Eric Adams Closes the Gap, Surges Ahead

By Yehudit Garmaise

    The mayoral primary is four weeks away, and Eric Adams has been playing the long game.

    While, in recent months, Andrew Yang received the lion’s share of media coverage and frontrunner status in the polls, even winning the endorsements of some prominent Boro Park leaders, in the past weeks, the Brooklyn Borough President has been pulling ahead.

   In heimish areas, which have been bombarded by unfortunate and violent anti-Semitic sentiment and attacks in recent days, Adams’ 22 years experience in the NYPD and tough-on-crime stance may prove appealing in the current political climate. 

   “Public safety is a prerequisite for prosperity,” Adams said in the recent mayoral debate.

   Adams even recently said that, if elected mayor, he would not be needing a security detail, as he would merely carry his own gun for protection.

   For the rest of the city, Adams may be benefitting from the exodus of previous Scott Stringer supporters, like Rep. Adriano Espaillat, who Politico reported is expected to announce his endorsement of Adams today.

   In addition, less than three weeks ago, for the first time, Adams was reported to be the top pick of 21%, while Yang was the favorite of 18% of the respondents of a poll that was taken by GQR, a Washington, DC-based polling and strategy firm.

   Although some might have dismissed that poll as an outlier, the following week, after PIX11 News and Emerson College surveyed 1,013 voters, Adams again came out on top with 18% of the vote, with Yang and the city’s comptroller Scott Stringer tying with 15% of the vote.

   The Jewish Voice, which recently endorsed Adams, joining the New York Post and The Jewish Press, also polled readers to show that the gap between the two frontrunners is tightening, as the Brooklyn showed the two candidates running neck in neck, in a statistical tie.

     Anything can happen in the next four weeks, of course, as 25% of New York voters admitted in the PIX11 poll that they were undecided. In addition, no one is quite sure whom ranked-choice voting will benefit, as the new voting system is tested for the first time in a citywide election.

   Just yesterday, however, the editorial board of the New York Post wrote, “As the body count rises, Eric Adams remains the only mayoral candidate to make fighting crime and restoring public safety central themes of his campaign. Most of the rest dodge: or insist that policing isn’t the answer.

   “All New Yorkers deserve to be safe in their homes and in public. Eric Adams gets that.”

   The Jewish Press wrote yesterday, “Adams’s 22 year service as a member of the NYPD – several in high ranking positions – has uniquely equipped him to deal with what most polls say is the first order of business in the minds of most New Yorkers: runaway crime.

   “ He would bring back the anti-crime units that were dedicated to cracking down on guns and gangs but were dismantled in the face of leftist political attacks.

    On Fox News, Tucker Carlson said that Adams could win the primary, although most in the country “assumed that Yang would win the Democratic primary in New York because 'It’s the Democratic primary in New York.'” 

     “But we were wrong,” Carlson said. “[Yang] may not win. All the urban decay seems to have awakened voters to actual issues.”

   In particular, Carlson pointed out that unlike New York’s current mayor and those on the far left, Eric Adams calls a spade a spade, acknowledges the reality of the challenges the city faces right now, and knows how to fix those problems.

    “Businesses are closing. Crime is rising. Homelessness is soaring,” Adams said, and Carlson admired that Adams, “Said it out loud.

   “By itself, that’s a victory in the context of New York politics: a victory of reality over delusion. For years, there’s been a rigid code among those smug, fussy liberals in New York City that you’re not allowed to notice as things fall apart.”

    And Carlson admires that Adams uses his 22 years in the NYPD to create solutions.

    “Here’s his solution,” Carlson said. “Don’t put up with [the disorder and negativity].

    “Bring back order. Crack down. Make New York a safe city again. Everything depends on it. And he’s right.”