Mayor Eric Adams’s choice to become the city’s top lawyer asked on Tuesday for his nomination to be withdrawn after the City Council questioned his fitness for the office during a bruising 11-hour hearing last month.
Randy Mastro, a former federal prosecutor and aide to Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, had little chance of Council approval for what he described as his dream job. But Mr. Adams pushed on with the nomination, mounting a monthslong campaign to gain support.
“New Yorkers have a right to expect more from their elected officials,” Mr. Mastro wrote in a letter to Mr. Adams. He added that he was being denied an opportunity to serve the role, the corporation counsel, “based on a hearing that was anything but fair.”
The Council, which was to vote on his nomination on Thursday, questioned whether Mr. Adams chose Mr. Mastro because of his reputation as an aggressive attorney, as the mayor faced an expanding federal investigation into his campaign fund-raising and a civil sexual assault lawsuit.
Last week, federal authorities took the phones of several members of Mr. Adams’s inner circle, including the police commissioner, first deputy mayor, schools chancellor, deputy mayor for public safety and a senior adviser to the mayor.
During the hearing last month, many Democratic members questioned Mr. Mastro’s morals and ethics based on some of the clients he has represented, including fast food restaurant owners opposed to increasing the minimum wage and Chevron, which he defended over pollution in the Ecuadorean rain forest.
The Council also questioned Mr. Mastro’s past association with Mr. Giuliani, who has undergone a very public decline.
Mr. Mastro had argued that he would not just be the mayor’s lawyer but would represent the entire city. He also cited his pro bono work for members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community and homeless people.
“It’s unfortunate that politics has seeped into this process and, as a result, will deprive New Yorkers of one of the most qualified candidates for this office our city has ever seen,” Mr. Adams said in a statement.
The City Council speaker, Adrienne Adams, had also made it clear that she saw Mr. Mastro’s nomination as another step in what she described as Mr. Adams’s attempts to curb the Council’s legislative powers.
Mr. Mastro’s long list of clients “conflicted with the city’s long-term institutional interests,” Ms. Adams said in the hearing last month.
Julia Agos, a spokeswoman for the Council, said that Mr. Mastro “offered no real accounting or accountability for the areas of his record during the Giuliani administration and afterward that many found harmful to Black, Latino and marginalized communities.”
The Council is willing to work with Mr. Adams “to advance a nominee who is unifying rather than divisive, has the trust of all city elected officials and can secure support from the Council,” she added.
But Mr. Mastro had his defenders on the Council. Robert Holden, a Democrat from Queens, said in a statement that the Council’s handling of the nomination was “a politically motivated inquisition.” He added, “We lost an excellent opportunity to have one of New York’s top attorneys representing the city, and this spectacle was a disservice to New Yorkers who expect professionalism and fairness from their elected officials.”
The former corporation counsel, Sylvia O. Hinds-Radix, left in May after reports of legal disagreements with the Adams administration. Muriel Goode-Trufant is serving as the acting corporation counsel.
The opposition to Mr. Mastro’s nomination was strong. He was not close to achieving the majority of the 51-member Council he needed to approve his appointment. Both the Black, Latino and Asian and Progressive Caucuses in the council opposed his nomination.
On Tuesday, a letter from Latino members of the City Council circulated calling for Mr. Adams to withdraw Mr. Mastro’s name from consideration. Many council members were planning speeches to excoriate Mr. Mastro further during the vote.
Mr. Mastro argued that he would pursue litigation that would align with the Council’s goals. Those promises were not enough. In his letter, Mr. Mastro said that although he was given a hearing, “most council members weren’t listening” to his arguments.
“They’d already made up their minds,” Mr. Mastro wrote, “for reasons unrelated to the merits.”
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