The case for Eric Adams

Don't scoff. The incumbent mayor has a record to run on, and much of it is quite positive.

Note: The views expressed here, like everything else in this Substack, are mine alone, not those of Vital City.

Eric Adams can be excruciating to watch, even if you’re someone like me who’s inclined to want him to succeed. He engages in petty and clownish attacks on the press, spreads falsehoods and veers into strange, messianic rhetoric. He uses race as a shield, and sometimes as a sword. His posture toward Donald Trump has damaged his standing in a city where Trump is correctly seen as a threat to the rule of law.

He collects shady characters like they’re Pokémon cards. When there was a critical mass of these types in high-level positions, his administration engaged in enough transactional funny business to get Adams indicted by federal prosecutors. It was a weak case, but there’s little doubt the mayor at least tiptoed close to the legal line on giving official favors in return for campaign donations and other personal gifts. I think less of Adams than I did before the indictment, and so should anyone who read it.

Yet I find it impossible to pretend that Eric Adams has been a wreck of a mayor. While I’m drawn to Zohran Mamdani’s optimism and talent like many others are, a reelection campaign is supposed to be a referendum on the incumbent — and New York is better off than it was when Adams took over at the start of 2022.

Crime is down. Housing production is up. The economy is strong. Schools are seeing meaningful reform. The migrant crisis has subsided. Adams is mostly being dismissed some sort of abject failure by the chattering class, but there’s a serious case for staying the course.

Public safety

Major crimes, which were elevated during the pandemic, went up significantly in 2022 before rising a bit the next two years. Even though shooting and homicide trends were more positive, the overall trendline was a big problem for a man who got elected in 2021 on a promise to improve public safety. Fortunately for Adams, the curve is bending decisively under Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch.

We’re not suddenly living in some paradise. While shootings and homicides are at their lowest levels since modern record-keeping began, felony assaults are way too high and essentially flat compared to last year. Low-level crimes are happening too frequently. On a percentage basis, the city’s declines since the pandemic lag behind those in many other cities.

But New York is getting safer. Though it’s always a mystery what drives crime down, progress under Adams has likely been driven by a combination of targeted enforcement and investment in alternatives to traditional policing, including mental health crisis teams and behavioral health supports.

The pertinent question is, to the extent that violence and especially random violence remain too common, Mamdani’s approach is likely to yield better results.

Mamdani, who in the past has endorsed defunding the police, isn’t for cutting the ranks of the NYPD now, but he does support a model of safety that de-emphasizes police presence in neighborhoods and leans much more heavily on social service responses. His theory is that police are overloaded with responsibilities beyond their core responsibilities — so other people and agencies, including a new Department of Community Safety, should take the lead role engaging people in mental health crisis and the like, so cops can focus on combating major crime. It’s a potentially sound theory, but much depends on execution. Besides, police attention to smaller crimes is generally a good thing, especially if in the “smaller crimes” bucket we include not-so-minor offenses like misdemeanor assault.

Meanwhile, Adams has been more pragmatic than Mamdani about the near-term future of the city’s jail system. While the challenger supports an accelerated closure timeline — despite logistical and political hurdles — the incumbent has acknowledged the reality staring us in the face: that the numbers of people in custody can’t fit into the jails as planned, and even if they could, the city just can’t meet the current legal deadline.

Yes, Adams’ management of the jails has been awful: Violence plagues cell blocks, deaths in custody remain far too high, basic conditions are still poor, and oversight has often been defensive rather than reform-oriented. But the question is what to do now, with a federal receiver waiting in the wings and construction of the borough jails way behind schedule and over budget. Adams’ approach is likely more realistic than Mamdani’s. The challenger wants to stay on course with the Rikers shutdown, looking for far more opportunities to forego incarceration. Adams is urging the Council to work with him on a Plan B that accepts the strong likelihood that the city will need more jail beds than the four borough-based jails allow.

Quality of life and sanitation

While it would be wrong to call Adams’ administration a paragon of efficiency, it has had a healthy focus on the kinds of conditions that shape how New Yorkers feel day to day: street cleanliness, working parks, noise complaints and the like. That has shown up most clearly in the Sanitation Department. Under former Commissioner Jessica Tisch and since, the city launched containerized trash collection and residential composting, expanding rat mitigation programs and modernizing pickup schedules. That’s something other mayors thought about and talked about but never actually made happen. The change can be felt on block after block.

Remember how ubiquitous illegal cannabis shops were? Mayoral candidates opposing Adams cited that as a massive government breakdown. After a few fits and starts, Adams got the authority he needed from Albany and the problem has been largely nipped in the bud.

Adams has reorganized police precinct accountability around 311 complaints, an overdue move, upgraded the 311 system itself, and launched a 1,500-officer NYPD unit focused on quality-of-life enforcement. Good, good and good.

There’s been lots of sturm und drang about e-bikes run amok. They remain a problem, but where the rubber meets the road on street safety, Adams has given Vision Zero a renewed push and delivered results. In the first half of 2025, traffic fatalities dropped to just 87 citywide, marking a 32% decline from the same period in 2024 and tying with 2018 for the lowest number since record-keeping began in 1910. Pedestrian deaths alone fell by 19%, cyclist deaths are at near-zero levels, and driver fatalities also dropped markedly.

Advocates for safer streets seize every opportunity to criticize his administration, and his inconsistent leadership has given them plenty of heartburn along the way. But attention to redesigned intersections, expanded protected bike lanes, 24/7 speed cameras, and targeted enforcement through collaboration with the NYPD are all paying dividends

Homelessness and mental health

When unsheltered people are left to rant, rave and unravel on subways and streets, it’s a tragedy for them and for the wider city. By most accounts, the problem has grown since the pandemic.

Adams has taken an interventionist approach to unsheltered homelessness and untreated mental illness. He’s pushed outreach workers and first responders to intervene when someone appears unable to care for themselves. This effort, which drew heavy criticism, is a significant break from years of looking the other way. After the mayor pushed and pushed, Gov. Hochul pressed state lawmakers to pass a new law codifying a proper standard for involuntary treatment.

Mamdani is uneasy about involuntary commitment, saying it should only be a “last resort.” If he’s mayor, New Yorkers can expect more spending on social services, including housing, in the hope that this empowers people to break the cycle in which they’re trapped. He might be right, but it’s reasonable to worry that if he becomes mayor, the city will be setting aside some of the most important tools to help those who are deteriorating in public.

Housing and affordability

Housing is having its moment in the public policy spotlight. The Adams administration has financed more than 25,000 affordable homes in each of the last two years — a historic pace that includes newly constructed buildings, supportive housing, and permanent housing for the formerly homeless. The City of Yes zoning reforms the mayor championed aim to catalyze construction of more han 100,000 additional units over time by removing outdated development restrictions.

Mamdani is generally in favor of bringing down zoning barriers like Adams, and that’s praiseworthy. But his core strategy for producing affordable units is borrowing $100 billion — $70 billion over the current limit — and tasking the public sector with the responsibility, while keeping in place a range of rules and regulations that make it especially expensive to build these apartments. That’s not likely to happen. And his promise to deliver four years of rent freezes to rent-regulated tenants would likely produce serious problems for affordable housing stock in low-income neighborhoods. A 2019 law already removed incentives for private investment in many of these buildings; freeze the rent year after year, and watch disinvestment become more widespread.

It’s hard to compete with Mamdani’s promise of free (taxpayer-funded) child care and free (taxpayer-funded) buses, tangible things that mean something real for millions of New Yorkers. Whether these are budgetarily responsible is another matter. But Adams has something to offer in the affordability column too. The city has eliminated local income taxes for more than 400,000 low-income New Yorkers and reduced them for another 150,000. When the state cut $300 million in childcare funding, Adams’ administration restored it, preserving the voucher system and starting a new 2-K pilot program.

Education

Adams could — and should — have brought more creativity and urgency to the Department of Education’s response to COVID learning loss. The pandemic left deep academic gaps, and the city missed key opportunities to experiment with tutoring, extended learning time, and new classroom models.

Even so, Adams has made overdue instructional reforms that reflect a real concern for both equity and academic standards. His mandated phonics-based literacy curriculum aligns instruction with research and provides a clearer path for students with dyslexia and other reading challenges. He also expanded universal dyslexia screening and created new support positions in struggling schools.

He’s fought to keep mayoral control of the school system in place, maintaining a governance model that allows for citywide planning and accountability.

What emerges is a mixed but purposeful agenda: not as bold as it could have been, but grounded in the idea that students should be challenged, that excellence should be preserved where it exists, and that those far behind should get targeted support to catch up. Simultaneously advancing equity and excellence is a huge challenge in the nation’s largest school district. Adams has tried to strike a balance.

At least right now, Mamdani’s education platform is fuzzy at best, and seems prone to tip the balance toward a relentless pursuit of equity at the expense of excellence. He’s a foe of mayoral control and a tepid supporter of the literacy overhaul. He talks a lot about helping the most deeply disadvantaged youngsters and supporting teachers, but what this really adds up to, who knows. As someone else put it, he needs an education policy “bigger than consulting the UFT.”

Jobs and the economy

New York now has more jobs than at any point in its history. Unemployment is down across all groups. Small businesses have hit a record high, with 20% of the city’s 183,000 firms opening during Adams’ time in office.

Mayors are less responsible for the city’s economy than presidents are for the national economy — which is to say, not much. Much of the city’s current conditions stem from post-COVID recovery and broader economic trends. But it should count for something that New York City is faring better economically than most other big cities.

Adams helped pass a tax incentive to convert vacant office space into housing, backed efforts to revitalize Midtown, and encouraged investment in emerging sectors. His Economic Development Corporation has pushed forward major initiatives like the Long Island City Life Sciences Innovation Hub, the Climate Innovation Hub at the Brooklyn Army Terminal, and an AI Accelerator program.

Economic vitality pays for the public services the city relies on — schools, housing, healthcare and public safety. Mamdani is a democratic socialist who says there shouldn’t be billionaires and who wants to increase taxes substantially while raising the minimum wage to $30 an hour. It’s willful ignorance to insist none of this would create risks for the local economy, and that’s before we get to how more expansive and expensive public services could further inflate an already massive city budget.

Governance and execution

Adams started out putting a few very bad people in very big jobs (his first Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Philip Banks and Chief of Staff Frank Carone in particular), along with some high-quality appointees. He went on to bring in more capable, experienced leaders in key agencies, but his behavior effectively scared many of them off. Anne Williams-Isom, Maria Torres Springer, Meera Joshi and Chauncey Parker, an impressive quartet of deputy mayors, all left when Adams seemed to be directly under Trump’s thumb. (Adams’ relationship with Trump remains too close for many New Yorkers.)

But Adams has had some high-quality people in important positions from the start, and he’s added more as the years have passed. That some of this happened under pressure doesn’t change the fact that it happened. Standouts include City Planning Chair Dan Garodnick, who shepherded through the critical City of Yes zoning reforms; Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who’s gotten many, many important things right; and Economic Development Corporation President Andrew Kimball. Sue Donohue at Parks broke through years of gridlock to reform how the city hires and trains lifeguards — an unglamorous but meaningful fix that we should all appreciate in the midst of a hot summer. Previous mayors tried and failed.

Adams’ overall management record is mixed, and he has made his share of sizable mistakes; so does anyone in this job. But the government is working better for New Yorkers in some significant ways.

There’s more to governance than selecting competent commissioners who will run agencies effectively. New York has a City Council whose 51 members skew heavily progressive, in part because of the way small-turnout, closed primaries work. Adams has been a check on the body’s worst instincts, forcing them at least to negotiate many potentially problematic pieces of legislation into more workable local laws.

Mamdani has shown talent as a legislator and campaigner, but he hasn’t managed a large institution — and he is unlikely to serve as such a check on the Council. Indeed, he is more likely to serve as an accelerant of progressive lawmaking. While he may drive agencies to get better results, he might not, and there are surely areas such as the now-subsided migrant influx where, despite a flawed Adams record, it’s hard to see how Mamdani’s approach would work better. His platform promises transformation; implementation is a huge question mark.

A serious choice with serious consequences

Zohran Mamdani offers a different vision for New York than the current mayor: more participatory governance, more generous public services (along with higher taxes to pay for them), and a shift away from an enforcement-led approach to public safety. There’s no question his positivity is attractive, as are other things about his character. And by the same token, there’s plenty that Eric Adams says and does that’s repellent.

But that doesn’t erase the real progress the city has made in recent years. New York is safer and economically stronger than it was in the wake of the destabilizing COVID pandemic. More housing is being built. Public schools are undergoing real reform. Long-stalled problems are getting unstuck.

There’s a credible case that the current mayor had a successful first term, and an equally credible argument that he’s earned a second.

(Update: The section on public safety has been updated to more accurately describe crime trends under Adams.)