Eric Adams, ex-black police officer, big favorite to win New York City Hall

Barring a twist, a former black police officer and anti-racist activist from New York, Eric Adams, should be elected mayor of the American megalopolis on Tuesday, an extraordinary journey for this poor child from Brooklyn, a young delinquent turned politician with the grip of the Democratic Party .

The post is deemed to be the most perilous after that of President of the United States: in fact, Democrat Bill de Blasio will go on December 31 to heights of unpopularity although he has, among other things, managed to release a city ​​of more than eight million inhabitants of the chaos of the pandemic (more than 34,000 dead).

If Democrat Eric Adams, 61, defeats his Republican rival Curtis Sliwa, 67, as planned at the polls, he will be only the second black mayor in the history of the economic and cultural capital of the United States, after David Dinkins ( 1990-93).

– “Already won –

Very moved after having voted in his native Brooklyn neighborhood, Eric Adams judged that this election represented a kind of social revenge for the “little guy” he was in his youth and therefore for the New Yorkers of the working class.

“We have already won”, he launched in front of reporters, drying his tears, without letting go of a portrait of his mother: “I am not supposed to be here. But since I am here, New Yorkers are going. realize every day that they also deserve to be in this city “.

Polling stations will remain open in New York’s five boroughs until 9 p.m. for 5.5 million voters, 170,000 of whom have already voted early in the last week of October.

– Militia –

Republican Curtis Sliwa is opposed to Democrat Eric Adams for the Nov. 2, 2021 election for mayor of New York. Mr. Sliwa is known to have founded the “guardian angels” a kind of militia against insecurity alongside the police. (AFP / Ed JONES)

In the last days of the campaign focused on insecurity, the likely future mayor hung on television with his Republican rival Curtis Sliwa, a colorful character, still wearing a red beret and who in 1979 created a a sort of militia, the “guardian angels”, voluntary patrols supposed to fight against attacks in the streets, alongside the police.

However, the former police officer Eric Adams has pledged to be intractable against crimes and misdemeanors whose indicators have turned red in 2020. He also appears as a defender of the middle and popular classes, and a leader against racial discrimination .

Attached to the right wing of the Democratic Party – unlike the far left New York representative in Congress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – he also declares himself close to the business circles of “Big Apple” (“Big Apple”), the financial lung of the planet.

The mayor of New York manages the largest municipal budget in the United States – 98.7 billion dollars for the fiscal year 2021-2022 – devoted in part to the exit from the health crisis.

Like his predecessors, Eric Adams will control the largest police force in the country (NYPD, 36,000 employees), whose reforms he will have to pursue, but without alienating his former powerful and unionized body of origin.

– Vegan –

Because the next mayor keeps his old job in the heart: he has been telling for years that, as a young delinquent of 15 years, he was violently arrested and then decided to “change the system from within”.

Become a police officer when New York was a cutthroat in the 1980s, he spent 22 years there and reached the rank of captain. In 1995, he founded a union that fights against racism.

In their history, the New York police have often been accused of turning a blind eye to violent, racist and corrupt agents. And she was again singled out, including through legal complaints, for the crackdown on anti-racist protests by the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, following the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis.

In a city that has paid a heavy price for the pandemic, Eric Adams will also have to manage the return to normal of schools, offices and businesses. Also fight against glaring social inequalities, poor housing, poor infrastructure, climate risks. Finally shut down Rikers Island, a terrible overcrowded, ultra-violent and unsanitary prison.

After leaving the police in 2006, he was elected senator for the State of New York, then president of the borough of Brooklyn, stepping stone to New York City Hall. Eric Adams is also proud to have gone vegan in 2016 to treat his diabetes and wrote a cookbook to convince African Americans to do the same.

bur-nr / arb / seb