Mayor Eric Adams.
Credit score: Ed Reed/Mayoral Images Workplace.
Join our New York News electronic mail e-newsletter to get information, updates, and native insights delivered straight to your inbox!
Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who as soon as was a registered Republican, didn’t rule out Friday rejoining the GOP.
Hizzoner, throughout a Dec. 6 NY1 interview, was requested level clean if he would take into account switching events in mild of his more and more optimistic tone towards President-Elect Donald Trump. In response, the mayor didn’t say “yes,” however he additionally notably didn’t say “no” both.
“The Party that’s most important to me is the American Party,” the mayor advised NY1 anchor Jamie Stelter.
Though he has solely held elected workplace as a Democrat, Adams was a registered Republican for 4 years — between 1997 and 2001 — when he was nonetheless within the NYPD.
The mayor’s obvious rightward shift appeared to start after he was federally charged by the Manhattan US Legal professional’s workplace in September and has accelerated since Trump gained reelection. Whereas Adams maintains that he’s espousing positions he has lengthy held, his pleasant stance towards the incoming Republican president has fueled widespread hypothesis that he’s hoping Trump will make his authorized issues go away — both by dismissing the costs or pardoning him.
“My tone has not changed. I’ve said the same things for really the last 35 years,” Adams stated on NY1. “So, it wasn’t about the election of the incoming president, who I refuse to be warring with.”
Trump has been publicly sympathetic to Adams, repeating with out proof that the mayor is the goal of a politically motivated prosecution over his outspokenness in regards to the migrant disaster and its impression on the Massive Apple. Adams himself has made that very same declare as just lately as Friday.
However the mayor is presumably nonetheless working in subsequent yr’s Democratic main in opposition to a number of candidates to his left. A few his challengers wasted no time on Friday in taking him to activity for not ruling out rejoining the GOP.
State Sen. Zellnor Myrie (D-Brooklyn), in an announcement, stated the Republican Social gathering beneath Trump has “never been more out of line” with New York’s values and that town wants a mayor who “isn’t scared to call himself a Democrat.”
“Donald Trump is determined to roll back climate protections, voting rights, Social Security, reproductive freedoms, and critical measures to curb gun violence — rights that New York fought tirelessly to win,” Myrie stated. “Instead of playing footsie with the next president, we need a mayor with the courage to stand up for our city.”
One other mayoral contender, Democratic Socialist Meeting Member Zohran Mamdani (D-Queens), stated that Adams sounds extra like he’s “auditioning for a job in right-wing media” than working for reelection as a Democrat.
“Eric Adams is in City Hall because Democratic voters sent him there,” Mamdani stated. “To serve his own narrow self-interests, he is clearly prepared to betray them.”
