As New Yorkers Turn on Mayor Adams, Prominent Democrats Join the Pile-On

For the nearly two and a half years since Eric Adams took office as mayor of New York City, many of his fellow Democrats have kept their criticism over his management of the city relatively muted or private in deference to the mayor.

That period of harmony is over.

On Sunday, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo appeared at the First Baptist Church of Crown Heights in Brooklyn and forcefully criticized the city for its “incompetence” in managing the Jacob Riis public housing complex in Lower Manhattan, where suspicions of arsenic poisoning arose.

A few hours later, Jumaane Williams, the city’s public advocate, called the mayor’s response to the Israel-Hamas war “shameful and dangerous” and argued that the police had used too much force against protesters at a pro-Palestinian demonstration this weekend in Bay Ridge in Brooklyn.

With Mr. Adams facing a federal investigation into his campaign fund-raising and low approval ratings, prominent Democrats have increasingly taken aim at the mayor and his policies — a potential foreshadowing of Mr. Adams’s contentious bid for re-election next year.

Mr. Cuomo and Mr. Williams have not declared if they intend to run for mayor, though their candidacies seem more likely if an indictment materializes against Mr. Adams. Two Democrats who have announced forming exploratory campaigns for mayor — Zellnor Myrie, a state senator, and Scott Stringer, a former city comptroller — have also been critical of the mayor’s management of the city.

Mr. Adams, his allies and his aides have been quick to push back, often in unusually public and aggressive ways.

A spokeswoman for the New York City Housing Authority went further than simply defending the agency; she attacked Mr. Cuomo in a viscerally personal manner on social media: “Andrew Cuomo’s statements are those of desperate fallen leader, who is purporting false public health information and fear mongering for political expediency.”

The mayor’s former chief of staff, Frank Carone, responded to Mr. Williams: “What is shocking is your latent bias against Israel and incapability to call out antisemitism.”

Mr. Adams has been a forceful supporter of Israel and has resisted pressure to call for a cease-fire, even after other members of his party have done so, including Gov. Kathy Hochul. The mayor has received criticism over his participation in a video call last month with prominent business leaders and possible donors who wanted him to take an aggressive approach toward student protests on college campuses, according to The Washington Post. On Monday, Mr. Adams, who pushed to send in the police to end the campus protests, called the article antisemitic.

Mr. Adams, a former police officer who ran for mayor in 2021 on a public safety message, was viewed early on as a national leader who could help Democrats look tough on crime. But in recent months, his approval rating dropped to 28 percent, the lowest for any New York City mayor in a Quinnipiac University poll since it began surveying the city in 1996.

Mr. Williams and other left-leaning Democrats, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have criticized Mr. Adams in the past, but the new wave of attacks has been more vigorous.

More moderate voices have also joined in raising concerns about the mayor, including Adrienne Adams, the City Council speaker, and Justin Brannan, a council member from Brooklyn who criticized the police response in his district over the weekend.

“I saw no evidence of actions by protesters today that warranted such an aggressive response from NYPD,” Mr. Brannan wrote on social media.

Mr. Cuomo, a moderate Democrat who has been friendly with Mr. Adams in the past, did not mention the mayor’s name in his criticism over the Jacob Riis Houses. But he chided the city’s response and argued that leaders would have taken residents’ concerns more seriously if they were happening at homes on Park Avenue.

“Heads would have rolled,” Mr. Cuomo said during his Sunday appearance at First Baptist, a Black church in the heart of the mayor’s voting base. “People would have been fired. Politicians would have lost their jobs. If this happened on Park Avenue, they would not have let their poodles drink the water. They would have brought bottled water in for their poodles, and they would have asked the poodle: Sparkling water or flat? Perrier or Pellegrino?”

Mr. Adams has taken the hits and tried to stick to his personal motto of “stay focused, no distractions and grind” and his rallying cry that “crime is down, jobs are up.”

On Monday, the mayor defended the police response in Bay Ridge, saying that he and critics like Mr. Brannan “must have looked at two different protests.”

“That was a complete disruption of the Bay Ridge community,” Mr. Adams said in a television interview on NY1. “Over 60-something 911 calls were held up because people were blocking emergency vehicle traffic. That was unacceptable. I take my hat off to the Police Department, how they handled an unruly group of people.”