Of EUnited States, lhe residents of New York are being called to the polls on Tuesday, November 2 to elect their new mayor. In total, 5.5 million people are led to choose Bill de Blasio’s successor in this Democratic stronghold. Two candidates, a Democrat and a Republican, clash. They have very different profiles, sometimes even surprising.
Eric Adams: a former police officer, vegan, from Brooklyn
The favorite is therefore, logically, the Democratic candidate. Eric Adams, 61, is vegan, and like any good American candidate for election, he has a story to tell. Part of his is that he’s diabetic and almost lost his sight in 2016. He claims healthy eating saved him and made a book out of it.
His ambition is therefore to succeed the unpopular Bill de Blasio and thus become the second black mayor of New York City, after David Dinkins between 1990 and 1993. In a clip, Eric Adams explains why he spent twenty years. years in the New York Police Department and founded a union that fights against racism. According to him, it all started with a brutal arrest when he was 15, when he was on the verge of falling into delinquency. He finally chose the uniform. His goal, according to him, is to “change the system from the inside”.
He later became a New York State Senator and Brooklyn Ward President. It is within the framework of this last mandate that he is the subject of an investigation into a possible conflict of interest. Brooklyn and Queens are the neighborhoods in which he grew up, in the heart of a poor family: a cleaning mother, a butcher father.
It is therefore naturally in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx that he focused his campaign. Eric Adams targets the middle and working classes, without neglecting the business districts. His profile is reassuring because the senator belongs to the right wing of the Democratic Party. Even the New York Post, a conservative newspaper, gives it its support.
If elected, Eric Adams will have to continue to heal the social and economic wounds of a city of more than 8 million inhabitants bruised by Covid-19, which has left more than 34,000 dead there. It will also have to meet the expectations of the population in terms of security because crime indicators have gone into the red in 2020.
Curtis Sliwa: a fan of cats, anti-system, with a red beret
For his part, the Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, is a fan of cats. This 67-year-old man has 17 and wants to set up shelters “without killing” – according to his expression – for the felines but also the dogs which roam the streets.
The rest of Curtis Sliwa’s campaign takes on Trumpist overtones, with anti-system rhetoric, even though he has already said he hates the former president. Safety is her favorite campaign theme. When Eric Adams promises, according to him, more crimes, confinement and the closure of schools, the Republican candidate says he wants to return New York to the people, not to politicians.
I’m Curtis Sliwa, and I’m asking for your vote on November 2nd to save and resurrect New York City. pic.twitter.com/kJbetvMhMZ
– Curtis Sliwa for NYC Mayor (@CurtisSliwa) October 23, 2021
Curtis Sliwa built his notoriety in the late 1970s, creating “Guardian Angels,” a sort of militia that volunteered subway patrols to prevent assaults when New York City was a cutthroat. Their distinctive sign: a red beret, which Curtis Sliwa never released.
The Republican candidate jostled Eric Adams during the last televised debates but, according to the latest polls, this will not be enough because Eric Adams has a 40 point lead. The turnout, on the other hand, is difficult to predict, even if it is often low for local elections.