New Yorkers headed to the polls Tuesday in a mayoral election that is virtually guaranteed to elect Black former policeman Eric Adams as the next leader of America’s biggest city.
The centrist Democrat is expected to trounce Republican rival and volunteer crime fighter Curtis Sliwa in the liberal-voting bastion to become just the second African American to lead the Big Apple.
A victory for Adams would cap a remarkable rise for someone who was born in poverty in Brooklyn and briefly worked for a gang as a teenager before a beating by police officers spurred his determination to reform the NYPD from within.
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If elected, the 61-year-old will succeed unpopular progressive Bill de Blasio, whose two-term limit ends December 31.
He will be tasked with leading the city’s recovery after the pandemic, which has killed more than 34,000 residents and closed hundreds of thousands of businesses.
He promised to tackle wealth inequalities and reform the education system, as well.
One of his trickiest balancing acts will be trying to reform police practices while keeping onside a heavily unionized force that feels it has been underappreciated during the de Blasio era.
– Reforming the police –
Adams briefly ran errands for a gang as a teenager. When he was 15, he was beaten by two NYPD officers after they arrested him for criminal trespassing.
In 1995, he co-founded “100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care,” an advocacy group designed to fight against racism in the police and that still exists today.
Adams credits veganism with reversing his 2016 diabetes diagnosis and released a book last year that aims to turn African Americans to a plant-based diet.
Sixty-seven year-old Sliwa, a right-wing radio host known for wearing a red beret, founded the Guardian Angels crime prevention group in 1979.
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