NYC Mayor Eric Adams indicted on federal charges, says NYT

Politics & Elections
1

CNN story here;

No specifics yet on what the charge is.

I haven’t been following this story in a LOT of detail, but it feels like this has been a long time coming. I don’t know why it is that big city mayors seem to be prone to naked corruption on a level you rarely see in other major elected offices, but it’s been clear for some time that he’s been focused on enriching himself and his own family at the city’s expense (and that’s aside from his acting extremely MAGA for someone who’s nominally a Democrat), and this has been a long time coming.

2

News is breaking on MSNBC but details are sparse thus far. Here’s a link to Yahoo News:

At this point there are no specifics as to what he has been indicted for (I think that’s coming tomorrow for some reason) but it seems to be something to do with his close relations with Turkey. Adams says it is a witch hunt and that he hasn’t done anything wrong.

According to the article, Adams is up for reelection next year. They helpfully speculate that the impact of this indictment on his reelection chance is “unclear”.

What do we think of Adams? I don’t know much about him beyond what is in that article. Unfortunate misunderstanding or couldn’t have happened to a more deserving fella? Is NYC due for some new leadership at City Hall or is Adams the victim of a political persecution for his mean words about Biden’s border policy? (FYI that absurd speculation is from the linked article)

3

That one. I have never heard a positive word about him from anyone I know here in NYC. All my democratic left-wing friends hate him.

4

Seems to me you picked the wrong category. You’ve also simulposted with

which is probably a better starting point.

5

Thanks, I have flagged this one so the mods can combine it with the P&E thread.

6

What is it with cities like NY? Are candidates so beholden to certain constituencies that they can’t get elected unless they are corrupt to some degree?

7

My WAG is that it’s a combination of the strong-mayor system, the office not really having any meaningful oversight, and big cities being so solidly Democratic that municipal government is essentially a one-party system, that results in officeholders treating the city like their own private fiefdom. I live near Seattle, and while the mayor there might not be outwardly corrupt, he is seen as generally being in bed with big business, actively hostile to public transit and infrastructure spending, and friendly to the police at the expense of the poor.

8

Moderating:

Threads combined as requested.

9

It is not just Adams, there are investigations all over his administration. It is quite the tangled web.

The governor may have to make a decision on this soon. With a special election happening in December.

10

Can the governor force such an election? Unless Adams resigns I am not sure the governor can just call an election to challenge the spot. I did Google it but found nothing helpful on this question.

11

As noted, charges aren’t public yet but CNN says the investigation was about campaign fundraising violations and foreign influence.

The fact that Adams is a Democrat could cause some small amount of political damage.

12

I’m sure we all know the adage that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

There is nothing special about democrats that makes them immune from this. Dems can absolutely be corrupt (and have been…many times…see Tammany Hall in New York as an example).

I live in Chicago and machine politics and corruption are baked in and it is a very blue city.

13

Back in the Tammany Hall days, the Republicans were the Democrats, and vice versa.The two parties switched somewhere before WW2. In other words, Lincoln was really a Democrat.

14

Good point.

I stand behind my overall premise though as a long time resident of Chicago.

My understanding was that Chicago was called the “city that works” because the older mayor Daley kept a tight leash on the corruption. The crooks got a piece of the pie but never too much and they couldn’t upset the nice people of the city (no more days of gun fights in the streets or shooting people in restaurants). Things got done with a kickback to the mob.

I’m not sure it is run as well as that today (which is not saying that was a good way to run things).

15

I can’t dispute that.

16

In New York the governor can remove a mayor.

It’s not absurd speculation. I’m not saying it’s true. Local news is reporting that is exactly what Adams is claiming.

17

Does “the mob” still hold power in Chicago (or New York, for that matter) in any meaningful way? I get mixed impressions from what I read online; the people named as leaders of the Mafia seem to be either in jail, in their late 80s, or both, but there are also named figures who are apparently understood to be involved, but are free men.

Having lived my entire life on the west coast, the Mafia has always seemed to me to be something that only existed in old movies, though my dad, who grew up in Boston in the '50s, used to strongly advise me (as if it were something he’d been through) to never borrow money from the Mafia no matter how desperate I was.

18

I just included that to make it clear that I’m not the one who thinks Biden is out to get him. I think it’s absurd to think that. But if Adams holds it to be true because that’s the world he chooses to live in, all the power to him I guess.

19

Yes they do. Perhaps not as strong as in their heyday but still there and still powerful enough.

I really like this discussion but perhaps it is better continued in another thread. I will start one tomorrow or Saturday if no one else does.

20

I think it’s a combination of things. First, the lower in the government hierarchy an organization is, the more corrupt and incompetent it tends to be; states tend to be worse than the federal government, counties worse than the states, cities worse than counties and so on. Second, big cities combine that tendency towards to corruption with a greater opportunity to profit from it due to that very size. And third, we’re much more likely to actually hear about it in the news when a big city like NY is caught being corrupt than we are when it’s Nowhere, USA population 58.

I would also lump being “extremely MAGA” in with the corruption, both because it is a form of corruption in itself and somewhat stems from the same factors that make cities more prone to corruption in the first place.