A Simple Working Theory of Eric Adams
ERIC ADAMS, THE newly installed mayor of New York City, is in many ways a confounding figure to try to understand. He's an outspoken police critic who spent a long career with the Transit Police and the NYPD; a putative reformer with a tendency toward nepotism and corruption; a Democratic machine politician who has sometimes been a Republican; an authentic representative of the Black Democratic working class who chooses to schmooze with rich white right-wingers; an opponent of stop-and-frisk who endorses stop-and-frisk; a stalwart Brooklynite whose pre-mayoral residence appears to have been in Fort Lee, New Jersey; a vegan who is obsessed with bucket traps that kill rats by drowning; a bicycle advocate who drives his car on the sidewalk.