With all due respect to GOP nominee Curtis Sliwa, Eric Adams remains our choice for mayor. He’s simply far better suited to do what they both agree is Job No. 1: Get on top of the crime and public disorder plaguing New York.
He’s also better equipped to lead the fightback against the other issues afflicting this great city post-pandemic: Get businesses reopened, get commuters and tourists back . . . and keep them back.
Part of his advantage is simply that he’s a Democrat and, yes, a black man and former cop with a strong record of demanding police reform. That (and his years as a state senator) makes him far more able to wrestle the City Council and Legislature into repealing or repairing the no-bail madness and other recent laws that make crime-fighting so much harder.
More, he represents the promise of dragging the entire local Democratic Party back to sanity. He’s been polite in his disagreements with the AOC/de Blasio wing — but crucially definitive not just on crime but also on the city’s need to keep its high-end taxpayers and to nurture businesses large and small.
Sliwa’s decades of volunteer service to the city command respect: He plainly loves this town, and his large heart is in the right place.
But it’s easy for a Republican to be tough on crime: Adams faced down the left on the issue in the Democratic primary and beat it — proving to the whole party that “their” voters demand an end to the bloodshed, fear and chaos.
He offers sanity on other fronts, too: truly supporting charter schools, for one, as well as preserving and expanding today’s Gifted & Talented programs in the regular public system.
In stark contrast to the ideology-driven disasters of the current mayor, he’s a pragmatist who understands that the system now fails far too many lower-income, minority kids — more than half of NYC schoolchildren lack basic proficiency in math and reading — and that the way to change it is to insist on standards and excellence.
He also stands for renewed fiscal responsibility, vowing to cut up to 5 percent of most agencies’ spending, a haircut that’s desperately needed after spendaholic Mayor Bill de Blasio wasted billions of taxpayer dollars on pet projects and pipe dreams.
Again, all this is especially welcome coming from a Democrat. As mayor of the nation’s leading city, Adams could even help pull the national party back from its current lunacy — perhaps even dial back the relentless partisan divides that now define US politics.
We already have differences with him — he’s a Democrat, after all — and expect we’ll have more in the future. But he’s also someone who’s happy to engage his critics, rather than demonizing disagreement, which is yet another step in the right direction.
Early voting starts Saturday. We urge you to choose Eric Adams.
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