Kathy Hochul, you’re officially on the clock with Eric Adams
I often have to factually defend various Democratic Party leaders against hyperbolic or misleading criticism coming from people on our own side. Most of the people who keep yelling “DO SOMETHING” have no idea what they’re talking about, and the magic wand ideas that they like to float are aggressively simplistic ideas that would never work. But I’m not afraid to call out specific Democrats as needed. That brings us to New York Governor Kathy Hochul.
Hochul met with New York City political leaders this week to discuss what to do about corrupt and compromised New York City Mayor Eric Adams. She invited people as powerful as Al Sharpton to the meeting, suggesting she was serious. But today she announced that she’s not removing Adams for now, and is instead moving to strip him of some of his power. So what’s going on? It’s one of two things.
There’s an important context to be understood here. New York City recently adopted ranked choice voting. It works very well in some other places like Maine, where they’ve been using it long enough to understand what they’re doing. But it has thus far turned out to be a confusing disaster in New York City, because the Democratic primary election basically decides who will be mayor, and there are usually a dozen or more Democrats running in that primary. New Yorkers’ lack of understanding of ranked choice voting is essentially how Adams became mayor, even though very few people picked him as their first choice.
If Hochul removes Adams right now, it’ll trigger a special election to replace him. Special elections tend to have low turnout and often yield an oddball result. If it’s a special election with ranked choice voting, there’s a strong chance that Adams could end up getting replaced by some other corrupt fake Democrat amidst all the confusion.
But there’s good news. If Hochul waits until March 26th to remove Adams, that would save the city from having to roll the dice on a special election. Instead the Deputy Mayor would simply finish Adams’ term, and then the voters could have their choice of a replacement in November. The odds of the ranked choice election going wrong on election day are much lower than if it’s a ranked choice special election.
So Kathy Hochul is doing one of two things right now. Either she’s declining to remove Eric Adams at this time because she’s too feckless to make a move, or she’s strategically waiting until March 26th and looking to hamstring Adams in the meantime. There’s a good chance it’s the latter. In fact it’s probably what her meeting with New York City leaders this week was about.
Either way, we’re going to keep up the pressure on Hochul until she removes Adams. If she ends up removing Adams on March 26th, then we’ll be glad to heap praise on her. And in the meantime we’ll continue supporting Hochul’s suddenly aggressive pushback against Trump. But if Hochul fails to come through on March 26th, we’ll be ramping up the editorial pressure on her even further. One way or another, Adams has to go.
