When I first heard Eric Adams’ comments about my home state of Ohio, I passed them off as a poorly executed attempt at political pandering, using a tired trope I’ve heard my entire life: East Coasters look down on us in “flyover country.”
During his Monday Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech, as he prepared to stage a mayoral run, Brooklyn Borough President Adams took a swipe at Midwestern interlopers to the city, declaring: “Go back to Iowa. You go back to Ohio. New York City belongs to the people that were here and made New York City what it is.”
My first reaction was, no, I won’t go back to Ohio. And second, who exactly is he talking to? Because hardly anyone I know from Ohio moves to New York. According to Baruch College stats, just one Ohio county makes the list of the top 10 “net senders” to New York City: Summit, which exported just 97 more people to New York than the New Yorkers it received, over a five-year period. Iowa wasn’t even ranked.
So not only is his claim that droves of (presumably white) Iowans and Ohioans are gentrifying the city and changing its character offensive, it’s also totally untrue.
Of course, reporters shouldn’t take politicians’ words personally. But considering there’s hardly anyone from the Buckeye State here in New York to defend my place of birth, I feel compelled to do it for them. After all, if New York has taught me one thing, it’s that boldness is a virtue.
And, actually, there is a strong case for why New Yorkers should be welcoming to Ohioans.
Let’s start with the legendary infrastructure that connects Adams’ borough to Manhattan: the Brooklyn Bridge. Its origins can, in fact, be traced to my hometown of Cincinnati, where in 1867 its architect John A. Roebling constructed the model for the iconic suspension bridge, which was completed 16 years later.
Or how about Toni Morrison? Born in Lorain, Ohio, Morrison’s prize-winning work was described by Adams himself as “the nourishment we need.”
When Nobel laureate Morrison appeared at a Brooklyn event in 2016, Adams gushed: “It is a dream come true to speak with someone whose work has spoken to me.” She lived for decades just outside the city, in Grand View-on-Hudson, NY, died at Montefiore Medical Center in The Bronx, and was memorialized in a star-studded funeral at St. John the Divine on the Upper West Side.
Feminist Gloria Steinem, born in Toledo, Ohio, smashed glass ceilings before the phrase even existed and has called the Upper East Side home since the ’60s.
And let’s not forget Sarah Jessica Parker, a girl from dirt-poor Appalachian Ohio whose iconic portrayal of Carrie Bradshaw on “Sex and the City” put Perry Street in the West Village on the map.
Now, I’m not in the same category as these esteemed women who broke barriers and helped shape our culture.
Instead, I’m Adams’ least favorite kind of Ohioan: a white, blonde, 20-something who grew up in a four-bedroom suburban home with a stay-at-home mom and a devoted dad.
But while Adams calls my kind of journey “gentrification,” I call it aspiration.
My parents scraped their way out of the dilapidated steel hub of Middletown, Ohio, to build their own American dream so that my brother and I could live ours.
And an elitist politician like Adams, who believes birthplace is a prerequisite to the privilege of enjoying this great city, can’t take that away from me — or any other Midwesterner who works hard enough to earn it.
Sara Dorn is a reporter for The Post who moved to New York City from Ohio in 2017.