A Case For Mayor Eric Adams
By Curtis Scoon
The evening of October 30, 2002, found me alone in the Queensbridge Housing Complex in Long Island City, Queens. It was a wet and cold autumn evening when my phone rang. I answered, and the voice on the other end excitedly said, “Yo, you heard what happened? They’re on the radio saying Jay got shot!” This was how I learned of the murder of rap pioneer Jason Mizell, a/k/a Jam Master Jay, a man I grew up with in Hollis, Queens. We literally lived around the corner from each other. I was in disbelief and initially dismissed it as a publicity stunt. Back then, getting shot and arrested was great promotion for an art form that strangely required entertainers to be authentically immersed “in the streets.” By the next morning, news of Jay’s death was all over urban radio. Little did I know that in another 24 hours, I would be named as a “person of interest” in his killing across all media platforms. Essentially, I was the prime suspect, and there was even a bogus motive provided. One major newspaper headline read, “Looks Like a Hit.” Various media reports alleged I either committed the heinous crime myself, or I employed someone to do it. Mizell was loved by many, and these erroneous allegations recklessly placed my life in danger without a scintilla of evidence. As the calls for vigilante justice grew in the days immediately following Mizell’s murder, only one voice gave me hope by admonishing the media for putting me in harm’s way. That voice belonged to a police officer named Eric Adams.
Heavy Is The Head
Nineteen years after my ordeal, Eric Adams was elected Mayor of New York in November 2021. The realization of a political dream inspired by the city’s first Black mayor, David Dinkins, in 1989. Adams had been a supporter of Dinkins and worked with his office on ways to curtail crime in the city’s housing projects using innovative means. Dinkins was an inspiration to a young Adams, the way President Obama later inspired Black men with political aspirations around the nation. When Adams expressed an interest in politics to top Dinkins advisor and campaign manager William Lynch Jr., he was encouraged to further his education and move up the NYPD ranks first. He later obtained a bachelor’s from John Jay College of Criminal Justice and his MPA from Marist College. It was excellent advice Adams fully embraced after a premature run for Congress in 1994 for New York’s 11th Congressional District.
After his failed congressional bid, Adams established ‘100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care’—an advocacy group for better interactions between the Black community and the NYPD. The organization consisted of Black police, corrections, parole, probation, and other members of law enforcement. The group sought to build trust between the community and the NYPD by standing up for otherwise marginalized people and truly serving the residents of New York City. In 2002, 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement joined with the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Latino Officers Association to ask then-police commissioner Raymond Kelly and the Civilian Complaint Review Board to investigate alleged misconduct involving 120 police officers. It’s important to understand the aforementioned actions won Adams no friends among New York’s power elite. Here was a man willing to go against the grain for the benefit of everyday New Yorkers. Adams was developing a reputation for doing the right thing in spite of political consequences. A rare quality in a profession where participants are stereotyped for being duplicitous.
Always Say Less Than Necessary
As early as October 2022, in his first year as Mayor, Eric Adams and the Biden White House experienced tension behind the scenes over the migrant crisis. Under Joe Biden’s presidency, millions of illegal migrants crossed our southern border into Texas, where many were placed on buses to liberal cities by Republican Governor Greg Abbott. By the summer of 2023, New York City had become the top destination for illegals flooding the country, and over 10,000 arrived monthly, straining the city’s social services. The migrants needed housing, food, education, and healthcare, and had no means of providing any of it for themselves. Washington’s disastrous immigration policy put Democrat mayors—many of whom are Black—in a precarious position. Accommodations often came at the expense of tax-paying voters. Adams alone pushed back. First, privately, but eventually publicly. In September 2023, the damaged relationship between the mayor and the president received coverage in media outlets such as Politico and CNN. Moreover, President Biden visited the city for three days later that month, but he and Mayor Adams avoided each other. Who snubbed who is unclear, but the relationship would soon prove to be irreparably damaged. Rather than toe the national party line like his mayoral peers around the country, Adams stood up to the President of the United States for his city—to his own detriment.
Strike The Shepherd
En route to Washington, D.C., on November 2, 2023, to meet with White House staff and a congressional delegation regarding asylum seekers and the migrant crisis, Adams was alerted to federal agents raiding the home of his chief fundraiser, Brianna Suggs. The feds sought documents related to Adams’ 2021 campaign as well as travel records to Turkey by campaign employees. The mayor abruptly canceled his meetings in D.C. and returned home to meet the problem head-on. The timing of the raid on Suggs’ home in Brooklyn appeared to be a message to Adams from the Biden administration. The FBI seized Adams’ cell phones and electronic devices in the following days. The mayor was publicly humiliated in the media as subsequent raids of key members of his administration led to numerous resignations. Proximity to the mayor made everyone a target, and the resignations made running the city unnecessarily difficult. Despite being a Democrat, he seemingly found himself in the crosshairs of what many have come to call political “lawfare.” The weaponization of the law against political rivals has long been an accusation levied against the Biden White House by President Trump himself, having withstood a litany of civil and criminal charges across several states.
As if to make an example of Adams, federal prosecutors announced a five-count indictment against him not long before the 2024 presidential election. He was charged with taking illegal campaign contributions and bribes from foreign nationals, wire fraud, conspiracy, and bribery. The feds outlined an alleged decade-long trail of corruption beginning when he was Brooklyn Borough President in 2014 and continuing through his mayoral administration. Prosecutors also claimed that, over the course of a decade, Adams received free and heavily discounted flight upgrades valued at more than $100,000, complimentary luxury hotel suites, expensive meals, as well as campaign contributions from straw donors that helped him qualify for matching public campaign funds. To the untrained legal eye, charges against Adams appear serious, but former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio had this to say: “From Day 1, I thought the charges against him were very weak. I believe in my heart, and this is from personal experience, that we’ve got to have maturity to know that just because some prosecutor brings a charge doesn’t mean it’s true.”
Money Matters
Political campaigns have become quite the expense over the years. Presidential candidates, for example, routinely raise over $1 billion to get a job that pays $400,000 per year. Politicians are often required to solicit potential donors beyond their organic base. The conundrum for Black politicians is that they tend to represent a constituency not known for donating to campaigns while needing their votes to win. On set for my independent film about race, politics and police, Black White & Blue, in 2017, I had the pleasure of interviewing Michigan State Senator Coleman Alexander Young II. Senator Young ran for mayor of Detroit later that year, and my donation to the Save Our City Super PAC was the largest contribution to his campaign, despite him being the namesake and son of Detroit’s first Black mayor. I worked three campaigns with now-Councilman Young, and the experience was the same each time. This is why Black politicians around the country champion causes that have nothing to do with race while counting on the “Black vote.” As for big-money donors, they all expect access for their donations. Skillful politicians can serve the voters and donors without compromising ethics and integrity, much less breaking the law. All money certainly comes with strings, but to suggest the mayor of a city with an annual budget exceeding $100 billion can be bought for a few thousand dollars, free meals, and flight upgrades is beyond absurd.
Changing Of The Guard
After winning both the popular vote and the Electoral College, former President Trump did the unimaginable and was reelected. This was an auspicious outcome for Mayor Adams, who was blatantly targeted by Trump’s opposition. Once sworn in, President Trump had the Department of Justice move to drop the federal corruption charges against the mayor. The criticism of Adams only intensified as accusations of an unethical “quid pro quo” deal with the Trump administration began to circulate. Adams’ political adversaries asserted the dismissal was contingent upon his cooperation with the president’s plans to deport undocumented immigrants in the city. Furthermore, it was pointed out that a dismissal meant the case could be reopened at any time if Adams failed to comply with the Trump administration. The implication was that the White House now owned Adams. For someone supposedly owned by the White House, Adams must not have gotten the memo. The week following the dismissal of his charges, Adams sued the Trump administration for unlawfully withdrawing over $80,000,000 in previously approved FEMA funds intended to reimburse the city for housing undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers. The lawsuit against the Trump administration contradicts any notion of Adams being a MAGA today. Hence, it received very little coverage.
Mayor Adams is now facing serious hurdles in his bid for reelection later this year. With a slowdown in fundraising due to bad press and low approval ratings, his political opposition “smell blood in the water.” There are even rumors he may lose the primary or run as an Independent like former Mayor Michael Bloomberg. In the crowded field of at least twelve candidates, only Adams and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo have the required experience to be mayor of America’s most populous city. From the campaigns I worked in Michigan, I saw how a deep field of candidates with no chance of winning can help an otherwise questionable candidate with deep pockets, such as Cuomo, get elected. This is exactly how Rep. Rashida Tlaib obtained Rep. John Conyers II’s seat in Michigan’s 13th District in 2018.
Cuomo, in spite of all his baggage, is clearly the establishment candidate, as evidenced by his fundraising and the dozens of former Adams donors who are shifting to him. This, in spite of sexual harassment allegations while governor. So compelling were the accusations that New York Attorney General Letitia James investigated claims made by at least 11 women alleging groping, unwanted touching, and kissing. She concluded the women were, in fact, telling the truth and were subjected to a hostile work environment that violated state and federal laws. The penalty for his confirmed lechery was tantamount to a tap on the wrist in the form of his resignation on August 10, 2021. Cuomo may very well be the “Teflon Don” of New York’s political scene for the way he emerged virtually unscathed from scandals that make Eric Adams’ dismissed charges seem like a parking ticket. Of all his political missteps as governor, it was the March 2020 directive from his administration mandating that nursing homes accept recovering Covid-19 patients. The number of elderly who died from this catastrophic blunder has been estimated to be as high as perhaps 15,000. We may never know the exact number of deaths, but one of the deceased was someone I knew my entire life. He was a close family friend and the father of my godbrother. His name is Ricardo Bonito Ritchie, and he was housed at Madison York Assisted Living in Queens, NY. Ricardo had not long received a kidney transplant, and his body was still adjusting to the new organ. He succumbed to Covid on April 6, 2020. He didn’t even last a month under the governor’s mandate. The people of New York City deserve so much better.
While hosting a Black History event at Gracie Mansion, Mayor Adams addressed Black critics calling for him to step down by saying, “All these negroes who were asking me to step down, God forgive them. Are you… are you stupid? I’m running my race right now.” There are some in the Black community who took offense and accused Adams of going full “MAGA” with statements like that. In a matriarchal community or society, men are not allowed to speak that way, if at all. Meanwhile, in Chicago, former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, an open lesbian and Black woman, allegedly berated a group of male attorneys on a Zoom call by claiming to have the “biggest d*ck in Chicago.” The contrast in reactions by the respective Black constituents is most telling.
On October 21, 2020, I accompanied an independent media company to the White House for their interview of President Trump. Election Day was weeks away, and the president was trying to finish strong. For the record, I am socially conservative and politically independent. At the White House, a group of influential Trump supporters queried me as to how to get Black voters to vote Republican. Without hesitation, I responded, “That’s not going to happen. Your best bet is to back Black independent candidates to weaken the Democrat stranglehold on the Black vote.” The crux of my argument was that until Black candidates had alternative funding options, they’d be beholden to the Democrat party. Needless to say, my words fell on deaf ears. Perhaps Mayor Eric Adams is the right man, at the right time, in the right place, to test this strategy and break 61 years of unconditional political fealty.
Curtis Scoon is the founder of ScoonTv.com Download the ScoonTv App to join our weekly livestream every Tuesday @ 8pm EST!
