Why Eric Adams is still the best choice for NYC Mayor compared to the alternatives

The sharks are out for Mayor Adams’ job. They smell blood in the water over his low approval rating and mishandling of the migrant crisis. They think he’ll be easy pickings in the 2025 Democratic mayoral primary.

Maybe they’re right. But any New Yorker who fears for our city’s future should hope they’re wrong — at least based on the depressing names that are touted so far in the media as potential successors to Adams.

Adams’ State of the City speech this week didn’t tell us much about his vision for New York that we didn’t already know.  But at least it was a robust, spirits-lifting celebration of the Big Apple — which we’re unlikely to hear from any of his possible replacements.

The mayor kicked it off by gleefully holding up a New York Post story on Time Out magazine’s designation of New York as the greatest city in the world. Can anybody imagine his predecessor doing that? Bill de Blasio, who for eight long years seemed ashamed to be part of the place, might still be giving daily Covid-19 death-count announcements if he were in office today.

It’s right and proper to scold Adams over his poor track record of delivering on his promises. But at least they are the right promises. I’ll take a half-effectual mayor with good intentions any day over a 100%-effective one with the wrong intentions.

Politics is famously “the art of the possible,” yet we expect the impossible of our mayors. Their powers are curbed by state dominion over such vital major issues as taxes, mass transit, public education and land use. They reduce any mayor, despite a daily media presence, to a pitiful helpless eunuch.