Mayor-elect Eric Adams continues to earn plaudits for his consistent and sound stands on the things that average New Yorkers care about.
Calling himself a “conservative” on crime surely earned boo-berries from the “defund the police” ideologues, but they didn’t elect him in the first place.
And he’s showing the same good sense on new issues as they arise. On Sunday, he told CNN viewers that he’s looking forward to an end of school-mask mandates: “Part of the development of socialization of a child is that smile,” he noted. So true, and so overlooked.
Nor is that his only sound signal: He’s also vowed to restore the Gifted & Talented programs the current mayor wants to kill. And last week he rightly called the city Department of Education “one of the greatest embarrassments.” The mayor-elect is outraged that taxpayers are “spending over $30 billion a year” on schools, yet a full “65 percent of black and brown children never reach proficiency.”
And he’s pushing hard to fix the benighted no-bail law and other problematic “reforms,” saying, “I don’t believe people who discharge guns on Monday should be out of jail on Tuesday, the next day — that’s not acceptable.”
Adams echoed the thoughts of many New Yorkers when he told NPR’s Weekend Edition: “I am conservative on public safety when you see 13-year-old children in our schools stabbed in libraries and a woman was shot while walking down the block with a baby in a carriage.”
Even his remarks about the future of the Democratic Party speak to the interests of the little guys: He says Democrats need to get back to basics or continue to lose ground at the polls.
New Yorkers now know that when Adams told them, “I am you,” it wasn’t just campaign rhetoric; it’s how he’ll govern. We look forward to seeing Democrats across the nation copy him.