Eric Adams eve

New York politics Adams eve

N EW YORK An excop prepares to take over America’s biggest city at a difficult time

Mayors in new york are usually inaugurated on the steps of City Hall, tress and a floor…We don’t want to put people in danger.” That may be the easiest dewhere they deliver an uplifting speech laying out their vision for the city. Sometimes those visions are successful: Rudy Giuliani, elected on the back of a decadeslong crime wave, vowed to make the city safer, and he did. Michael Bloomberg, elected after the attacks of September 11th 2001, said lower Manhattan must be rebuilt. Today, it is thriving. But David Dinkins never quite managed to be a mayor for all New Yorkers, which may be impossible. Nor did the outgoing mayor, Bill de Blasio, meaningfully reduce economic inequality.

Eric Adams, who will take over from Mr de Blasio on January 1st, planned to hold his inauguration in Flatbush, a workingclass neighbourhood in Brooklyn—a nod to both the outerborough coalition that propelled him into office and to his own upbringing in Brooklyn and Queens. But Omicron put paid to those plans; as cases spiked in New York, Mr Adams cancelled his own celebration. “I don’t need an inauguration,” he explained. “I just need a matcision he makes for years to come. Mr Adams inherits a reeling city. The economic fallout on New York from the September 11th attacks was largely confined to lower Manhattan; the pandemic, by contrast, has shuttered businesses across all five boroughs. New York lost 630,000 jobs in 2020 and has an unemployment rate, 9%, that is more than double the national average. Tourists are staying away. The city has 100,000 fewer restaurant jobs than it did in early 2020, and hotel occupancy rates hover around 50%, compared with 90% before the pandemic. Subway ridership is only just over half its prepandemic levels. Only 28% of Manhattan’s office workers are at their desks on any given day, and just 8% come in every day. Midtown is dead. Employment is unlikely to return to prepandemic levels until at least 2024. James Parrott of the New School’s Centre for New York City Affairs expects that doubledigit unemployment rates for the city’s AfricanAmerican and Latino populations could last even longer.

Fortunately, Mr Adams has a better relationship with the city’s businesses than did his predecessor, though that is a low bar. Stephen Scherr, the chief financial officer of Goldman Sachs, is on the incoming mayor’s transition team, which includes 700 people, compared with Mr de Blasio’s team of 60 in 2013. Mr Adams has also created a corporate council of advisers, including executives from the finance, realestate, hospitality and tech sectors—all focused on encouraging workers to get back to their desks and not leave New York for warmer, lowertax climes. Mr Adams has grand plans to turn the city into a cybersecurity hub. He also wants to attract cryptocurrency businesses, and has suggested he might be paid in bitcoin.

He also ran on public safety, distinguishing him from his wealthy, liberal Democratic rivals, and boosting his popularity in the city’s highercrime areas. Overall, New York is far less safe than it was before the pandemic, with murders up 50% and nonfatal shootings double what they were two years ago. Unusually, Mr Ad

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