As mayor of New York City, Eric Adams has made one thing abundantly clear: He loves to travel abroad — optics, an abandoned indictment and propriety be damned.
In his first three years in office, he visited Qatar (for the 2022 World Cup), Greece (to discuss antisemitism), Italy (to meet the Pope), Israel (to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu), and Mexico, Ecuador and Colombia (to urge would-be migrants not to come to New York City). Earlier this year, he traveled to the Dominican Republic to show solidarity after a deadly nightclub collapse.
But in the waning weeks of Mr. Adams’s administration, the pace of his travel is picking up and the city is footing much of the bill.
Mr. Adams has strenuously defended his mayoral wanderlust, waving off periodic questions about whether it was appropriate to be leaving New York City so frequently, especially after he was indicted on corruption charges that focused, in part, on improper foreign travel.
“I was a little boy that had a dream of traveling the globe,” he said in December 2023. “And I’m living out that dream.”
With the indictment now dismissed and the end of his single term fast approaching, Mr. Adams has taken his globe-trotting to new heights. In early October, the mayor flew to Albania for a four-day trip that his aides said was designed to stoke business and tourism. On Friday, he returned to Israel for a four-day trip to meet with business leaders and politicians, including Mr. Netanyahu.
And when he left Israel on Tuesday, it was not to head home — but rather to embark on a five-day trip to Uzbekistan.
That means that in the 48 days between Oct. 6, when he landed in Albania, and Sunday, when he is scheduled to return to New York, Mr. Adams will have spent roughly 27 percent of his time thousands of miles away from the city he governs.
And there may be more mayoral travel in the offing: He has discussed with aides his desire to travel to several countries in Africa before his term expires Jan. 1.
These journeys are not cheap, in part because he travels with a retinue: a security detail and a variable number of aides. Mr. Adams brought six advisers to Israel, one to Albania and one to Uzbekistan.
Representatives for Mr. Adams declined to reveal how much New York City taxpayers were spending on these international expeditions, but they suggested the cost was worth it.
“The mayor has long emphasized the importance of honoring and uplifting New York City’s diverse communities, whether he is celebrating different heritages at Gracie Mansion or discussing innovation and economic development with foreign officials abroad,” said Fabien Levy, a spokesman for the mayor who accompanied him to Israel. “The mayor continues to govern, lead, and deliver for this city regardless of where he is.”
The mayor’s episodic absence from City Hall is one of several signs that he is no longer particularly concerned with what people think about his job performance. He has stopped conducting weekly question-and-answer sessions with reporters. In June, he hosted two conservative influencers — one an OnlyFans model, the other a content creator banned by YouTube and Twitch for spreading misinformation and making comments that were deemed antisemitic — to Gracie Mansion for cigars and an interview.
And earlier this month, he sat for a cringe-worthy interview with the comedian Ziwe, during which she asked him if he was jealous to see George Santos supplant him as President Trump’s “new favorite criminal.” (The Trump Justice Department abandoned the indictment in apparent exchange for the mayor’s help with the president’s deportation agenda.)
Mr. Adams has traveled broadly for years, dating back to his time as Brooklyn borough president and a New York state senator. But as mayor, his past foreign trips became fodder for federal prosecutors, who accused him of accepting free and heavily discounted airfare to countries around the world, and of soliciting illegal foreign donations and channeling them through straw donors.
Other New York City mayors have traveled, though few as frequently as Mr. Adams has in recent months. Every mayor has visited Israel since Vincent R. Impellitteri traveled there by ship in 1951. Bill de Blasio took a nearly 10-day visit to Italy during his first year in office in 2014. Michael R. Bloomberg took many trips, often flying his private plane to Bermuda or Palm Beach, Fla. Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was known mainly for his love of domestic travel, visited Israel during his final weeks as mayor in 2001, raising eyebrows for using an airplane that belonged to Mr. Trump. David N. Dinkins visited South Africa and France.
If there is precedent for Mr. Adams’s global gallivanting, it can be found in the international peregrinations of Jimmy Walker, the Jazz Age mayor who ultimately resigned in disgrace, according to Terry Golway, an adjunct history professor at the College of Staten Island.
In 1931, a full year before Mr. Walker left office and journeyed to Paris to be with his showgirl paramour, he traveled to Cannes, where he met with the King of Iraq, even though he did not know where Iraq was.
“In Walker’s case, he’s schmoozing with the king of a country he’s never heard of in the French Riviera while there are bread lines in his city,” Mr. Golway said. “In Adams’s case, I guess, what does he care about public opinion any more? But it seems to me to be such a disrespect for the taxpayers of New York City.”
There is some sort of logic behind Mr. Adams’s choice of travel destinations, particularly Israel. The New York City area is home to the largest Jewish population outside Israel, and the mayor is a fervent defender of Mr. Netanyahu. Mr. Adams is also a staunch opponent of Zohran Mamdani, his imminent successor, who is an outspoken critic of Israel and has said he will not travel there.
On Tuesday, his fourth and last day in the country, Mr. Adams toured Kfar Aza, an Israeli kibbutz near the Gaza border that was attacked by Hamas-led militants on Oct. 7, 2023. He also met with Israel Ganz, the head of a regional council of settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
“Adams is a true friend of the settlement movement,” Mr. Ganz wrote in a post on Facebook describing his meeting with Mr. Adams. Mr. Ganz said he gave Mr. Adams an art piece made from the fragments of an Iranian missile that hit an area under the council’s jurisdiction during Israel’s war with Iran in June.
Mr. Adams has also argued that it is important for the mayor to honor all the communities represented in New York City, though New Yorkers who identify as Albanian make up only 0.5 percent of the city’s population, while New Yorkers who identify as Uzbek make up only 0.3 percent. Mr. Adams has hosted roughly 100 flag-raising ceremonies in Lower Manhattan for countries big and small, including Israel, Albania and Uzbekistan.
Mr. Levy said that Mr. Adams decided to travel to Uzbekistan after Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the country’s president, invited him during an event in Washington earlier this month. In October, a spokeswoman for Mr. Adams who has since left his administration said he had traveled to Albania at the invitation of Prime Minister Edi Rama.
Another possible motive: Mr. Adams has suggested that he is seeking post-mayoral employment overseas.
John Kaehny, the executive director of Reinvent Albany, a good government group, said that the mayor’s use of taxpayer dollars for the trips was unethical, but unsurprising.
“Eric Adams’s continues to be one of the most disastrous mayoralties ever in New York City history,” Mr. Kaehny said. “This is kind of par for the course.”
Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting from Tel Aviv.
Dana Rubinstein covers New York City politics and government for The Times.
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