Eric Adams is the new mayor of New York City, with Democrats being sworn in in a ceremony in Times Square shortly after the nation’s largest city rang out on New Year’s Saturday.
Adams, 61, faces the enormous challenge of pulling the city out of the pandemic, taking office as the city grapples with a record number of Covid-19 cases driven by the omicron variant.
As the confetti continued past Times Square, Adams read his oath of office. Deputy Attorney General Sylvia O. Hinds-Radix of the state Supreme Court’s appellate division took the oath of Adams as he placed one hand on the family Bible and the other held a photo of his mother, Dorothy, who had passed away. life in 2020.
He made no comments or took questions from reporters, but appeared on “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ with Ryan Seacrest” shortly after being sworn in.
He told Seacrest that he has a few parties to attend but that he will “get up early in the morning, work for New York City.”
Before that he made a brief appearance on the main stage to assert the resilience of the city.
“Even in the midst of Covid, in the midst of everything we’re going through, this is a country where hope and opportunity are always present,” he said earlier in the night.
“It’s great that New York shows the whole country how we’re coming back,” he said. “We’ve shown the whole world what we’re made of. We couldn’t believe it. This is an unbelievable city and believe me, we’re ready for a big comeback because This is New York.”
Adams is a former New York City police captain and Brooklyn district president who has taken a more business-friendly, more moderate stance than his predecessor but describes himself as a down-to-earth and down-to-earth mayor, who will “get the job done”. He was the city’s second Black mayor, after David Dinkins, who served from 1990 to 1993 and was New York City’s 110th mayor.
Adams said this week that he plans to implement many of the policies of outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio, including vaccine regulations considered the most stringent in the nation.
The city’s workforce is required to be vaccinated, as are anyone trying to dine indoors, see a gig, work out at the gym or attend a conference. However, New York City has also required private-sector employees to be present, the most far-reaching mandate of any state or major city and a policy Adams said he will maintain. maintain.
He also pledged to keep schools open and avoid further closures in this city of 8.8 million people.
Even without a mandatory shutdown, the city is still struggling with de facto closures because of the widespread Covid-19 infection.
Several subway lines have been suspended due to positive test results among transit workers leaving too few staff to run trains regularly.
The Rockettes Christmas show was canceled for the season, and the New York City Ballet Theater canceled the remaining performances of “The Nutcracker.” Several Broadway shows have closed because of Covid-19 cases, and restaurants and bars around the city are temporarily closed because their workers have tested positive.
Adams said he and a team of advisers are working on whether to expand the city’s immunization mandate, plan the distribution of masks and rapid tests, and introduce a warning color-coding system. inform New Yorkers about the current level of threat posed by the virus.
As a mayoral candidate, Adams describes growing up poor in Brooklyn and Queens and talks about the issues of crime, policing and racist injustice that blend his experience as a former police captain, an officer critical of his department and a teenager experiencing brutality at the hands of police officers.
While promising as a man of action in the mayor’s office, Adams is at times an unconventional politician who is expected to put his own stamp on the role.
He is a vegetarian, wrote a book in 2020 on how the plant-based diet helped him with diabetes and has been showing off his favorite smoothie recipe on social media. . He is known to frequent some of the city’s nightclubs, saying during an appearance on Stephen Colbert’s late-night show that, “This is a city of nightlife. I had to give it a try. product. I have to go out.”
