Eight candidates for the top elected office in the city grappled with major challenges facing the Big Apple from job loss and school reopenings to an ongoing spike in violent crime.
Stop and frisk hasn’t disappeared
Bill de Blasio’s vocal criticism of the NYPD’s use of stop and frisk under then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg helped vault him to victory in 2013. In a city of a million issues, it became
the issue. Now Maya Wiley – de Blasio’s former counsel, who has many of his allies on her team – is hoping to make it an issue again, twice targeting Eric Adams for defending the tactic in the first official Democratic primary mayoral debate Thursday night. Adams, a retired cop, called stop and frisk “a great tool” in an interview with CBS New York last year and said that the police force under Bloomberg was simply using it wrong. Adams has been saying the same thing for a decade – while also loudly, proudly, criticizing the racist
The web of relationships between Eisdorfer, his firm, his clients and the borough president offers a peek into how Adams, who’s now at the top of the field in his run for mayor, managed his affairs at Borough Hall.
Former Adams’ staffer left to lobby, raising specter of conflict of interest Michael Gartland
A former employee of Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams was working as a lobbyist for at least one company that had business before the BP’s office, almost immediately after he left his job with Adams creating the potential for a conflict of interest.
Joel Eisdorfer, who began working for Adams during his days in the state Senate and who continued working for him in Borough Hall, acted as a lobbyist for New York Capital Group LLC, where he’s worked from 2016 to 2021. In all those years except 2017, Eisdorfer was the sole lobbyist at the firm, according to records kept by the city Clerk’s Office.
Quinn insisted that tackling NYC homelessness is an urgent priority, as did mayoral hopeful Shaun Donovan who made a similar plea with other candidates just hours before the first CFB-sponsored mayoral debate Thursday.