Adrienne Adams, the speaker of the New York City Council and one of Mayor Eric Adams’s principal partners in government, said on Monday that the mayor should resign.
Ms. Adams’s repudiation of the mayor came just hours after four of his eight deputy mayors announced they would leave City Hall, a catastrophic loss to an administration already hobbled by scandal, a corruption indictment and a growing sentiment that the mayor placed his own interests ahead of New York City’s.
“With the resignation of deputy mayors, it has become clear that Mayor Adams has now lost the confidence and trust of his own staff, his colleagues in government, and New Yorkers,” Ms. Adams, who is not related to the mayor, said in a statement. “He now must prioritize New York City and New Yorkers, step aside and resign.”
The mayor’s loss of support from Ms. Adams, a fellow Democrat who holds the second most powerful position in city government, may be a near-death blow to Mr. Adams’s ability to govern. Even before her announcement, Brad Lander, the city comptroller, expressed concern that Mr. Adams might be unable to continue running the city.
Mr. Lander, one of several Democrats challenging Mr. Adams’s bid for re-election in the June primary, sent a letter to Mr. Adams on Monday calling on him to create a contingency plan to run the city because of the administration’s “unprecedented leadership vacuum.”
If the mayor does not create such a plan by Friday, Mr. Lander said he would convene a committee to remove Mr. Adams on the basis of his inability to govern.
The City Charter provides for a so-called Committee of Mayoral Inability, which would comprise five members: a deputy mayor chosen by the mayor; his corporation counsel; the speaker of the City Council; New York City comptroller, and the most senior of the five borough presidents. Four of the five would have to vote to remove the mayor.
As of Monday, two of those would-be members have called on Mr. Adams to resign: Ms. Adams, the council speaker, and Mr. Lander. A spokesman for Donovan Richard, the Queens borough president and the longest serving of the borough presidents, said: “Considering his position on a charter-outlined committee that could be convened to review the mayor’s ability to discharge his duties, Borough President Richards will reserve further comment at this time.”
In his letter to the mayor, Mr. Lander wrote, “In the absence of a contingency plan, the resignation of four or more deputy mayors, and the chaos created by the Justice Department’s actions regarding indictments against you, may well constitute inability to govern.”
He added, “Should your office be unable or unwilling to formulate such a plan promptly, I will seek to convene a meeting of the Inability Committee.”
Christine Quinn, the former City Council speaker, said that Ms. Adams’s statement was the first she had ever heard of a speaker calling for the resignation of a mayor, and was evidence that the leaders of the city’s executive and legislative branches were hopelessly at odds.
“Obviously, it’s an incredible vote of no confidence,” Ms. Quinn said. “But if you’re the other half of government and you’ve called on the executive to resign, there’s no ability to work together.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, also wields the power to remove Mr. Adams from office. She has called the allegations “extremely concerning and serious,” and was soliciting views from powerful fellow Democrats and her closest advisers.
John Kaehny, the executive director of Reinvent Albany, a good government group, said that Mr. Lander’s willingness to invoke the committee demonstrates the precariousness of the situation the city is in.
“The technocrats who are departing were put in place by Governor Hochul to stabilize the city and weed out the mayor’s cronies,” Mr. Kaehny said. “Their departure make a strong case for Governor Hochul to remove the mayor because they signaled in their resignations that the mayor was compromised.”
In September, Mr. Adams was charged in a five-count federal indictment accusing him of bribery, fraud, soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions and conspiracy.
The calls for Mr. Adams to leave office have grown louder, following the Justice Department’s order that federal prosecutors in Manhattan seek dismissal of the indictment against him — just weeks after those federal prosecutors said they had uncovered “additional criminal conduct” by the mayor.
The order was conveyed in a memo from Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove III, who indicated that the dismissal would be only provisional; the matter could be revisited following the November mayoral election. The prospect of the case returning created the appearance that Mr. Adams would be under Mr. Trump’s thumb through the duration of his term.
That impression was only heightened when the well-regarded prosecutor that Mr. Trump had chosen as the interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Danielle R. Sassoon, chose to resign rather than carry out the order from Mr. Trump’s Justice Department.
The day before she resigned, Ms. Sassoon wrote an explosive letter detailing what she said appeared to be a corrupt quid pro quo between Mr. Trump and the mayor: Mr. Adams would go along with Mr. Trump’s mass deportation plans in exchange for a dismissal of his charges. She also said her office had been preparing a new indictment adding obstruction of justice to the charges against the mayor.
Mr. Adams has denied any such quid-pro-quo deal exists.
At churches on Sunday and Monday, Mr. Adams said he was going nowhere. He compared himself to Lazarus, the biblical figure who rose from the dead. He appeared to suggest that he was the victim of a smear campaign, and said that if you tell a lie long enough, people will tend to believe it, a phenomenon he compared to “a modern-day Mein Kampf.”
His comments incited more uproar, with Scott Stringer, a former city comptroller who is also running for mayor, calling Mr. Adams’s comments “unacceptable.”
“The mayor of the city with the largest Jewish population should not be comparing the situation that his own unethical conduct put him into anything to do with Hitler or the Holocaust,” he said.
William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.
Source link
