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New York City Eric Adams elected, of the Democratic Party, his new mayor on Tuesday (2). Adams, 61, would be the second black person to take charge of the city (the first was David Norman Denkins in the early 1990s).
Eric Adams October 26, 2021 – Photograph: Eduardo Munoz
He was born in the Brooklyn area and raised in the Queens area. He was raised only by his mother, who worked as a cook and housekeeper (the next mayor claims she’s from the guild). Adams’ mother passed away in early 2021, but it took months to reveal that fact.
Eric Adams, New York’s new mayor, holds a picture of his mother during polling day – Photo: REUTERS/Andrew Kelly
The politician says he grew up fearing his family would lose their home, but according to the New York Times, it’s hard to verify whether the accounts of his teenage years are true.
He states that there was a turning point in his life at the age of 15: he and his older brother were arrested for trespassing on private property, and were beaten while in police custody.
According to the New York Times, there are some variants in the accounts Adams gave of his arrest; He had previously claimed that he and his brother broke into the house of a prostitute who owed them money; In another version, the woman was not a prostitute but an exotic dancer who owed them money. The newspaper reported that the next mayor of New York is telling several stories with variations.
Adams claims that his arrest at age 15 made him want to be a cop to change company.
He worked for 22 years in the police. In 2006, he stopped being a police officer. At that time, he was already an activist with a history – in 1995 he formed a group within the company called 100 Blacks in the Police who Care. The group had racial justice as its agenda.
From the late 1990s onwards, he attended university and rose through the ranks of the police force.
At that time, he became a member of the Republican Party – today, he claims that it was a protest against the leader of the Democratic Party in the second half of the 90s.
In 2007, he was elected to the Senate from the state of New York (in some US states, the state legislature is bicameral).
Subsequently, he became the deputy mayor of the Brooklyn area.
The next mayor of New York is a vegetarian, too. He claims to have followed a meat-free diet since he was diagnosed with diabetes in 2016, and that the change in diet and exercise routine meant the disease was not clear.
Eric Adams commemorates his victory in the New York mayoral election on November 2, 2021 – Photo: Eugene Gologorsky / AFP
Adams claims to build long-term political relationships. In the Senate, he supported 20 bills that became laws.
He participated in discussions about NYPD policy that addressed black and Latino men in a manner that was interpreted as discriminatory.
During his years in the state legislature, he was criticized for his involvement with lobbyists – as well as for raising campaign money among wealthy New Yorkers.
The last moments of the campaign
In the final days of the campaign, he debated the new New York mayor twice on television with Republican challenger Curtis Sliwa.
Sliwa accused Adams of failing to meet with police unions, said the Democrat preferred to meet with former city gang leaders to talk about fighting crime, and criticized the mandatory Covid-19 vaccine for government officials.
The police union said 10,000 of the city’s 35,000 customers will be taken off the streets with a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination. But according to the “Washington Post”, The measure affected only 34 police officers.
