Mayor Eric Adams alleged on Tuesday that City Council Speaker and mayoral challenger Adrienne Adams has fought him on several policy issues as a springboard to run for his job, despite her showing scant interest in the role prior to several months ago.
During his weekly “off-topic” news conference on April 22, Hizzoner claimed that the speaker’s hidden motivation for butting heads with his administration on a range of issues over the past three years was to mount a run against him. Those issues include the mayor’s wide-ranging funding cuts, council legislation to boost eligibility for the city’s housing voucher program, and the balance of power in City Hall.
Most recently, the two Adamses at City Hall (who have no relation) have clashed over First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro’s executive order allowing federal immigration authorities back onto Rikers Island for the first time in a decade. The council sued last week to block the move, prompting a state judge to grant it a temporary restraining order that bars federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement from setting up shop there at least until Friday.
“This is not the first time the speaker has been hostile to the things we want to do,” the mayor said. “I mean, we now learned why she was trying to block everything I do.”
Speaker Adams’ spokesperson, Mandela Jones, responded that the speaker had no plans to run until allegations surfaced in February that Mayor Adams’ attorney engaged in a quid pro quo with the Trump Justice Department to get his federal corruption case dropped.
“The mayor says a lot of things that are not true,” Jones said in a statement. “Anyone can see that Speaker Adrienne Adams was not planning to run for mayor, until Eric Adams embarrassed and undermined New York City by trying to hand City Hall over to President Trump. Unlike our current mayor, Speaker Adams isn’t auditioning for a job on the Trump reality show.”
Speaker’s late bid for mayor
The mayor’s implication that Speaker Adams has long used an adversarial stance toward his policies to launch her own bid for his office stands in sharp contrast to her past statements and actions.
Speaker Adams, who is term-limited from running for another term in the City Council, had shown little to no interest in running for mayor after spending the past three years leading the city’s legislature; on many occasions, she told reporters that she had no plans to do so.
Even more notably, the speaker only entered the mayor’s race after being pushed to run by other Democratic pols and union leaders concerned about the mayor’s alleged dealings with the Trump administration and as a backlash against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo — the front-runner in the June 24 Democratic primary.
Speaker Adams also entered the mayor’s race quite late, on March 6 — a decision that has hampered her ability to qualify for public matching funds as quickly as other candidates.
The mayor made the comments to illustrate that despite their past battles, he and the speaker have been able to agree on a city budget deal over each of the past three years. The two sides must pass a spending plan for the coming fiscal year by a June 30 deadline.
Mayor Adams also said it was “problematic” that the speaker kicked two members off of her budget negotiating team following their endorsement of Cuomo for his mayoral bid.
“The fact that two electeds lost their seats (on the budget committee) because they didn’t endorse the candidate, that’s a real issue,” the mayor said. “We’re in the middle of negotiations. We can’t use our authority as an elected to in any way benefit ourselves.”
At the time, Jones told City & State that Speaker Adams had removed the lawmakers — Queens Democrats Selvena Brooks-Powers and Lynn Schulman — because “members of council leadership lost confidence that these members shared their values.”
