Mayor Eric Adams of New York City says he is a man of God, and on Tuesday morning, at an event billed as the “largest citywide religious endorsement ceremony in New York history,” he sought to prove his point.
Standing among New Yorkers in saffron robes, white robes, turbans, kurtas, skullcaps, collars, black hats and even, aberrantly, a cowboy hat, Mr. Adams argued that he could not have lived through the three and a half years of his first term in office without his belief in God.
“You don’t survive this without faith,” Mr. Adams said.
Those three and a half years have been nothing if not tumultuous.
Mr. Adams took office as the city was emerging from the coronavirus pandemic, and soon faced an influx of more than 200,000 migrants whom he was legally required to shelter. He was indicted on federal charges of bribery and fraud, and mounted an ultimately successful campaign to get the Trump administration to abandon the charges.
He saw half of his deputy mayors resign after the Justice Department moved to dismiss the charges, in what both the prosecutor who brought them and the judge who dismissed them described as an apparent quid pro quo, an agreement reached in exchange for Mr. Adams’s help with the president’s deportation agenda.
And through it all, he has endured, openly describing himself as the divinely ordained leader of a city where crime has begun to fall, in keeping with national trends, and where he has (with some exceptions) championed pro-growth housing strategies in a bid to make apartments more affordable.
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The post Eric Adams Assembles Religious Leaders to Bless His Candidacy appeared first on New York Times.
