Eric Adams: This campaign was for those who have been betrayed by their government. There's a covenant between government and the people of our city. You pay your taxes, we deliver your tax dollars through goods and services. We have failed to provide those goods and services. January 1st, that stops.

Brian: That was part of how Eric Adams claimed victory in the mayor's race last night. He quoted Drake. He said, "I started from the bottom, now I'm here" as he did on the campaign trail, referencing his life story of starting out with very little. Good morning, everyone. It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. What a difference a bridge or a tunnel makes. A clean sweep for Democrats in New York. A cold dark night of the soul in New Jersey and a bunch of other places. Murphy and Ciattarelli remain too close to call in New Jersey as we speak. Senate President Steve Sweeney might even go down to a Republican, nobody predicted that.

There was the wipeout for Dems in Virginia that's been leading the national news and the national question of whether the Democrats can keep control of Congress next year looms much larger than it did 24 hours ago. Democratic nominee India Walton may lose in Buffalo to a write-in campaign by the incumbent mayor she beat in the primary. That incumbent Byron Brown has declared victory. I believe as of now, India Walton has not conceded, replacing the Minneapolis Police Department with a new model lost in a referendum in the year after the police murder of George Floyd.

We'll talk about all these things this morning, but we will begin with the Dawn of the Eric Adams era in the city of New York. We've got a few more clips lined up to come. One more for right now before we bring on our first guests and you might see this one as Eric Adams distinguishing himself from Bill de Blasio, at least rhetorically, as he extends a hand to corporate CEOs.

Eric Adams: Listen, folks, we have to get this out of our head that our CEOs in this city don't want to participate in the uplifting of our inner city. The problem is we haven't gone there and asked them to do so. It's time to build bridges that we've destroyed in the past. We need each other. That's what we need in the city, to turn our economy around by reaching our hand out to the business world.

Brian: All right. Eric Adams, interesting clip right? With me now WNYC and Gothamist, Elizabeth Kim, who has done such great work covering this mayoral race from the primary campaign in the first months of 2021 to crunching the final outcome today. One of her recent articles relevant to that clip from G&T to vaccine mandates, Here Are Some De Blasio Policies Eric Adams Will Likely Change As New York City Mayor. Liz, I'm guessing we're all on a sleep deficit this morning, so thanks for plugging through into the late morning to come on one more time. Good morning.

Liz: Good morning, Brian. Happy to join you.

Brian: Listeners, we'll take your calls in this first segment with a simple question. If you could say something to Eric Adams this morning, what would it be? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. If you could say something to Eric Adams this morning from a simple congratulations to a Mr. Mayor elect, I really would like you to do this, what would it be? 212-433-9692 or you can tweet it @BrianLehrer. Liz, first things first, citing Drake, he started from the bottom. Now he's here. It is a compelling story, right?

Liz: I think yes. He leaned heavily on his biography, and you can tell that on the night where he officially won, he basically leaned on it again and he used the words, "I am you." I think he wants to basically express this universality of his experience that somehow that he can relate to immigrant New Yorkers. He can relate to obviously working-class New Yorkers because he was one, but something of the American dream that this was someone who had clear obstacles in his path, both of income, of race, of learning disabilities, and now he is the second Black mayor of the city.

Brian: Liz, that clip of Adams from of the victory speech reaching out to CEOs. It may rankle some people that he is telling people with little power to be more generous of spirit to the people with so much, or to say as he did there that the CEOs haven't been asked to help uplift them when so many activists would say, "We've been asking for it, we've been demanding it for decades," but that's what he said. You attended the victory speech last night. Is there a specific ask or strategy that you would expect to follow that setup?

Liz: I think that those remarks were a not-so-veiled dig at Mayor de Blasio, and he's basically saying that he's going to pivot from Mayor de Blasio who, we should say, did not openly reach out to business. I don't think that it's completely fair to say that Mayor de Blasio was the anti-business mayor. I think he had a lot of support from the real estate industry in particular. I think in this moment, like from the start of the primary, I was hearing from a lot of people, not just in the business sector, but even in the nonprofit world that said, "We need a mayor who can bring all these stakeholders together in a room and have them partner with one another."

Now, that's a lot easier said than done, particularly when their politics differ. I think when Eric Adams makes a statement like that, he's probably thinking of an organization like the Robinhood Foundation. That's an organization that calls itself the biggest poverty-fighting organization in the city, but look at who funds them. It's a lot of people on Wall Street, a lot of hedge funders. At the same time, they are pushing and they're funding smart policies, absolutely, but we have to keep in mind that's the very public face of their civic engagement. What worries people is what goes on behind closed doors on deals that affect their businesses.

Brian: Here are a few more clips from the speech. He is promising something to the families of New York that they have in Europe, but not in the United States.

Eric Adams: We're going to do this particularly for the women who are in this room. We want universal child care.

[cheers]

Eric Adams: Universal child care.

Brian: Here is the longest clip we'll play, it's Adams on the signature issue from his campaign being aggressive about safety from civilian violence and police violence as well. Now by way of background for this clip, remember that Republican Curtis Sliwa had been very critical of Adams meeting with convicted violent gang members.

Eric Adams: We're going to get the safety we need and the justice we deserve. They go together. By driving down gun violence and crime from our streets while we drive our biases and bad behavior from those who are tarnishing the shield. How dare people ask me do I sit down and talk to gang members who are trying to get their life right? You're darn right I am. You're darn right. You do an analysis of those gang members, you know what you're going to find? You going to find learning disability, dyslexia.

You're going to find all of those mental health issues. The problems we ignored and betrayed those young people for produced what you looking at. You're seeing the hate that New York has created and it's time to stop that hate, but let's be clear. Let's be clear here. As I talk to my gang members, January 1st, the conversation stops. You won't shoot up my city. You won't stab young people in school. You won't sell drugs and guns on my street. I am extending an opportunity to get out of gangs and get in a job. Get into school, become gainfully employed. We are not going to just talk about safety, we're going to have safety in our city.

[cheers]

Brian: Again, Eric Adams from his victory speech last night. A lot to talk about in that one clip alone. WNYC and Gothamist, Liz Kim with us and also joining us now is New York Times Metro correspondent Jeff Mays. One of his big pieces late last month, What Kind Of Mayor Might Eric Adams Be? No one seems to know. Hi, Jeff. Welcome back to WNYC.

Jeff: Hey, good morning, Brian.

Brian: Let's start with that clip we played with you, Jeff. Certainly a lot of passion in that passage last night. What has Adams really told us about how he is going to try to be a both-things-at-the-same-time mayor on police violence and civilian violence?

Jeff: He's made some huge promises on crime and his ability to reduce crime, while not going back to the days of stop and frisk, where the civil rights of mostly Black and Latino men were being violated. That's really going to be the crux of his mayoralty. If he cannot reduce crime, everything else that he's talked about, the businesses and education, it's going to be difficult to accomplish.

He really is promising to do two things at once. During the campaign, he made a couple of statements that people found controversial. One, he talked about how stop and frisk can be used properly and should be used properly to reduce crime, which a lot of people were concerned about. He also talked about bringing back plainclothes squads of police officers to specifically target gangs and guns. The police commissioner had eliminated some of those squads early on.

When he talked about doing those things, he said, "I can bring both of those things back safely, because I'm a former police officer. I was abused by police, I understand how to police without violating people's rights." Really, that's going to be a big portion of how he performs as mayor is whether he can address crime and whether people's rights are respected at the same time.

Brian: What did you think when you heard the passage from within that clip, where he's trying to make a deal with gang members. "I'm going to talk to you, you convicted murderers and whatever else they are, who are behind bars for violent crimes," and saying that's a good thing to do. "I'm going to talk to you and I'm going to do things for gang members who aren't incarcerated, who haven't committed violent crimes yet, who may have learning disabilities, dyslexia, whatever. You don't go killing and assaulting the people of our city." What did you think when you heard that kind of a deal, like he's making a deal with the gangs?

Jeff: Well, I think he said a couple of things there, and in some ways, they were kind of contradictory. He said, "I'm going to meet with these gang members. I've met with them, it's okay. Now, here's the deal, don't commit crime or you're going to pay the price." I think the tough-on-crime approach is one of the things one of his opponents, Maya Wiley, in the Democratic primary, she raised just a ton of concerns and was really a strong focus of her campaign against Mr. Adams, was that that tough-on-crime approach doesn't necessarily work.

There's been a movement to reform the criminal justice system here in the city. We've had things like small crimes for marijuana going away, bail reform took effect throughout the entire state. There really has been a push to change how we deal with people being brought into the criminal justice system. A lot of people are just concerned that it's almost impossible for Mr. Adams to, on the one hand, say that he's going to tamp down on crime, but then, on the other hand, he's going to talk to gang members and give them a chance. It's a really delicate balancing act.

That's why seeing how he's going to perform that is going to be interesting, because, in the one breath, he's saying, "It's okay for me to go out and talk to gang members." If you talk to the criminal justice reform community, they certainly would advocate different approaches to addressing crime. For example, giving people money, jobs, and education to prevent crime. The old harsh ways of just focusing on them, on people who are prone to be drawn into the criminal justice system doesn't work. So Eric has promised that he can do both. It's a big promise and we're going to have to see how that plays out.

Brian: Right. Liz, you were at the victory speech last night. What were you thinking when you heard that particular clip?

Liz: I think he comes into the office on the issue of policing with two kinds of credibility. One is, like Jeff mentioned, he was a police officer. He was a police captain, but the other credibility he has is as a Black man who grew up in South Jamaica, a working to middle-class neighborhood, and who experienced police brutality, who experienced probably racial profiling. He comes into it with both those kinds of credibility and it's going to be a very difficult line for him to walk.

I think when he says something like, "I can talk to gang members," I think part of that is it's not just from the perspective of, "Yes, I was a police officer." It's also from the perspective of, "I'm someone who grew up Black and poor and I had a learning disability, and that early on in my life led me down a difficult path." He talks about too how he had to make things up to his mother because of the anguish that he caused her by getting arrested. He talks about that a lot. I think that that's also where that sort of gesture comes from is, again, his biography.

Brian: One more thing on this, because it is so central to why he won the mayoralty. Then we'll move on to some other aspects. Jeff, do you think that he or anyone can succeed both ways on civilian safety and police safety? It seems like de Blasio, and I get what Liz was saying, Eric Adams' biography leaves him very perfectly positioned to really get both sides of what is currently a political divide, but it seems like de Blasio for his efforts at balance, is going out with both police officers and police reformers pretty much having disdain for the guy.

Jeff: I think where Mayor de Blasio ran into trouble is that he basically won office because of the way he talked about stop and frisk. Like Mr. Adams in some ways, Mayor de Blasio leaned on his biography. He talked about how his son is Black and they have to worry about policing. His son appeared in the ad saying that his father was going to be the one to end stop and frisk. The mayor, in some ways, leaned on the fact that he had a Black son and that's why he understood that issue.

For Eric Adams, it's much more personal. He was the one who was beaten by police. He was the one who got in trouble as a young man. He was the one who was recruited by his mentors to go into the police department and purposely speak out from the inside of the police department about discriminatory policing, what he was seeing, and his ways to change that.

When I was out and spoke to voters, there was some skepticism about him being a former police officer, but then people said, "You know what, we're willing to give him a chance because we think his argument makes sense. A former police officer who spoke out against a lot of these abuses, maybe he can go in and make these changes." I think people during the primary especially, were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

During the general election, Curtis Sliwa, who was the founder of the patrol group, The Guardian Angels, also tried to focus on crime, could not touch Mr. Adams with some of these criticisms because Mr. Adams came in with such credibility as a police officer. As we saw crime going up slightly in the past several months, he had been talking about that really before a lot of the other candidates. I think he has a lot of credibility, and he convinced people that, "Hey, give me a chance to try to do this." I don't think he's going to have a long time to make some of the changes that he's promising, but it's going to be interesting to watch.

Brian: Jeff Mays for the New York Times. Liz Kim from WNYC and Gothamist on the election of Eric Adams. We'll get to your calls in a bit. Liz, the other clip we played there, just before, from the victory speech, was Adams promising New York City families, particularly for the women. He said, universal childcare so lower-income families can keep generating income from the workplace. We don't have that in the United States. They have that in a number of European countries, but not here. Does he have a plan?

Liz: He does. It's a very market-focused proposal. Basically, what he's proposing to do is he wants to reduce the cost of childcare by basically helping out childcare providers. We know that during the pandemic, this particular sector was very hard hit, so he wants to give them space in city-owned buildings, he's proposing giving them some zoning incentives and he's going to give them a tax break as well. These are all savings that he thinks can be passed on to parents.

I think what's important to note though, this point, will in large part, depend on federal funding that he, at the time, probably anticipated would be part of Joe Biden's Build Back Better reconciliation bill. That's currently being negotiated and it doesn't look good for that particular provision, so this will be interesting. Can he follow through on it? That was something that he has been mentioning in the latter stages of the race and he did mention it in his speech last night, so we'll see how he delivers.

Brian: All right. Callers, what would you say to Eric Adams on the morning after his mayoral election, if you had his ear? 212-433-WNYC or tweet @BrianLehrer. Don in Manhattan. You're on WNYC. Hi, Don.

Don: Hi, Brian, thank you for letting me on. Thank you for your show, by the way.

Brian: Thank you.

Don: I would ask Eric Adams to ask Governor Hochul to really fund the campaign for physical equity so that New York City public schools could get more money to help their education programs, in particular, media specialists or librarians, in particular, in Black and brown areas. We have a deficit of librarians, a deficit of music teachers, a deficit of sports things, which will help him offer an alternative to the gang members. [crosstalk]

Brian: [crosstalk] Go ahead.

Don: Yes, when LBJ came up with a summer jobs program, we had a gang problem back in the 1960s. When LBJ came up with the summer jobs program, gangs disappeared almost overnight because the little knuckleheads had an after-school job that they could go to, and that requires some money from some place.

Brian: Don, thank you so much, really interesting stuff. Liz, Eric Adams, if he had a mantra in this campaign, it might have been, if you don't educate, you'll incarcerate, and so the caller says he wants Adams to see that Governor Hochul fully funds education for New York City and you were at the victory speech last night. One of the things that most surprised me last night, watching it on TV, was that he invited Kathy Hochul to make some remarks. Because here we are at this moment where a number of people who might be considered allies of the new incoming mayor are all running for governor of New York, presumably Letitia James, probably Bill de Blasio, probably Jumaane Williams, but he gave Hochul a platform and a pat on the back. What was that?

Liz: Well, I think that was very shrewd on his behalf. This is a relationship that is going to be very important for him in the early part of his mayoralty. Yes, she's running, but for now, she is the incumbent and she has a lot of power over the purse strings in Albany and he's going to need funding for some of the policies that he wants to get done. Giving her that platform to say something, I thought was very smart and very practical.

Brian: Jim in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jim.

Jim: Hi. How are you?

Brian: Good. Let's get to it.

Jim: Can you hear me?

Brian: I can.

Jim: One thing I wanted to say is that there seems to be this urgency among people in the media, and even in listening to his speech last night, Eric Adams to deliver on progressive issues. One thing that I would say to him is that he shouldn't forget that in many ways, the people of New York City rejected the progressive candidates, the Maya Wileys, we didn't want that.

In many ways, it was a rejection of de Blasio. We wanted a more centrist candidate. We wanted somebody that would be for everybody in New York, not just for progressives. I think there's this sense that everybody wants to hear, "What is he going to do for progressives? What is he going to do," but that's not who we wanted. I think the temperature of New York City has in many ways shifted away from progressive values. I think he should keep that in mind as he goes out and makes his victory speeches today.

Brian: Jim, thank you very much. Jeff Mays, what about that dynamic?

Jeff: Well the interesting thing is that coming into office, Eric Adams is more centrist, is a moderate Democrat. He describes himself as progressive personally, and thinks the definition of progressive is being used incorrectly, but when he does come into office, he's going to have to face a slew of other elected politicians. The city council is likely to be further left to him on a lot of issues such as criminal justice reform and affordable housing.

In addition, the other two citywide elected positions of controller and public advocate were won by Brad Lander and Jumaane Williams, both stalwarts of the city's progressive movement. Brad Lander was one of the founders of the progressive caucus in the city council. There is going to be some balance in this administration. He is going to face pressure from people like Tiffany Cabán on the city council who almost won Queens' district attorney primary a couple years ago and was very far to the left on criminal justice reform, issues of bail reform.

She's going to be on the city council and there are going to be several others like her who are going to be pushing and challenging Mr. Adams. I'm not sure that the caller has absolutely correct that New Yorkers rejected those progressive ideas. Because many of the other people that are going to be taking office next year are people who are strong proponents of those progressive values.

Brian: All right, listeners, more on the victory of Adams coming up, including another surprising victory speech clip that runs along the lines we were just talking about, progressive centrist, where is he positioning himself. More with Jeff and Liz, more of your calls, and then we'll get to the rest of the election results outside of New York City, where Democrats and progressives will mostly have to lick some pretty big wounds and ask themselves what to do next. New Jersey, Long Island, Virginia, Buffalo, Minneapolis, but maybe not Boston, stay with us.

Eric Adams: If I can quote one of the most philosophical genius of our time. Drake, "Started from the bottom, now we here."

[cheers]

Brian: There was Eric Adams citing Drake near the beginning of his victory speech last night, "Started from the bottom", in many ways in his life. Now he's the second Black mayor of New York, or simply put, he's the mayor of New York as we're looking at the election results and what they mean. We're doing New York City first and focusing mostly on Eric Adams with WNYC and Gothamist, Liz Kim, and Jeffrey Mays from the New York Times.

Jeff has an article recently called Nobody Knows What Kind Of Mayor Eric Adams Will Be. That's at least the theme. Listeners, we're taking your calls on things you would like to say. If you had Eric Adams' ear this morning, either a simple congratulations or a plea to do something in particular now that he will be taking power. Let's take another one of those. Here's Matt in the Bronx, Matt, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Matt: Hey, I would just like to tell him to rethink his plan to put permanent housing for homeless in the outer boroughs because it's exactly what the developers always wanted. They hoodwinked the communities to get these things built, and then they were all always counting on the government to come fill them up.

Brian: All right. Thank you very much. Alan, in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Alan.

Alan: Good morning. Although I don't think this should be his priority issue, it is something of concern in progressive parts of Brooklyn and the New York Times also agreed that he really should not be focusing his standard of education for Yeshiva students on the desires of Rabbis and Orthodox leaders, but on the needs of the students, and if their math, science, and civic education is substandard, he shouldn't rely on the endorsement of the leaders alone to decide what's the right thing to do,

Brian: Alan, thank you very much. Jeff Mays, I don't know if you were there last night, or if you were watching on TV like I was, but standing prominently placed right behind Adams in the TV shot during that victory speech were two Blackhat Hasidic men, as well as three women of color and one other white man. Did you see that and take anything from it? If you were cropping the shot to the center of the center, it was Adams and two obviously Hasidic-looking guys.

Jeff: I think Eric Adams was the borough president of Brooklyn for the last eight years, home to a large portion of the city's Orthodox Jewish population. He certainly has good relationships with those groups. During the primary, Mr. Adams and Andrew Yang were two of the people who were strongly competing for that Orthodox vote, and sometimes you do get that block vote from that community. He definitely has strong ties to that community. Had consultants on his campaign with strong ties to that community. Certainly, I think the desires of that community are going to come into play during his administration.

Brian: Larry in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Larry.

Larry: Hi, how you doing? I would like to tell the mayor that number one, listening to his speech last night, I would think that young Black man are creating all the problems in New York City, and if not for young Black men creating problems, New York city would be some kind of haven, and that's not true. The drug trade in the white community is off the chain. There's a lot of crime and there's also problems, and I'd like to say, secondly, that he should settle for nothing less than New York City becoming the great exporter of young professionals.

Instead of just saying, "Well, I know we're going to put more police on bad neighborhoods," he should be saying, "We're going to get rid of these poverty zones that we've had for the last 50 years and convert them into the professional warehouse. From now on, we're going to be exporting professionals. We're going to create professionals," something upbeat instead of-- he sounds angry.

Brian: He does say, and we mentioned it before, something that he says over and over again, "If you don't educate, you'll incarcerate," and talked in the earlier clip we played about the poor people of New York being betrayed by city government of New York over the years. It sounds like at least for you, Larry, that part of his message isn't getting through.

Larry: Right, because I grew up in a poverty zone and I've been hearing that for the past-- I'm 60 years old, I've been hearing that since I was 10 years old. We've got to educate and all of these other solutions that don't work. You got bad policing, there's no parks, no amenities in Brownsville where I grew up, no parks, no outreach from social services in the libraries, and no outdoor movie theaters. There's nothing there, there's no jobs. There's just a lot of blame, and I'm asking that he create a more overall approach to all the issues that stymie the growth of people in the poverty zones.

Brian: Larry, thank you so much.

Larry: Education is great, but it's not the end.

Brian: It's all those other things. Larry, thank you. Please call us again. Liz, let's do a quick checklist from your article on De Blasio Policies Adams Will Likely Change As Mayor. Gifted and talented programs. What's the de Blasio position, what's the Adams?

Liz: De Blasio has scrapped the program. The old G&T model is basically children as young as starting at age four, they take a test and they're placed in a gifted program that basically separates them from the general public school population. De Blasio wants to replace it with a new initiative. I don't know that he'll have enough time in his tenure to really get that approved, but the new initiative, which he calls Brilliant NYC, would basically offer accelerated classes to children in grades three to five.

They're not going to be tested into those classes. That's going to be based on teacher recommendations and their prior work. Adams has interestingly taken the position that he wants to keep, he wants to expand G&T, but he's also at the same time said that he does not believe that a child's educational future should be determined at age four by a single test. That was essentially one of the biggest criticisms of the G&T model.

That it was not fair, that it was not an accurate assessment of a young person's academic or intellectual abilities, and the bigger problem was that it basically accelerated or exacerbated, I should say, the segregation in the city's public school system. I think there's still a lot of questions, he's basically punted on what is he going to do with the test. I think that is what a lot of families are really wondering. Will there be a test and what age will it begin? I think he's basically left that open. He says he's basically going to have some people look at this question and they're going to come up with a proposal, but I think it seems pretty unlikely that there will be a test in January.

Brian: Another one from your article on ways Adams is likely to be different from de Blasio, vaccine mandates. What's the de Blasio position, what's the Adams?

Liz: They're more in line on that. De Blasio has issued a vaccine mandate for all roughly 400,000 city workers, and that began this week on Monday, that took effect. Adams has said that he supports a vaccine mandate, but he would have preferred to have gone to the unions first to negotiate. Mayor de Blasio basically issued the mandate, and now he is currently working to negotiate the exemptions and hammering other details out with the unions.

Adams, as early as this morning, said on some news talk shows that he had reached out to the unions last night. He doesn't want to get involved now, but because he says he wants to give the mayor the chance to reach that negotiation. I think this is one in which we see this vaccination rate among city workers climbing steadily, I think as of yesterday, it was 92%. I think by the time de Blasio leaves, there's going to be a pretty high vaccination rate among city workers. I don't really know that this will really rear its head.

Brian: There's also a vaccine mandate for children question. One of the other stories last night while we were all doing election returns, was that the CDC approved the vaccine from Pfizer for 5 to11-year-olds, and hasn't Adams made some noises about potentially requiring that for New York City public school children? Which de Blasio says he will not because he doesn't want to bar entry to the school door for any child.

Liz: Correct, and that could potentially be a little bit more thorny for Adams. He's given himself an out by saying that if a family elects not to have their child vaccinated, they can opt for remote learning. Currently, there is no remote learning option, but if he does that, then there's the question will the remote learning be any good, and will these families be upset that they're not able to have a superior kind of education for their children which all experts have agreed in-person is far superior to remote. That will definitely be one of his major challenges around vaccine mandates.

Brian: One more clip for a closing thought from both of you from Eric Adams' victory speech last night. It may not be fashionable these days to reference the American dream as a reality, rather than as a false or exaggerated promise, but Adams did it last night without a hint of irony. Listen.

Eric Adams: We will never go backwards because America is the only country, the only country on the globe with dream attached to our name. There's no German dream. There's no Polish dream. There's no French dream, but damn it, there's an American dream. You don't leave a nightmare to come live in a nightmare. We have to allow those 10 million dreams to come alive and to benefit from what this country has to offer. January 1st, that's the promise. That's what we will accomplish.

Brian: Jeff Mays, that's not just New York pride from the incoming mayor of New York, that's American pride, maybe of a slightly sentimental variety more likely to be heard from the right these days, at least in that form. Why do you think he included that?

Jeff: I'm not really surprised to hear that, because I think Liz maybe talked a little bit about earlier, is that Mr. Adams has leaned very heavily on his biography and the idea that he was very poor growing up, to the point where he carried a garbage bag of clothes to school because he thought he might be evicted and because he had interactions with the police, and because his dyslexia went undiscovered for most of his youth. Yet here he is, becoming the next mayor of New York City. He's leaned very heavily on that idea that he can take that, export that out to other people who are suffering, who are struggling, and that they too can have success.

He talked last night about opening up the prosperity of the city and making it available to everyone. The idea that he leans heavily on his biography of someone who is part of the American dream, who has had success despite starting out, "I am you," is one of his favorite lines that he tells voters. I believe he said it last night as well. That is not really surprising at all. I think, given his background and some of the promises he's made, he's going to be judged on the type of improvement we see for the most vulnerable New Yorkers.

Brian: Liz, closing thought? 30 seconds.

Liz: I think of an article that Jeff wrote about this being a watershed moment for Black electeds in this city, and I draw a line between what Adams says and that point. I think what the test will be is will that representation translate into better outcomes for not just Black working class in this city, but Latinos and the other people of color, immigrants? That will be the test. It's not enough that he represents the American dream. Can he deliver that dream to other people, other citizens?

Brian: Liz Kim from WNYC and Gothamist, Jeffery Mays from the New York Times. You've been going round the clock, both of you, I know. So have I, a little bit. Great of you to join us and do one more shift here this morning. Thanks a lot.

Liz: Thanks, Brian.

Jeff: Thanks for having me.

 

Copyright © 2021 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.