Adams hones strategy as he returns to Albany

NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams headed to his old stomping grounds in Albany last year, fresh off a campaign victory and looking to replicate that political success in the state capital. But legislative leaders proved a tougher audience than New York City voters, and denied him two of his biggest requests.

This year Adams is changing his approach.

When he heads to Albany Wednesday for “Tin Cup Day” — the annual rite of politicians descending on the state capital to request more money — he will be joined by two veterans of the notoriously-opaque Albany political process, both recent hires. Diane Savino, a former state senator, is expected to join him and Camille Joseph Varlack, an attorney who worked for ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, will be on hand as he testifies before the Legislature.

Adams has made a point of deepening his relationship with Gov. Kathy Hochul, a fellow Democrat who remains powerful over the state budget despite a bruising political spell of late.

And he has shifted his tone on one of his most contentious requests related to the state’s 2019 reforms to bail laws. The mayor is no longer calling for a sweeping overhaul, instead narrowing his focus to the 1,600 or so most dangerous repeat offenders. He and his team are hoping legislative leaders who were loath to overturn their own reforms last year will be amenable to more modest changes, though Adams has not enjoyed a warm relationship with those top lawmakers.

The recalibration comes after Al Sharpton gathered Black politicians in his Harlem headquarters last month to find common ground on policing. It also presents an opportunity for Adams to make headway on his goal of speeding up the courts’ discovery process. Nevertheless, he appears to realize the unlikelihood of persuading lawmakers to afford judges the discretion to consider how dangerous a defendant is when setting bail. He has stopped calling for that change altogether, though his police officials continue to push for it.

In his testimony Wednesday, Adams is expected to also focus on what his budget office called “unfunded mandates” in a recent memo obtained by POLITICO. His fiscal team determined the state’s $227 billion budget would shortchange the city $461 million next year and $1.34 billion in fiscal 2025, by demanding smaller class sizes, lifting the charter school cap, charging him more than $500 million annually for the cash-strapped MTA and failing to deliver adequate resources for an influx of more than 45,000 asylum-seekers.

Adams’ Albany strategy of employing senior advisers — chief among them Ingrid Lewis-Martin, his closest aide — comes at the expense of running his political operation entirely through City Hall’s intergovernmental affairs division (IGA). That unit functioned as the nerve center of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s City Hall, and was run by his top advisor, Emma Wolfe. Adams, by comparison, has shrunk that office by one-third, according to budget documents.

The current 31-person division will be pared down to 21 positions, though the state legislative affairs team did not lose staffers. A City Hall spokesperson noted the administration filled several vacancies in the IGA unit this year, despite shrinking its overall size.

“The premise of this story is wrong,” spokesperson Jonah Allon said in a statement. “Building on our state and federal victories is critical, which is why we have added to — not subtracted from — our intergovernmental affairs team.”

The mayor also increased the budget for his first deputy mayor when he promoted Sheena Wright to the role. Wright, previously the deputy mayor for strategic initiatives, has three times more staffers than her predecessor Lorraine Grillo, budget documents show. The jump in resources — 24 employees, compared to eight — is another sign that Adams holds Wright in high esteem. He is expected to rely upon her relationships with private-sector players as he navigates Albany during his second year in office.

Savino’s role comes with risk. The former state senator was a member of the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC), a group of Democrats who caucused with Republicans from 2011 through 2018.

Though the IDC reunited with mainline Democrats in 2018, few in the conference have forgotten that Savino and her cohort spent years voting against their own party, effectively blocking scores of progressive bills from becoming law. Savino, who was the last of the IDC conference remaining in the Senate until she decided not to run for reelection last year, was well-regarded as a legislator but is hardly known for bridging divides.

But so far, the administration has been receiving a warmer welcome this time around.

State Sen. Michael Gianaris, one of the administration’s chief critics, said Adams approached him to discuss how they could work together — a marked change from last year when the Queens lawmaker said he received no outreach from City Hall.

"He personally came to meet with me and expressed a desire to work together,” Gianaris said. “So, [a] better start. We’ll see what it means at the end of the day."

Several people familiar with the inner workings of Albany, who spoke with POLITICO on the condition of anonymity, agreed that Adams’ team has been proactively reaching out to legislative leaders in both houses.

One aide to legislative leadership, for example, said they are now talking with the Adams administration in a similar way that they did with the de Blasio administration even though the former mayor had a larger IGA staff.

“There has been an improved level of communication this year,” state Sen. Zellnor Myrie (D-Brooklyn) said. “And I think there has been a concerted effort for them to reach out earlier and to reach out more often.”

Joe Spector contributed reporting.