A one-term mayor’s achievements weighed down by scandal

Zohran Mamdani, mayor since midnight, must learn from the mistakes of Eric Adams, whose record of significant accomplishments has been undermined by too many scandals for a single administration to handle.

When it comes to crime, Adams has actually presided over a sharp reduction that now brings us closer to the lowest level of homicides in the city’s history. The fruits of this approach were evident enough that Mamdani decided to keep Commissioner Jessie Tisch on the NYPD.

It took Adams going through a few commissioners to get to Tisch, but he ended up with a winner and Mamdani wanting her to continue is a ratification of her success, one that wouldn’t have been possible without Eric Adams giving her the job.

On housing, Adams accomplished a near miracle by winning approval for a massive rewrite of the city’s zoning resolution, which had not been amended since 1961. Called the City of Yes, it will make a real difference to our shortage of affordable housing. Adams had carefully shepherded it through an often recalcitrant city council and through the array of demands from both the real estate lobby and housing advocates.

As with the police, Mamdani keeps Adams’ housing czar, Leila Bozorg, and promotes her to deputy mayor. This is another ratification for a great success.

Another big victory was the elimination of the thousands of unlicensed weed shops that existed everywhere and are now gone. Thanks Adams for this.

Adams faced an impossible situation with the bad faith efforts of red-state Republicans like Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and the inaction of the Biden administration to create what has been the defining crisis of migrant arrivals. Adams stumbled at times and had a few false starts, but we came out the other side with our city government moving forward and, in the long run, many of these newcomers are slowly integrating into the fabric of New York like the generations before them.

However, Adams’ entire legacy will always carry the tarnish of his bad decisions, from petty corruption that didn’t result in criminal prosecutions solely because the Trump administration let him off the hook because they wanted him to help them with immigration enforcement, to the insistence on bringing the borough’s culture to prime time, characterized notably by a reliance on longtime friends.

The friendly clubhouse atmosphere could have thrived in a much more ceremonial environment with far less oversight, but it was never going to match the high-stakes reality of running the nation’s most important city, one of the world’s premier metropolises with a budget and workforce rivaling those of many smaller countries.

From Ingrid Lewis-Martin’s alleged freewheeling meddling in matters involving litany of private sector connections to her old pal Tim Pearson steamrolling experienced agency staff, the most striking lesson of the Adams years is that you are only as good as the people around you.

This should not surprise the outgoing mayor; after all, many of us tried to prevent it from the start.

Had Adams avoided scandal, his major accomplishments would have earned him a second term starting today. Instead, he will be present on the steps of City Hall for the mayor’s inauguration, but it’s for Mamdani, not for him, because his chances for another four years have been fatally compromised by his problems.