Whereas Mayor Eric Adams enjoys grabbing the highlight at celeb occasions just like the Met Gala, his marketing campaign promise to scale back crime is unmet.
Gilbert Carrasquillo/GC Photographs
Virtually the very second Daniel Enriquez was senselessly murdered final Sunday on the Q practice, Eric Adams, wearing designer bright-red jacket and navy-blue pants, was urgent the flesh with celebs at an occasion a few blocks away.
I do know Adams has been within the job solely 5 months, however wining and eating with the cool youngsters is one thing our new mayor appears to take pleasure in — possibly a bit an excessive amount of — as his marketing campaign promise to scale back violent crime more and more seems to be like a nasty joke on New Yorkers.
Adams is a frequent buyer at a few of the metropolis’s glitziest and most dear eating places (on a wage of round $250,000). He not too long ago partied in Beverly Hills with Dave Chappelle after attending the Milken Institute World Convention. And who can neglect his Met Gala look? Adams was photographed on the crimson carpet sporting an “Finish Gun Violence” jacket — as if all of us have to be reminded.
Final Sunday, Adams was hanging with Kanye West, Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour and others for a vogue present on the New York Inventory Trade’s closely fortified headquarters when a maniac with almost two dozen prior arrests allegedly shot Enriquez lifeless in a subway automobile.
Enriquez labored at Goldman Sachs; he wasn’t a fat-cat banker, however a really middle-class researcher. When he was murdered, he was taking the subway headed to Sunday brunch as a result of he couldn’t afford to Uber it into Manhattan from his dwelling in Brooklyn.
Does all this make Adams a nasty mayor? No. Even our mayors have to have some downtime.
Nevertheless it’s a part of a rising narrative about Adams’ nascent mayoralty, significantly among the many enterprise elite, that he loves the trimmings of the job greater than doing it.
Letting down supporters
Purchaser’s regret is beginning to roil the connection between the mayor and the town’s enterprise leaders. They had been amongst his greatest supporters, writing checks left and proper as a result of he promised to make the town protected for them and their staff.
And now they’re nervous that they’ve been conned as a result of the rot that Invoice de Blasio created as mayor and Adams promised to repair — out-of-control crime, homelessness and different quality-of-life points — continues to position residents on the mercy of criminals and the criminally insane.
The enterprise neighborhood has rather a lot at stake in Adams doing what he stated he would do and it goes past earnings and taxes. A lot of the 500,000 individuals employed in banking, actual property and insurance coverage in NYC aren’t super-rich merchants or funding bankers. They're common individuals. They toil in again workplaces, or as tellers or researchers, like Enriquez.
They should take public transportation, and Adams’ marketing campaign guarantees gave them — and the individuals who run the businesses the place they work — hope they might survive their commute.
But crime is hovering, significantly on subways — felonies are up greater than 50% in April in comparison with a yr earlier — and bail reform has saved criminals on the streets. While you’re not being mugged, you understand taxes are nonetheless too excessive.
Regardless of the lawlessness, Adams stated he desires enterprise leaders to drop versatile pandemic work preparations and convey the rank-and-file again to the workplace so that they spend their cash in metropolis bars, eating places and retailers.
He even desires individuals to maintain taking the subway, imploring JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon to experience the practice to work as a result of it’s “protected.”
Respectable subway worry
Huh? Neither Dimon nor anybody I do know who can afford an Uber goes close to any subway platform out of worry they’ll undergo the identical destiny as Michelle Go, the Deloitte US worker killed in January when she was randomly shoved in entrance of an oncoming practice.
Following the Enriquez homicide, Kathy Wylde of the Partnership for New York Metropolis, Gotham’s largest enterprise advocacy group, had this to say about Adams and crime: “Employers are desperate to carry individuals again to the workplace, however they aren't going to concern mandates that expose staff to non-public damage or worse.”
In non-public, enterprise leaders are much less circumspect.
“Adams must cease touring, cease bulls–tting all people and cease going to scorching golf equipment and deal with crime,” a CEO of a distinguished NYC firm instructed me.
One other suggestion: Cease leaking that you've got your eyes on the White Home whereas Gotham is burning.
Adams met with Wylde and about 100 enterprise leaders on Thursday to debate the Enriquez homicide and crime, which may very well be the beginning of a dialogue that forces the mayor to come back to grips with the state of affairs.
They didn’t pull any punches, I'm instructed. They instructed him the subways aren’t protected and that was even earlier than final weekend’s slaying.
Let’s hope Adams obtained their message and, by all means, enjoys the town’s nightlife, eating places and hanging with celebs.
However first dwell as much as your promise to ensure individuals like Daniel Enriquez or Michelle Go are protected, or there gained’t be a lot of a nightlife to take pleasure in.
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