The speech by Mayor Eric Adams of New York City, in the closing week of Black History Month, seemed to be hitting all the right historical notes.
He outlined the lineage tying together Nat Turner, Marcus Garvey, Rosa Parks and Barack Obama and connected the dots between David Dinkins, the city’s first Black mayor, and himself, the city’s second.
Then Mr. Adams reached for a comparison of biblical contortion.
“When Jesus was on the cross, he said, ‘God, forgive them for they know not what they do,’” Mr. Adams said earlier this week, drawing a murmur of recognition from the invited audience at Gracie Mansion. “All these Negroes who were asking me to step down, God, forgive them. Are, are you stupid?”
Mr. Adams, the only mayor in the city’s modern history to be charged in a federal indictment, has often framed his mayoralty in us-versus-them terms, portraying himself as a working-class Black leader subject to unfair, race-tinged criticism from the political elite in New York.
He has continued to do so in the face of assertions that he agreed to a quid pro quo with the Trump administration: In exchange for the Justice Department’s moving to drop his case, Mr. Adams would help the president enforce his immigration policies.
Yet as the mayor seeks to rally support behind his uphill re-election bid this year, many Black leaders in New York have turned against Mr. Adams, saying that his crises have not only jeopardized his future, but also threaten the political prospects of other Black leaders.
Donovan Richards, the borough president of Queens, warned that Mr. Adams could harm the Black community. “You can set people back,” he said, “if you don’t manage with integrity.”
Adrienne Adams, the speaker of the City Council, called for the mayor to resign, saying the city had “endured enough scandal, selfishness and embarrassment.” Ms. Adams, who is not related to the mayor, has been drafted by other Black leaders and is now considering entering the mayoral race.
Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the first Black woman to lead the State Senate, said it was time for the mayor to “move aside” for the sake of the city.
Crystal Hudson, a Black city councilwoman from Brooklyn who is considered a leading candidate to become council speaker next year, said that the actions of one Black person do not reflect on all Black people. But she nonetheless spoke of the “collective embarrassment” among Black elected officials over the mayor’s troubles.
Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of Democrats in the House, has withheld judgment on Mr. Adams but said that it appeared that the Trump administration had the mayor on a “short leash.” (His brother, Hasan Kwame Jeffries, a professor at Ohio State University, was far less restrained in a social media post, using colorful terms to criticize the mayor.)
The disappointment among some Black leaders was heightened by the sense of how Mr. Adams might have squandered an opportunity to bolster New York’s growing base of Black political leadership.
Brian Cunningham, a Black assemblyman from Brooklyn who is the son of Jamaican immigrants, said that he and other Black leaders had been rooting for Mr. Adams to succeed even if they didn’t agree with him politically because of “what he symbolized” for the next generation.
“I don’t know if white voters, other voters who don’t identify as Black and even some Black voters, will trust a Black person with this level of power,” Mr. Cunningham said. “This is not what we wanted.”
Mr. Adams has seemed to make things worse through his efforts to have his federal corruption indictment dropped. By appearing to partner with President Trump, Mr. Adams, who denies wrongdoing, has left himself vulnerable to accusations that he has placed himself in a subservient position.
That image was reinforced after he participated in a joint Fox News interview with the federal border czar, Thomas D. Homan. At one point, Mr. Homan said that if Mr. Adams did not “come through” on his promise to cooperate with President Trump’s immigration agenda, “I’ll be in his office, up his butt, saying where the hell is the agreement we came to.”
One elected official after another condemned the interview as further proof that Mr. Adams had agreed to a quid pro quo, humiliating the city in the process. For some Black leaders, the moment carried a deeper heaviness.
“There is a particular sensitivity Black New Yorkers have watching Eric Adams be embarrassed on national television by Trump’s border czar,” said Zellnor Myrie, an Afro Latino state senator who is running for mayor and who represents Mr. Adams’s former district.
Mr. Myrie, the son of Costa Rican immigrants, had no trouble listing his range of emotions. “Shame that the second Black mayor in our city’s history can so obviously be played for a fool for the country to see, disappointment in his lack of integrity in this moment and pain knowing how far back this sets Black leadership.”
Mr. Richards likened the interview to a “reminder of the way white segregationists would talk to Black leaders” in the past. “As an African American, I felt disrespected,” he said. “I felt so belittled watching that man talk to him that way.”
Mr. Adams has even lost some support from among his most faithful supporters, members of the Black clergy. The Rev. Al Sharpton, one of the mayor’s most important allies, said that Mr. Adams and the city were being held “hostage” by President Trump.
A group of four pastors representing congregations in Brooklyn, Harlem and Southeast Queens, crucial parts of the mayor’s winning electoral coalition, said that Mr. Adams could “no longer be trusted to speak up, speak out, and fight for the Black and Brown communities across this city who need him most.”
Amaris Cockfield, a spokeswoman for Mr. Adams, said that Black leaders are often held to unfair double standards that create false narratives and hinder the advancement of Black leadership.
“Many Black leaders in New York today stand on his shoulders,” Ms. Cockfield said. She then cited Mr. Adams’s work to improve education and policing, create one of the most diverse administrations in city history, award minority contracts and reduce Black unemployment.
“No mayor has done more for people of color in New York City history than Mayor Adams,” Ms. Cockfield said.
Not every Black elected leader has abandoned the mayor. Several Black state legislators, including Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, chairwoman of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, wrote to Gov. Kathy Hochul to urge her not to exercise her constitutional power to remove Mr. Adams from office. The legislators cited “double standards” and said “our communities would never forget it” if Mr. Adams was forced out.
Ms. Bichotte Hermelyn, one of Mr. Adams’s strongest allies, said that the mayor’s willingness to find common ground with Mr. Trump should not be mistaken for fealty. “Eric having a conversation with the president doesn’t mean he believes in those things,” she said.
In a potential sign that Mr. Adams was not beholden to Mr. Trump, the administration recently announced that the city would sue the federal government to retrieve $80 million that had been suddenly snatched from its bank account. The money, allocated by Congress, was from dedicated Federal Emergency Management Agency funds to help pay for the influx of migrants to the city.
Still, there was broad skepticism about the mayor’s stance toward the president and his antagonistic attitude to his opponents.
The mayor was recently grilled about his use of the word “Negro” to apparently target Black leaders who criticized him. (Mr. Adams also used the term while speaking to congregants at a Black church in Queens in February, saying, “If you’re not going to be with the brother, Negro, shut up.”)
“So anybody who’s Black who calls for you to step down, they need help from God?” Curt Menefee, a Fox 5 anchor who is Black, asked the mayor during an interview on Fox 5 on Wednesday.
The mayor said he was referring to anyone who wanted his “flame to prematurely be extinguished” by calling for his resignation or dismissal.
“I have not been convicted of a crime,” Mr. Adams continued. “I’ve moved the city forward. I’ve done the job that New York is asking me to do. And so when you have those that are trying to usurp the power of the voting rights of the people, that is not democracy and God forgive them.”
The post Black Leaders on Why They’ve Turned Against Eric Adams appeared first on New York Times.
