“I worked on a lot of campaigns, and when you run the campaign and then you win, and you get into office, you want to keep your core message alive, and the fact that New York City is being destroyed, that was Adams’s core message,” Bill Neidhardt, a former press secretary for Adams’s predecessor, Bill de Blasio, and now a political consultant, told The New Republic. “He’s just being a disciplined politician by reminding everyone that the city is falling apart.”
For his mythos to have much currency, Adams, a former NYPD captain, had to embellish just how much difference one elected official can have on a city (crime statistics rarely correlate with policing strategies) and also the degree to which the previous Democratic administration failed New York. While former Mayor de Blasio silently supported Adams during the Democratic primary, Adams has spent his entire time in office bashing him, especially on criminal justice issues. Adams has blasted reforms de Blasio supported, both big and small: His attempts to close the abattoir of Rikers Island and install a modicum of police reforms have come under derision, as has his leadership of the city itself.
In the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections, Adams was front-and-center in promoting the image of a crime wave in America’s cities, one that was amplified by local news. As New York gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin, a Republican, and California Representative Kevin McCarthy, who was then House minority leader, bashed Democrats on crime, Adams joined in, helping the GOP make the case that Democratic leadership inevitably led to violence and chaos.