Then Adams, who first caught the public eye and criticized police brutality early in his career as a police officer, advised them, “You must be the keeper of your brothers. You have to make sure that he or she never gets to the point where they attack the shield because one officer can destroy all the work we are trying to do.
His younger brother, Bernard, a former police officer who is the mayoral security director with a salary of $1 a year, told me that their mother had instilled in them that “you must be your brother’s keeper” and beware of the little man who didn’t get a fair chance.
Six months into the job, Eric Adams, 61, is at a pivotal time. The honeymoon, full of hopes for a dynamic new mayor, is over. Adams’ poll numbers have fallen, which the optimistic politician has confidently assumed. “AC is not an A, but a C is not an F,” he told reporters, adding that he interpreted tough New York graders’ grades as “We’re going to give Eric a shot.”
The New York Post, which endorsed his candidacy, has now given Adams the Homeric nickname “club hopping.” Emma G. Fitzsimmons of the Times wrote that his efforts in Albany, where he once served as a state senator from Brooklyn, failed to achieve long-term mayoralty over public schools and other measures. David Freedlander of New York magazine, who argued that Adams is under-achieving, recently wrote: “It’s become hard to escape the impression that New York City is run by a mayor who frankly takes it easy. “
What Adams brought to work is a flair that’s refreshing after eight years of the dyspeptic Bill de Blasio. Over the weekend of July 4, he tweeted a video of him taking a spin on a jet ski and “looking like a pro” in Mill Basin between events in Brooklyn. But the questions echo: Is he all hat and no cattle? Was he skewing too much to babble at the expense of content?
“It’s like the return of ‘Beau James,’ Jimmy Walker,” said a top Democratic politician, referring to the vivacious mayor of Roaring Twenties (who left office in a cloud of scandal). “But the most important thing is what you do. between 9 and 5, not between 5 and 9.
