Eric Adams comes crashing back down to earth

Eric Adams comes crashing down to earth
When Eric Adams was elected mayor of New York, he was a breath of fresh air. The zany former Republican ex-cop said all the right things about the urgent need to bring rising violent crime under control, reopen after the pandemic and get the Big Apple back on track.

There followed a honeymoon period in which Adams was burning the candle at both ends, facing off against progressive prosecutors by day, doing his bit to keep New York’s clubs and restaurants solvent by night. “If you’re going to hang out…

Eric Adams comes crashing down to earth

When Eric Adams was elected mayor of New York, he was a breath of fresh air. The zany former Republican ex-cop said all the right things about the urgent need to bring rising violent crime under control, reopen after the pandemic and get the Big Apple back on track.

There followed a honeymoon period in which Adams was burning the candle at both ends, facing off against progressive prosecutors by day, doing his bit to keep New York’s clubs and restaurants solvent by night. “If you’re going to hang out with the boys at night, you have to get up with the men in the morning,” he was fond of saying. The contrast between his no-nonsense talk on crime and unapologetic boosterism for post-Covid New York and the gloomy prevailing national mood in his party was striking — and refreshing.

But five months after taking office, Adams is losing his city. A poll published this week will have made for grim reading in Gracie Mansion. New Yorkers appear to have soured on their mayor. The Siena College/NY1 survey finds that just 29 percent of voters in the city say that Adams is doing an excellent or good job. A majority of respondents said that the city is heading in the wrong direction and three-quarters said they worry about being a victim of violent crime.

In a press conference this week, Adams compared the poll results to getting a C in high school. “Mommy always told me to try to get an A, but she never told me I failed with a C. I think New Yorkers are looking, they’re saying ‘We’re going to give Eric a shot.’… I think that, you know, listen, a C is not an A. But a C is not an F.”

According to the latest Comstat report, serious crimes in the city are up 40 percent on last year. The one silver lining is that the city’s murder numbers have slowed slightly, down 9 percent on last year, but still higher than they were before the pandemic. Adams has beefed up anti-gun units and set up a controversial plain-clothes squad to replace a similar outfit by his soft-on-crime predecessor. Adams is braced for violent summer months and will hope his early steps in office can make a difference.

On America’s other coast, voters in San Francisco have voted to recall Chesa Boudin. The departure of the progressive prosecutor means that crimes are, well, once again illegal in the City on the Bay. It is, rightly, being seen as a wake up call for Democrats who have flirted with defunding police departments and let the basics of public safety slide. The sobering message from New York is that acknowledging the problem is only the start of the battle. As Adams’s time in office so far demonstrates, it’s regaining the sense of order and safety on the streets of America’s cities that is the hard part.

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The FIRE this time

Our newly appointed editor-at-large Ben Domenech (welcome, Ben!), has a fascinating interview with Greg Lukianoff published on the site today. Lukianoff is runs the free speech organization FIRE. That acronym, a nod to shouting fire in a crowded theater, stands for Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Or, rather, used to stand for that. This week FIRE rebranded as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, unveiled a whopping $75 million in new money from supporters and pledged to take its fight for free speech out of academia and into the country.

“People have been approaching and asking since day one, the whole time we faced pressure to expand beyond campus,” Lukianoff tells Domenech in an exclusive interview. “We were thinking about expanding in 2024, but 2020 was such a bad year for freedom of speech, it was unlike anything I’d ever seen.”

FIRE’s move comes as the ACLU, for generations the first port of call for anyone looking for protections for their First Amendment rights, has ceded the bipartisan ground it used to occupy. The challenge for FIRE is that it must push back an increasingly intolerant left while holding the line on the right too. As Domenech writes, “both the left and right seem inclined in recent years to deploy the power of government to effect their ends — including eradicating protections against the meddling of bureaucrats in order to achieve a government-mandated arrangement of balance.”

An ‘only in Washington’ tale of marital disharmony

The ugly and very public collapse of the Conway marriage was a minor, insidery story throughout the Trump years. The unseemly row continues. Yesterday, George Conway decided to plaster himself across cable news on the evening of his wife’s Cafe Milano book launch. Politico Playbook reports: “We are reliably informed that George booked the appearances as ‘counterprogramming’ to Kellyanne’s event. Regular patrons of Milano will recall that above the bar in the center of the restaurant are two large TV screens that are usually tuned to cable news.” Classy move, George.