It hardly bode well for Mayor Adams’ re-election chances when he got booed at the Planet Hollywood reopening on Tuesday night.
By every measure, from terrible polls to Bronx cheers on the red carpet of a festive celebrity party, Adams is headed for a shattering defeat at the hands of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the June 24 Democratic mayoral primary. There might be a way for him to pull it off, but it will take a laser-focused effort to educate voters about how much damage the former governor did to the Big Apple.
Adams must remind the electorate that Cuomo is mostly behind the city’s stubbornly high felony rate and increasingly disorderly streets and sidewalks. As governor, he signed the criminal-coddling legislation that gave evil-doers a free pass like no other state in the Union.
The primary winner will almost surely be elected mayor due to the city’s overwhelmingly Democratic electorate. Adams’ approval rating tanked at a record-low 20% in the latest Quinnipiac University poll, which also found that 56% of voters say he should resign from office.
Meanwhile, despite the sexual-harassment scandal that drove him from office in 2021, Cuomo is favored by 31% of likely Democratic primary voters compared with 11% for Adams, according to Quinnipiac. The rest were split among nine other candidates in what City & State called a “wide, weird and unsettled field” of unloved elected officials and complete unknowns.
While Adams is bogged down by that corruption indictment, Cuomo brazenly rides a crest of popularity due to his name recognition and charismatic oratorical powers. Supporters disregard his 2020 order to send hospitalized COVID-10 patients to nursing homes, which surely added thousands to the death toll; his lockdowns that were much harsher and longer-standing in the city than anywhere else in the state; or sexual harassment claims against him by multiple women.
Cuomo last week doubled down on his support for bail reform, telling a Harlem church it “righted a terrible wrong.”
But he also pledged to add 5,000 cops to the depleted ranks of the NYPD. There’s nothing like sounding pro-police to come across as the law-and-order Hercules the city needs.
Cuomo can honestly claim credit for some good works: Completing the Second Avenue subway and LaGuardia Airport’s splendid new Terminal B and for preventing a year-long shutdown of the L train between Manhattan and Brooklyn by finding a swifter way to repair tunnel damage than the MTA wanted to do.
Those achievements mock Adams’ failure to get rid of widely hated sidewalk sheds even at city-owned buildings.
Adams, overwhelmed by the Biden-era influx of illegal immigrants, took a beating over the chaos they brought us, from the pitiable sight of infant-carrying migrant women peddling candy on subways to murders committed by Venezuelan gang members.
His bumbling administration resembled a clown car with constant comings and goings of police commissioners, agency heads and deputy mayors. Maybe most damaging in our Trump-hating city, he’s accused of sucking up to the new president in order to wrest a federal pardon for his corruption charges.
Yet for all his personal unpopularity and legal vulnerability, Adams does have a slim path to victory open to him — if he has the stomach for it.
While Adams displayed guts facing down the Biden administration over migrants, Cuomo showed no guts when he caved to the criminal coddling legislature and signed the heinous 2019 bail “reform” and “discovery” rules that tie prosecutors in knots and turn violent perps loose wholesale. The latter rules are so favorable to criminals, even notoriously “woke” Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg objected to them.
While there might be ambiguity over other blemishes on Cuomo’s record, there’s none regarding the bail law. He could have vetoed it, but he feared alienating the legislature’s left wing to which he pandered.
So instead, Cuomo un-did, with strokes of a pen, more than three decades of enhanced civic order — even under witless former Mayor Bill de Blasio — and gave the perps a get-out-of-jail pass.
Although crime was much worse in the 1980s and early 1990s, the city feels less safe today than it was in 2019. Resurgent mayhem is more than a warning; it’s a frightening reality for New Yorkers who weren’t here 30-plus years ago.
To have a chance of surviving the primary, Adams must focus on that single issue no matter how much The New York Times and its media echo chamber howl about it.
He needn’t defend himself over a Turkish airlines seat upgrade or “wire fraud” charges. His strongest strategy would be to persuade voters that Cuomo is mostly to blame for a stubbornly high felony rate and increasing street anarchy.
That’s what matters most to most New Yorkers — actual crime and disorder unleashed by Cuomo’s acquiescence to the legislature’s far-left agenda.
Plenty of voters may still favor Cuomo, but at least they can make a choice as informed as it is impactful.
If to “go negative” means telling the truth, Adams can shout it from the tenement and skyscraper rooftops. He should tell it to the mass of New Yorkers who see the quality of life deteriorate before their eyes. Say it again until they’re blue in the face. And again, and again. scuozzo@nypost.com
