Meet the Mayoral Candidate: Eric Adams

[music]

Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning everyone. We will begin our week in just a minute with the first appearance since the primary of Eric Adams, the Brooklyn Borough President, and now officially the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York. He's going to be coming on with us. Then later this hour, we'll have Congressman Hakeem Jeffries from Brooklyn and Queens, who is also the chair of the house, Democratic caucus, one of the house leadership roles under speaker Nancy Pelosi. There's going to be so much to talk about with him, this intense moment for voting rights.

We have the Texas Democratic Party delegation from the Texas House of Representatives, or at least some of them holding up in Washington DC right now to avoid a vote being taken in the Texas house that would restrict voting rights in various ways. We're going to go down some of the top points of contention regarding those Texas bills and get his take. One thing, if you haven't heard this is they want to ban 24 hour voting, or voting after 9:00 PM. I don't think that goes on in a lot of places, but the Texas Republicans want to make sure it doesn't go on.

They also want to ban drive through voting. Then there are new voter ID requirements that they would impose specifically for absentee ballots. That would require, for example, not just a signature, but a driver's license number or the last four digits of your social security number on your absentee ballot. Republicans say a signature on an envelope is a pretty flimsy form of identification by itself. They don't really check how you cross your T's, compared to your original registration form and things like that.

The Supreme court just ruled it's okay to enact measures to prevent voter fraud, even if it hasn't been a problem yet. We'll talk about that with Congressman Jeffries. Also the infrastructure bill which seems like a version of, is going to go through in a one party version. Because the Republicans are down with the physical infrastructure, roads and bridges and things like that, but not the human infrastructure. That's all coming up with Congressman Jeffries later.

First, Eric Adams, we will debrief the campaign a little bit, talk about the general election to come between him and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, what he thinks would make a good transition. Mention the fact that he'll be our first vegan mayor and why he thinks that could even have policy implications and a few other things along the way. Borough president, welcome back to WNYC and belated congratulations on your nomination.

Eric Adams: Thank you so much Brian. It's good to be back. You have an informed show and you have informed listenership.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. You want to start with some breaking news that I see you'll be making later this hour appearing with Senator Gillibrand as she reintroduces the federal gun trafficking bill. What's important about that bill. What's your role in that event as a mayoral nominee, since this is federal legislation?

Eric Adams: It's the partnership that I speak of all the time. We have disjointed system, the bad guys are organized. They're organized on how they bring guns to the streets of our cities, particularly in the inner cities that are predominantly Black, brown and poor Americans and New York is no different. It is unbelievable that we don't have federal laws that talk about gun trafficking. What the Senator is doing, she is clearly stating we need to define federal trafficking, gun trafficking, and really bring together the disjointedness of the various state laws so we can have a way of going after those who are trafficking guns. Assault rifles, and as I say over and over again, Brian handguns, that is America's problem.

Brian Lehrer: You know Gillibrand brand has been introducing versions of this bill for a decade and it's never passed because of Republican opposition. Do you have any reason to believe as a matter of politics that it's a different moment right now?

Eric Adams: Oh, yes. It's starting from the top. When I was in DC last week in a conversation with several law enforcement and mayors, we met with the president and the energy is there. I was truly dismayed throughout my law enforcement and my career as an elected official, how we failed to identify what was happening every day in the cities, throughout our entire country. I think the president is bringing the right mindset now, and we have a Congress, we have majority are Democrats, and with the fight in the Senate, we have the majority of senators. Here's an opportunity to finally get this legislation passed and not allow the lobbyists and the NRA to quit prevent us from doing so.

Brian Lehrer: I know it's been two weeks now, and you've done some other interviews, but maybe many folks in this audience haven't heard directly from your mouth, the basics of why you think you won the primary. Why do you think you are the Democratic nominee today?

Eric Adams: Basics, exactly what you just stated? Just a basic communication with everyday New Yorkers. I stated on your show often that I was a blue collar candidate, and when people started to look at my life, they looked at the barriers that I had to overcome. Everything from a learning disability without the support that I needed in school, undiagnosed, being arrested and beat by police officers, going into the police department, fighting for reform. I know what it is to go to school at night, taking two classes at a time in CUNY, so I can finally obtain my masters.

I know what it is to be a low paid employee. I was a dishwasher, I worked in a mail room. I lived the life that New Yorkers are living. I knew once I travel throughout the city and talk to those individuals throughout the city, and they hear my narrative. That then they know that one of their own will become the mayor of the city of New York and end the inequalities and just the systemic dysfunctional atmosphere in our city where we're creating our crises. I talked about it often, and that is what I'm going to do. If I'm fortunate enough to be elected as the mayor of the city.

Brian Lehrer: Now you've not been the biggest fan of rank choice voting. Now that you've been through it and obviously you were able to win in this election within it. How do you think it was for democracy?

Eric Adams: Actually, I was a fan of rank choice voting. I was part of the original group of electives that talked about rank choice voting. Sometimes people take your legitimate critique of a system as you're opposed to it. That was really part of just hijacking the narrative. As I said it from the beginning when I announced my support, it must be matched with education. We did not educate all New Yorkers. Now, your listeners Brian, your New York Times Readers, your Wall Street Journal readers, and all of those that have the ability to analyze all of this information, it's fine for them.

That's not the reality when English is a second language. That's not the reality for a 85, 90-year-old voters who are trying to navigate the process. Every new barrier you put in place, you're going to lose voters in the process. That is what I said. You can't just spend a million dollars sending out postcards to educate New Yorkers on ranked choice voting. I knew that was going to be a problem, and it did turn out to be a problem.

Brian Lehrer: What would you change next time around to make it better?

Eric Adams: Education. We had an amazing team of people who were diverse in various languages, they were part of census roll out. We should have kept them in place and paid them to go on the ground in their various communities and educate people on rank choice voting. Second, remember we took this plan in January. We had to educate the entire board of the election of this plan in January. When the pandemic was here, there was so many obstacles, we felt as though there was a level of urgency just to get it done. I said no to that. We should have been better prepared. We should have made sure that we ironed out all the kinks before we executed it. Let's do it on those specialty lectures so we can figure out what we need to do. Then let's roll it out another year. There was no urgency to get this done, and I believe that was a big mistake.

Brian Lehrer: You said an interesting thing on primary night that people on social media don't decide elections, people on social security do. How much was that a joke and how much do you think older people have a disproportionate impact on elections for better or worse?

Eric Adams: It was not a joke [chuckles]. It was a real analysis of what I knew. If you look at social media and the people who thought they were going to decide the outcome of an election, they sat in their living rooms and tweeted every day. I knew something different, I was on the ground, I was talking to people. That's why far too many candidates understood that crime was a driving issue in the city. When I was talking about it is because I was in Black associations, meetings, community groups, and I heard what they were saying. I knew right away that the issue of crime was suffocating our communities.

If you just sit around all day and tweet, or listen to what people are tweeting, you're not going to understand the pulse of this city. Those people on social security as I stated, are all seniors, they are the true participants in our democracy, they're triple prime voters, they go to the voting booth, and they make sure they get their ballots in. If you ignore them, they're not on Twitter for the most part, they are in their churches, in their community groups, their civic groups. You have to engage them if you want to win elections and that's what we saw in this election. Four boroughs decided I was their first choice in this election. That was an amazing feat that we were able to accomplish.

Brian Lehrer: I guess the flip side of that would be if the election came out the same as the final Marist poll, and we don't really know because they weren't exit polls in the election. If it came out the same as that final Marist poll, which seemed accurate, in some ways that we can confirm, you would have won the most first-place votes among 45+ New Yorkers, but Maya Wiley would have won among those under 45. If you accept that premise, do you want to reach out to younger voters who were maybe looking for different, what they consider progressive language, especially about police reform to tell them you'll act in their interest?

Eric Adams: I am going to continue to reach out to all New Yorkers. As I stated during the campaign, and I'm saying now, I'm a 35+ year progressive. We allow many of the columns, many of the writers of the stories of the election to really distort an impressive record of progressive policies and politics. You and I both know the role I played in ending the abuse of stop and frisk, police abuse, poor healthcare in our city, affordable housing. Too many New Yorkers, instead of digging into the records, they basically stayed on the surface.

Because if you will look at the example you're just talking about. If you looked at Twitter, you would have thought Eric, was the creator stop and frisk instead of the person who fought against the abuse of it. Many of my younger voters didn't take the opportunity to say, "Let's dig into the record of all the candidates that are running." Maya and others, all these candidates, we're about the same age. Where were they when Eleanor Bumpurs was shot and killed? I was in the Bronx marching against that. Where were they when Arthur Miller was killed? Where were they when Dirty Thirty, the corruption in policing? They were nowhere to be found.

No one went beyond the surface of a tweet, to look into the record of the candidates. That's why many of my young voters unfortunately, did not know my real record, to make that decision to say, 'This is a progressive candidate." I'm not surrendering my progressive credentials to anyone just because we define what being a progressive candidate is.

Brian Lehrer: I saw that you tweeted on Saturday, "On this day in 2014, Eric Garner gasped his final words, 'I can't breathe.'" You wrote, "It's been seven years since that fatal fateful day and yet two unequal systems of justice persist in our city. In honoring Eric's life, we must continue fighting to end the abuses that led to his death." Obviously, you're on issues like that. What would be near the top of your list policy-wise for accomplishing that with respect to the NYPD or anything else?

Eric Adams: Well, let's go back for a moment because that's important what you just stated. Let's go back and look at 2014. In 2014, I was calling for a grand jury reform, this secret process that is really a relic of the past, we need to re-examine that. Then look at every candidate that ran for mayor. You find me one comment they made in 2014 about Eric Garner. Find me one statement they made, then look for my comments, my statements, my protests, my activism, what I was doing as the elected official. I'm there, I was present, I was present for every moment that we were dealing with these important issues and that is what I was saying before.

When we look at, how do we ensure the justice? Number one, it took too long to get rid of Pantaleo. Eric Adams as mayor, my police department is not going to wait four years before we get rid of a police officer that is not suitable to serve the city. We're going to have an expeditious, but fair trial system, and within a short period of time, we're going to determine if that person is guilty of an act that we will remove them from the department.

Number two, we have to really lean into grand jury reform. It's time for us to stop this secret process where it's determined without knowing how did we decide if a person received an indictment or not, that is something that can be done, and continue. Then we need to empower our CCRB to allow them to make clear, fair, but proper determinations, if a police officer has a pattern of abuse, so that officer is not remaining in our department far too long. Then, finally, just on this topic, we must have a better relationship. How do you kill someone for selling loosie cigarettes? The interactions of these extreme minor infractions should not cause us to have a very negative encounter.

We saw the video, we saw how it went from 0 to 100 and a level of anger in a rapid pace. That is not proper policing, that is not properly engaging with everyday citizens. My police department if I'm fortunate enough to be the mayor of this city is going to know how to engage in these minor infractions better than what we're doing now.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take a few questions for Eric Adams. We're no longer in the context of the Democratic primary campaign of course, so maybe questions about running against the Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa or the potential transition from Mayor de Blasio or early policy decisions he may face. 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, for borough president and Democratic mayoral nominee Eric Adams. Borough president piece of trivia that I don't know if you know, did you know that you and I went to the same high school.

Eric Adams: [chuckles] You're telling me you went to Bayside High School?

Brian Lehrer: I went to Bayside High School. You were there after me but let's see. Did you have Mr. Black for English, or Mr. Elosuwa for history?

Eric Adams: [chuckles] I forgot those teachers back then. I knew coach Nelson from my first year playing JV football. [chuckles]

Brian Lehrer: I remember him and that's a beautiful athletic field and stadium over there. I guess we missed each other by a few years, but if I was just a few years younger, I would have been playing flute in the marching band when the football team scored touchdowns at the Bayside High School athletic field.

Eric Adams: You know what, you said something else that's important. When you attach, having athletic fields, great resources in schools is attached to the ability of people to succeed. Bayside High School, which is a predominantly white community, I was bused to that location. You can't find those same fields in poorer communities of the city. You don't have good PSAL programs, you don't have programs that extend beyond the academics. That is probably part of the inequalities that you have in this city and that is what we must change.

Brian Lehrer: I'm so glad you brought that up, because I actually wanted to ask you a policy question out of our high school experiences. One difference and you just mentioned it was I lived around the corner from Bayside High School in the mostly white neighborhood there. You were being bused in, as you just said, from South Jamaica, I think at that point in your life. How well did that work for you? Did your experience with that leave you with any ideas about the best ways to desegregate the city schools, assuming you become mayor?

Eric Adams: Well, we need to connect the dots. We look at increase in hate crimes, we look at our inability to associate with each other. These babies are not born hating Chinese, Jewish, people, members of the LGBTQ community. Bo, they're not born that way. We live in an isolated city and we need to use our department of education not only to have our children be academically smart, but emotionally intelligent. We must be intentional about it, inter-generational, cross-cultural.

Using the school system to do projects together with our students on how do we learn from each other cultural backgrounds, and really build and foster a better understanding of each other as we develop the full personhood of our young people. We must integrate our schools. We're doing our children a disadvantage because if your board room is monolithic, and only look like one various ethnic group or gender. You're not going to be prepared to solve the global problems that we're facing and it must start in our school system and I'm going to be aggressive about doing that.

Brian Lehrer: William in South Richmond Hill, you're on WNYC with Eric Adams. Hello, William.

William: Yes. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my call. First of all, Mr. Adams, congratulations on your nomination. I did vote for you. I'm a registered Democrat and I hope you win the mayoral election this November. My question is simply put, what are you going to do in your new administration, if you are elected, to take care of a systemic problem that has been plaguing New York City, especially in the outer boroughs for so long, which is affordable housing. Specifically for people like me, who are just a normal delivery guy working in a shop making minimum wage and can't even afford to pay the rent or even a studio apartment in a halfway decent neighborhood. But instead, renting in a room in someone's house, which is illegal under state and city law and I'm 60-years-old so I've been doing this for some time now?

Brian Lehrer: Eric Adams go ahead.

Eric Adams: I talked about this on the campaign trail, and many voters identified, I know what it is to live on the verge of homelessness and live on someone's couch. I did it growing up, not sure of the marshal was going to throw the family out of when we traveled home from school. We need to look at several different areas. Number one, we're not doing a good job with the stock we have right now. Large number of units that were actually bill paid for by HPD, HRA allocated. Number one, are we building the right type of housing? Which I'm learning we're not.

Second of many, the difficulty that is associated within a person actually into the housing unit. It's easier to get someone in a market-rate housing than in one of the affordable units. Then be flexible enough to look at the high income band and drop it down if you can't feel those high-income apartments. Subsidize the lower income bands so that we could get people who don't meet the criteria for the high-income band into some of the vacant apartment. NYCHA public housing, so many of those apartments are still left unoccupied. Our failure to get people into NYCHA public housing.

Eric Adams we're going to build out a real on real-time system to look at every unit we have. How long is going to take to get occupied and get people into the affordable units that we need and build them faster than what we're doing. Then we're going to think outside the box, look at micro-units. Look at a new, modernized version of SRO's so that people who live in the studio type of apartments, build over our railroad yard. Just be more creative in how we build units and use the level of urgency. Yes, I am one who calls for upzoning in parts of the city that have historically not upzoned and brought in their fair share of affordable housing. Let's move poorer people into richer communities so that we can have access to healthy food, good transportation, good schools. One solution solve a multitude of problems.

Brian Lehrer: Sabotai in Elmhurst. You're on WNYC with Eric Adams. Hello, Sabotai.

Sabotai: Oh, yes. Hi, Brian. Good morning. Thanks for having me on. Good morning Borough President Adams. I appreciate the opportunity to ask you this question about the dirt bikes and ATV issue. You've been on the show before, you've been asked this question as has the mayor, Mayor de Blasio. I don't really see the efficacy of the current policy, which is not to chase them down, or to try to corral them. The current policy is basically one of permissiveness, and that permissiveness is basically leading to a growth of the problem, a really large growth.

I live on Queens Boulevard, and our evenings here in Elmhurst have been turned into the Indianapolis Speedway, the packs are getting larger, they're becoming more frequent. I think a dirt bike actually just hit a child in a park just the other day. I'm not saying there's a connection, but the permissiveness is leading to lawlessness, and there needs to be a different policy because the current policy is not working, and it's disrupting our evenings, and it's a huge safety issue. I think you've said it before--

Brian Lehrer: Let me jump in and get you an answer because our time is short. I also noticed borough president that over the weekend, you tweeted a quote, from an article on Gothamist by our Jake Offenhartz about hit and run car crashes that we need to crack down on that and reckless driving. Do you see these two issues related and what do you say to the caller from Elmhurst on Queens Boulevard?

Eric Adams: He's right. I was up in Washington Heights with Congressman Espaillat, and Councilman Rodriguez, and other leaders where a young person died on a dirt bike. Yes, over the weekend, a young child was struck by a dirt bike, and I believe he's in critical position. It's unacceptable. It just feeds into a larger problem that our city is eroding, it is really has become a place where lawlessness is the norm and that is just unacceptable. We've lost our ability to understand what it is to be a good neighbor. It doesn't mean being heavy-handed. It's just having acceptable codes of conduct of how you live in a diverse city like this.

We need to stop the illegal use of ATVs, dirt bikes, and all the other forms of two-wheelers that are moving around our city in a very dangerous environment. Up and down the sidewalk, racing in the street, this is just unacceptable. I don't believe the hands-off approach is the right way to do it. Number one, we should stop the sale of these bikes if you don't have the insurance, and registration at your time of pickup. This is a partnership we should do with the state because many of these bikes don't have insurance, they are illegal. If you have a requirement, at the time of purchase, you're going to have a substantial impact.

Then we need to corral them. We need to have a special unit go after those bikes that are road now confiscate those bikes until people can come back with the proper insurance and make sure that they don't use them on the street because they're illegal right now to use on the street. Lastly, let's open up facilities like Floyd Bennett fields where people can actually use the bikes in a legal way, which they were supposed to be used instead of in an illegal way in our streets.

Brian Lehrer: Enabling a place for them. I know you got to go in two minutes. Just real quick on the transition. I know you want Mayor de Blasio to start one early, both for you and Curtis Sliwa just in case. Because you say these are complicated times and it will take more than the usual time between the November election and New Year's Day with the pandemic and crime and other things. The mayor says officially it would be wrong. Is something going on behind the scenes? Are you are your people having any meetings that you could call the informal start of the transition process?

Eric Adams: Well, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but we do want to be prepared. I'm a Boy Scout, I was an X Cub Scout and you know what, we're told always be prepared. This is an opportunity for us to use the next few months to really engage in a conversation of what we're facing as a city, not only COVID, where we're seeing increase of crime, education, how we want to return. There's something else that's hidden below the surface, Brian, cybersecurity, we must get cybersecurity under control.

We need to have a full understanding of what we're doing, what do we need to do so we need to be prepared for all of these complicated issues. We're having informal conversations there's no official transition team, but we are starting to have informal conversations to be abreast on what we're facing as a city. I encourage all candidates to attempt to do this dialogue as well to be prepared to run the city.

Brian Lehrer: You're going to live in Gracie Mansion, apparently, not every mayor in history did?

Eric Adams: I love Brooklyn, so it may be a combination of Gracie Mansion and my place in Brooklyn in Bedford-Stuyvesant. First, we need to win, then when we win, we'll decide what the proper address will be.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. I'll say that you pointed out yet another difference between us whether you realized it or not. Because, in high school, all I did was play flute in the marching band during the football games, you actually played football, and you made it all the way to Boy Scouts. I quit after Cub Scouts.

[laughter]

There you go. Eric Adams, congratulations again on your nomination. We look forward to your further appearances.

Eric Adams: Thank you. Take care, Brian.

 

 

Copyright © 2021 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.