This week’s indictment of New York City Mayor Eric Adams, the second Black person to lead America’s most populous  city, has divided the Black Big Apple. Elders from the ideological center like NAACP NYC chapter President Hazel Dukes to the Rev. Herbert Daughtry of the militant left stood side by side with Adams as the mayor vowed to fight the federal charges yet stay focused on serving the needs of 8.3 million residents. 

A contrary face in that crowd, reported ABC7 News, was heckler Walter “Hawk” Newsome, co-founder of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, who long had been calling for Adams’ resignation. 

Meanwhile, a New York resident who is attending college in Virginia told me that her peers on social media were polarized; one side insists Adams is a victim of a racially motivated plot, the other side is as adamant that Adams deserves to get the boot. Indeed, Black New York is divided and passionate over the issue.

Yet the puzzling question is whether the feds, a combined effort of the U.S. Attorney New York Southern District office, and the FBI, have a strong case to take down Adams, making him the first mayor in the city’s nearly four-century history to be indicted and possibly convicted? 

If the latter is true, Adams could serve up to 20 years in prison for wire fraud, said legal experts on MSNBC Thursday evening.

Adams’ alleged crime is mainly taking lavish gifts from Turkish officials and doing favors to get that nation’s new 36-story Manhattan consulate opened by bypassing fire department safety protocols. The feds were investigating Adams and the Turkish angle for nearly a year before yesterday’s charges dropped.

An insider at City Hall close to Adams told me the indictment was all about accusing Adams of taking international air travel upgrades and attempting to make it look like the mayor took foreign contributions – bribes – from the Turkish government. 

A few hours before the 57-page indictment was unsealed, a CBS News legal analyst said it was unlikely that the feds would go so hard at Adams if they didn’t have a smoking-gun case.

Could the Adams scandal compare with the turmoil that nearly suffocated Mayor Ed Koch nearly four decades ago in 1986? Combative Koch was not faulted directly for corruption, however, his inner circle of leaders was indeed crooked. Donald Manes, Queens borough president, who Koch was grooming as his mayoral successor, took his own life at home before investigators closed in and an indictment was imminent, chronicled Jack Newfield and Wayne Barrett in “City for Sale.” A rogue’s gallery of political bosses and operatives in Brooklyn and the Bronx were indicted and convicted.

In Adams’ case, though not charged, key players are bailing. Schools Chancellor David Banks announced this week he is retiring, and Adams’ chief counsel Lisa Zornberg resigned, saying she could ‘no longer effectively serve.”

If Adams survives the corruption charges he vows to run for re-election in November 2025. Adams took care not to repeat the style of the first Black New York City mayor, David N. Dinkins. 

Dinkins was elected as the kinder, gentler antidote to Koch, whose bombast eventually made voters weary after three four-year terms, particularly Black New Yorkers, who accused him of being a racist. But Dinkins was perceived as weak and ineffective. The Crown Heights riot of 1991 happened on his watch. A Black mob attacked an orthodox Jewish community after the rabbinical leader’s motorcade struck and killed a Black boy and maimed his cousin, a young girl.

Dinkins’ triumphs were working with the legislature in Albany, the state capital, to restore the police force to full strength after it was gutted during New York’s near bankruptcy of the late 1970s. Dinkins also facilitated the transformation of Times Square from red light district to family friendly entertainment destination. 

Adams has had a bumpy ride from the day he was elected in 2021. Adams coped with the coronavirus pandemic that rendered Manhattan a ghost town and sapped the entire city economically. And governors from southern states shipped southern-border migrants to New York and refused to alert or coordinate with Adams and his team. Crowds of migrants were housed in neighborhood schools and other sites, which angered families particularly in the outer boroughs. Through it all Adams projected strength despite moments fraught with chaos.

Meanwhile, Adams had a conflicted relationship with the city’s Black community over policing. He famously was beaten by NYPD officers as a youth, nevertheless Adams joined the force and rose to the rank of captain. Adams went on to found a Black police advocacy organization and marched with citizens to protest brutality by the blue. However, when he became mayor, residents alleged Adams downplayed police misconduct. Insiders also complained that he meddled in the work of Keechant Sewell, the city’s first Black woman police commissioner. After nearly two years’ service she quietly resigned at the end of 2023.

What only appears certain is in the short term, do not become fully invested in the belief that Eric Adam is an innocent man being framed by the deep state, or that the federal justice system has a flawless story that will bury the 110th New York mayor. 
Stay tuned.