NYC mayor, hobbled by a tough 2023, prepares to head to Albany

NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams heads to the New York state Capitol this week long on needs and short on leverage with the lawmakers who will determine his fate.

The New York City mayor has a relatively harmonious relationship with Gov. Kathy Hochul, a fellow Democrat, but has had a challenging one with the legislative leaders who hold the power to scuttle his agenda. On Tuesday, he plans to travel to Albany for Hochul’s State of the State address, and is scheduling time to sit down with those leaders — the Senate majority leader and Assembly speaker.

This marks the mayor’s third tour of duty in Albany — a mercurial state capital where officials operate in relative obscurity, play hard ball and have been known to dash the hopes of mayors in far stronger political positions than Adams.

And this time around, Adams finds himself at his political nadir.

He is facing multiple investigations into his 2021 campaign and record-low poll numbers. He enacted unpopular budget cuts in November. And further complicating matters, his main Albany ally — Hochul — is grappling with her own obstacles with the Legislature in a critical election year for Congress and state lawmakers. Adams’ relationship with the nation’s most powerful Democrat, President Joe Biden, has also soured, leaving him with few key Democratic allies when he needs them the most.

“If he’s [polling] in the 20s or low 30s with big, high-profile investigations, Albany will be really hard for him,” said Chris Coffey, a Democratic consultant and CEO of Tusk Strategies. “It’s hard for any mayor at the best of times. These certainly aren’t the best of times for him.”

Adams, who declined to be interviewed for this story, has recently begun signaling his Albany wish list: Extended control over the city’s nearly-1-million-student school system, a controversial property tax break designed to spur housing development and authority to shutter unlicensed weed stores. He is also in desperate need of more state aid and further policy solutions to address the ongoing migrant crisis.

Like his predecessors, he is captive to a system empowering state leaders to decide many of the city’s laws and finances. A mayor can’t even change city speed limits without Albany’s sign-off.

It all spells trouble for Adams as he navigates the influx of migrants arriving from the southern border and his own political peril a year before he will run for reelection — trouble that has begun to embolden adversaries. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party has been more seriously mulling a challenge to him in 2025, and state legislative members are being eyed as potential challengers.

The stakes are high for Adams in Albany again this year, after mixed results thus far in his tenure — the latest mayor to come to the state capital and leave with major goals unrealized. A failure to deliver on his priorities would further weaken his political brand just as he begins to sell voters on why he deserves a second term.

“Any elected official listening to their constituents knows that New Yorkers are asking every day for affordable homes, good schools, and the freedom to walk down the street without being bombarded by dozens of illegal smoke shops that are operating outside the law and putting young New Yorkers at risk,” City Hall spokesperson Charles Lutvak said in a statement. “Our administration’s priorities are New Yorkers’ priorities, and anyone opposing them would be putting politics over people.”

The mayor’s intergovernmental affairs team, which had a rocky introduction to Albany in 2022, appears to have gotten more organized and has already begun engaging with legislators ahead of Adams’ annual visits to the state capitol to appeal for more funding.

State Assemblymember Catalina Cruz (D-Queens) said last week she was scheduled to meet with Adams’ team — the earliest outreach she has received during his tenure.

And Albany lawmakers already seem to be huddling on housing, an issue dear to the Adams team as it struggles with a housing shortage in the city.

But putting his own mark on state legislative efforts will require careful negotiating and triaging political resources, and capital decision makers seem well aware the mayor is starting out from a point of disadvantage.

“I think Mayor Adams has his work cut out for him,” state Sen. John Liu (D-Queens), who will be key in deciding how long to extend Adams’ decision-making authority over the city’s school system, said in an interview. “He’s in a difficult spot for a number of reasons.”

Problems abound

Adams’ issues have been snowballing for more than a year, from the point at which the first busload of migrants arrived in spring 2022. Since then, more than 160,000 asylum-seekers have come through the city’s care.

The administration has pegged the current and future costs of caring for the new arrivals at $12 billion through the summer of 2025 — a sum that has spurred Adams to criticize the state and federal governments for inadequate support. (New York state has chipped in $2 billion so far.)

Those costs have also contributed to a looming budget shortfall that has led the mayor to pursue cuts, including at the Department of Education.

“I agree the state needs to do more when it comes to the migrant crisis, but ultimately the mayor is going to come to us wanting to renew mayoral control when he has underfunded the schools despite us sending the money,” said state Sen. Jessica Ramos (D-Queens), referring to recent budget cuts Adams has blamed on the migrant surge, as well as state aid to the city education system. “That has lots of parents upset.”

The cuts have proven to be extremely unpopular with voters, 83 percent of whom expressed concern about them in a recent Quinnipiac University poll that also measured Adams’ job approval rating at a record low 28 percent.

Ramos and Brooklyn Sen. Zellnor Myrie are among the state lawmakers weighing bids to challenge Adams in 2025.

Adams’ problems are exacerbated by multiple investigations, including a FBI probe into his 2021 campaign and its possible collusion with the government of Turkey. Federal agents even took the dramatic step of stopping Adams on the street to seize his electronic devices. No one has been charged in the probe, but state Sen. Gustavo Rivera — whom Adams tried to unseat in 2022 — said it is nevertheless weighing on the minds of lawmakers.

“This is a serious investigation that the feds are undertaking,” The Bronx Democrat said in an interview. “If something happens, if someone is indicted, that obviously has an impact on him being a trusted partner in governing.”

A tough crowd

Adams would not be the first city executive to head to Albany at a disadvantage and come home with major victories unrealized — and for good reason. The state has outsized control of city government, and lawmakers there relish the power.

In 2005, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg sought approval for a West Side stadium in Manhattan as a linchpin for an Olympic bid, but it was rejected by then-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

And former Mayor Bill de Blasio grappled not only with a restive Legislature, but an overtly hostile governor in Andrew Cuomo, who seemed to delight in crushing his foe’s agenda.

“We’ve seen what it looks like for a mayor to go to Albany in a hobbled state,” a former high-ranking city official, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal strategy, said in an interview. “There were numerous legislative challenges that [de Blasio] was facing when he was under investigation, and a real pall was cast over the administration.”

“That is when it becomes really important to select the issues that either already have real coalitions, or have coalitions-of-the-willing you can build,” the official continued.

Indeed, some legislative asks sought by Adams appear to be in motion.

State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, who did not make themselves broadly available to reporters last week to discuss the upcoming Legislative session, have signaled their intent to pass a housing package after the state failed to make any headway last year. Key for Adams will be the inclusion of a tax break to spur multifamily development that has long been a flashpoint in Albany, the mayor recently said.

The mayor can count on a bevy of allies to come to his aid, though they will have limited ability to advance the city’s agenda in the leadership-dominated capital.

Assembly Member Jenifer Rajkumar (D-Queens) introduced a bill last month that would give Adams explicit authority to close unlicensed cannabis locations, an issue routinely brought up by constituents at town hall events. Sen. Jeremy Cooney, chair of the body’s Subcommittee on Cannabis, expressed support in an interview for giving the city more power to shut down illegal shops.

Rajkumar is a fixture at many of the mayor’s events, even when they bear little relation to her work in the district, and the mayor has close relationships with several of her Assembly colleagues in Brooklyn and Manhattan, including Harlem’s Inez Dickens. In the Senate, the mayor can count on Queens lawmakers James Sanders Jr., who sat on his transition team, and Leroy Comrie, who has defended him in the wake of the investigation; and Brooklyn’s Erik Dilan, another steady ally.

But along with Rivera, the lawmaker from the Bronx, the mayor’s political team has sought to undermine several sitting members of the Legislature, which could have a countervailing effect.

The mayor’s chief advisor quietly worked with a super PAC that backed 10 moderate allies of the City Hall, in most cases unsuccessfully, against more left-leaning candidates in 2022. And a separate PAC run by a close mayoral ally, Rev. Al Cockfield, has given to a wide variety of candidates — among them Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin.

Albany sessions that require mayors to argue for control of city schools are typically grueling. And winning over enough lawmakers to extend the policy can require enormous resources, often at the expense of other priorities, such as trying to negotiate legislation to spur housing construction.

“Here’s the challenge: Even if he was at the height of his powers, in a mayoral control year he has got to spend all his time, energy and capital getting mayoral control,” said another former city official granted anonymity to discuss City Hall matters.

Past as prologue

Adams has taken extreme offense at the idea he has come up short handed at the Capitol.

His office pointed to state victories that include a child care tax credit, approval for a public housing trust that was first introduced by the previous administration and obtaining authorization to operate speed cameras on city streets overnight.

“Through two Albany sessions, our administration has fought on behalf of working-class New Yorkers and delivered major wins to make the city safer and fairer, and we will build on that record of success this year,” Lutvak said in a statement.

But the mayor heads into his third turn at the Capitol with a decidedly mixed record.

Adams came away from his first year without two of his biggest priorities: Four years of mayoral control of city schools and sweeping changes to laws that would have given judges broader discretion when to set bail in non-violent cases.

The following year the mayor made some improvements to his intergovernmental affairs operation, and scored more victories: The state again rolled back several pieces of New York’s 2019 bail reform laws, though the changes were more modest than what the Adams had wanted the year before. And he was also able to curtail the effects of a hefty city contribution to the MTA and reduced school aid.

But at the same time, the Legislature failed to enact a housing plan as New York City rents skyrocket and saddled Adams with a bill to reduce class sizes against his will.

Adams campaigned for the mayor’s office in part by citing his experience as a state senator representing Brooklyn for eight years, and understanding Albany’s byways. But many of his former colleagues are no longer in Albany, and current lawmakers haven’t offered much deference to his state legislative experience

“He’s got to maintain the same advocacy skills that made him a great state senator,” former Gov. David Paterson, who was also the Democratic Senate minority leader, said in an interview. “When you’re going back to Albany, you have to be that advocate.”

In both of his previous sojourns to Albany, Adams has been able to lean on Hochul, who wields considerable control over the budget process, to push for some of his major priorities.

However, her power over the Legislature has similarly been diminished after a close general election win in 2022 and, more recently, tussling with lawmakers over a series of vetoes.

Regardless, she is vowing to help the embattled mayor once again.

“I’ll continue to work with Mayor Adams. I actually represent the people of New York City as well. Those are my constituents,” Hochul told reporters last month. “So we have a mutual interest in forming a strong partnership in making sure we can deliver to the people of New York City.”