor. Public corruption scandals have become commonplace. Trust in institutions is at a serious low. All the more reason to hold Mr. Adams to account for the way he conducts the city’s business, and his own