They may share a name, but they’re no happy family.
Mayor Eric Adams and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams grew up together, walked the same Queens high school hallways and even saw their mothers die within a year of both climbing atop the summit of New York City politics.
But the long-standing relationship between the no-relation Adamses has devolved into a bitter power struggle, according to more than a dozen sources with knowledge of the fallout who spoke with The Post.
“This thing with the Council is not going to go away and it’s going to get even more snippier,” one Democratic operative said.
“There are going to be more and more headlines.”
Fierce feuds and bratty back-and-forths between the respective Adams factions in City Hall and the Council have become increasingly frequent and public.
Just last week, New Yorkers watched the two bizarrely hold dueling meetings over a bill that would expand lawmakers’ oversight over mayoral appointees.
On the mayor’s side, insiders say administration officials feel threatened by loud, leftie members of the Council who have been emboldened under the speaker and are actively working against his reelection.
“Inmates are running the asylum,” a Democratic Council source said about the Council.
The speaker, for her part, feels disrespected by the mayor who repeatedly touts their relationship in public but privately flip-flops on promises and has staffers who operate in a chaotic and petty manner, sources said.
“I think what started out as some legitimate difference over policy differences has devolved into a fight over power and tribal grievances,” another Dem strategist said.
‘My amazing friend’
To hear Eric Adams tell it, the two have always been close.
When Hizzoner took a swagger-filled victory lap on his first 100 days as mayor in 2022, he touted the partnership with his “amazing friend” Adrienne Adams.
“We were high school students together,” he told her. “You and I both lost our mommies this last year. They’re looking down on us and they’re telling us, ‘You got this, baby. You got this.’ I thank you so much. Adams & Adams Law Firm is going to bring us through this.”
While both went to Bayside High School, they didn’t run in the same circles, sources said.
“It’s a complete joke,” one Council source said. “They were not good friends in high school.”
“For all we know they didn’t get along in high school,” another source said. “These two people took two totally different life paths, got here and have some prejudgments about each other.”
Eric Adams, by his own telling, was a less-than-stellar student and had a formative brutal run-in with the NYPD.
He eventually became one of New York’s Finest and rose through its ranks to become a prominent captain who founded the 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care advocacy group.
After he left the force in 1996, he served as a state senator and Brooklyn borough president before he was elected New York City’s second black mayor.
Adrienne Adams had a lower-key rise through politics, cutting her teeth on a Queens community board before she was elected to the Council in 2017.
From there, her profile grew to the point that she was one of two top candidates in 2021 to succeed then-outgoing Speaker Corey Johnson — a race that sources told The Post sowed the seeds of the current clash.
A widening rift
The rift began before Eric Adams even became mayor.
The then-mayor-elect’s unsuccessful backing of Francisco Moya, a lawmaker from Queens, in the 2021 speaker race was seen as meddling by some Council members, multiple City Hall insiders said.
“There is still resentment with the mayor’s political team over the speaker’s race,” one source said.
The rupture widened when Eric Adams and Adrienne Adams sat down a few months later in 2022 to hash out their first budget, which shrank school funding by $215 million — a deal that sparked outrage from teachers and prompted lawmakers to walk back their support.
“Council members claimed they were shocked,” the insider said. “They started pointing fingers at the administration. It was a turning point.”
Contentious budget battles only escalated with the migrant crisis, with the mayor which the mayor said would cost the city $12 billion — a number the Council disputed — as he pushed a spate of sweeping spending cuts.
Council members in 2023 overrode Eric Adams’ veto of a housing voucher plan, then sought to join a lawsuit looking to force him to comply with the reforms they enacted.
They also slapped down his veto of the How Many Stops Act, a controversial bill that would make the NYPD record all street stops.
As they geared up to override that veto in January, the dispute devolved into a petty seating spat when a mayoral aide tried to swipe chairs from reporters at a Council news conference.
Council members who sided with the speaker during the vote suddenly found themselves uninvited from public events with the mayor, sources said.
Then when City Hall tried to crack down on communications between Big Apple agencies and elected officials in April, Adrienne Adams flat out told Council members to not fill out the requested form.
The administration feels that progressive critics of the mayor’s have been roused under the speaker, including Councilmember Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn), who was at the center of several contentious exchanges with City Hall staffers in and out of chambers.
Adrienne Adams’ number two and a former ally of the mayor, Deputy Speaker Diana Ayala (D-Manhattan/Bronx), attacked him publicly, calling him a “slumlord,” which City Hall felt was out of line.
The spat escalated last week when the mayor’s top liaison with the Council, Tiffany Raspberry, turned her back on the speaker at a hearing and stormed out of chambers, insiders said.
“No one expected it to be this level, the vitriol, especially her, especially when he [Eric Adams] is out there saying, ‘I love you,’” the first Dem operative said. “Everybody sees through it. It’s unfortunate.”
“It’s like sorta siblings, trying to figure out who started it but I think they are both messing it up,” another source quipped.
“They just need to have a peace treaty.”
Both the mayor and the speaker declined to be interviewed.
Eric Adams’ top spokesman told The Post he didn’t agree with the premise of the story, claiming the two have “a strong, long-standing relationship.”
“The vast majority of the time, they agree, but like anyone, even if they disagree from time to time, they know how to look past the noise and ‘Get Stuff Done’ for New Yorkers,” Deputy Mayor for Communications Fabien Levy said.
A Council spokesperson said lawmakers have “constructively” worked with “agencies and offices of this administration that are more focused on governing” including on housing, zoning and other legislative priorities.
“Speaker Adams leads the Council based on the democratic principles of inclusion and reaching consensus on sound public policies regardless of who proposed them, instead of relying on partisanship or demagoguery,” said Shirley Limongi, deputy communications director for Adrienne Adams.
Additional reporting by Carl Campanile
