Eric Adams plays it low-key at NYC panel with Lori Lightfoot, other big city mayors

Mayor Adams centered his successful 2021 campaign on claims he is uniquely primed to fight crime in New York City as a reform-minded ex-cop.

So it was uncharacteristic for him to keep mostly quiet during a public safety-focused panel in Manhattan on Thursday.

The “Public Safety in Urban America” discussion, part of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s annual National Action Network convention, featured Adams and three other Democratic big-city mayors, including Chicago’s outgoing chief executive Lori Lightfoot.

Adams, a former NYPD captain, moderated the 40-minute discussion. He deferred almost all of the talking to Lightfoot and his two other counterparts, Mt. Vernon Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard and former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter.

Adams focused his allotted time on asking them what they’re doing to combat crime in their cities.

One of the panel’s few instances in which Adams took a more front-seat stance came after Lightfoot voiced confidence that her public safety policies are putting Chicago on the right track while lamenting that “some of the folks in the media like to say” that her city’s crime spikes started with her.

“[Reporters] want to highlight those negatives and not the successes,” Adams chimed in.

He said a similar example can be found in how the New York press corps hasn’t, in his view, written enough about the fact that Fitch, the credit rating agency, upgraded the city’s bond rating in February.

“That allows people to invest here, that’s so important,” Adams said. “It shows the management style of this administration, and the management style that you had in Chicago with these new ideas are so important, and you often don’t read about them.”

Asked why the mayor opted to take a bit of a rhetorical backseat at the National Action Network event, his spokesman Fabien Levy said he believes it was “a productive conversation.”

“But glad you were counting the minutes and are eager to hear more from the mayor,” Levy said.

Lightfoot’s appearance comes as she prepares to leave office after falling short in her campaign for a second term in a February election. Incoming Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a union organizer backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, will be inaugurated on May 15.

As part of a national trend, New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago and Mt. Vernon all saw crime spikes during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The spikes have since ebbed, including in the five boroughs. Shootings and homicides have continued to trend in the right direction since Adams took office in January 2022, with a few hiccups along the way.

The four mayors at Thursday’s discussion all agreed their cities still have more to do to improve public safety.

Nutter, who served as Philadelphia’s mayor between 2008 and 2016, said he and his fellow panelists are held to an unfairly high standard due to the fact that they’re Black.

“You see all of us up here. There is a different level of expectation in public safety realm for Black mayors,” he said. “There is a different level of expectation morning, noon and night. We are supposed to make everyone safe and nothing bad is ever supposed to happen.”

Sharpton, who introduced the four mayors before Adams shouldered the moderating job, said David Dinkins, New York City’s first Black mayor, was subjected to the same higher standard.

He also argued Dinkins lost his bid for a second term in 1993 because his Republican opponent, Rudy Giuliani, “scared the city” by sensationalizing issues around crime.

“We are not going to let them play that game on Eric Adams,” Sharpton said.