“They Can Tweet All They Want”: Eric Adams on Weed, Beyoncé, and the Housing Sleuth Haters

If you take the polls, Eric Adams could very well be the next New York City Mayor. Few people expected that around this time last year, when almost no one besides Andrew Yang could name any of the dozen Democratic candidates and the mayor’s hopes were mostly relegated to tiny boxes on Zoom. During a summer of racial justice protests, it continued to seem unlikely that a progressive activist like Maya Wiley looked like a better shot. But as my colleague Chris Smith wrote earlier this month, “Timing is always crucial in city elections,” and as COVID declines and shootings increase, Adams’ message comes through – that he is both a police reformer and a public safety advocate Have had a response.

And that despite not just one campaign season like no other, but the question of whether Adams actually lives in the five boroughs; a speech telling newcomers to town to “go back” to Iowa and Ohio; and the perception that as a former cop he might be too kind to a police force in need of serious change and accountability, which was not helped by the re-emergence of a 2011 video showing parents cleaning up their nurseries ” “Search” contraband and encourage them to do so on a regular basis. (Plus that four-year Republican stint.) If the polls give any clue, though, Adams could go to the Gracie Mansion after tomorrow’s primary in January 2022 – the first-ever ranked poll.

Last week, Vanity Fair chatted with Adams about everything from his Bed Stuy apartment to the NYPD to smoking a joint and Beyoncé’s operation. This conversation has been condensed and edited for the sake of clarity.

Vanity Fair: You lead in all polls. How do you feel as election day approaches? Do you think you have that in your pocket?

Eric Adams: I don’t really look at the polls. If I were number one or number 19, I’ll do the same thing I did, work hard and use the term grind. I do my job and the universe will do its job.

But you must be glad that you are fine.

Not happy, not sad. The man with the wax wings flew just far enough, not too close to the sun, not too close to the water. Steady.

I have to speak to the elephant in the room: people still don’t believe that you really live in this Bed Stuy apartment. There is forensic level research on Twitter comparing the refrigerator you showed on the tour to previous recordings of your refrigerator. the content contains many non-vegan items for a vegan; The bed is in the middle of the room. Are you sure you don’t live in New Jersey? I grew up there, that’s no shame.

Those people on Twitter, I just keep going and ignoring them. It cost me a lot to open my home and I did it because I didn’t want this to consume my campaign. My advisors told me, “Eric, this is disrespectful to you. Don’t do it. ”And I said,“ No, I’d rather be transparent. ”Then they asked for my E-ZPass records, I gave them to them. That’s a wrap for me. You don’t get any more answers. You can tweet what they want; that is a whole universe that lives among itself. [But] There is a real world that is not on Twitter. And so I didn’t care what they write or what they say. I did what I had to do to show people that I was Brooklyn.

If you win, will you move into Gracie Mansion?

That is still to be decided. I would love to, but, like the mayor, me, you know [would] love to come back to Brooklyn. And so I’m sure that there will be days that I would spend in Brooklyn. I enjoy the neighborhood and love to let people know that your mayor lives on your block.

Last night came a story about another apartment that you allegedly did not divulge ownership of. Are you concerned about legal investigations during your tenure?

Not at all. In 2007 I think I signed it [over shares in the coop to a friend], I showed the contract that I signed. The new owner said: “Eric has signed the property over to me.”

Police tensions are a key issue – fighting rising crime versus curbing police abuse. You have talked a lot about the former and some of your plans, such as reliving the conflict with the latter. How do you balance the two? What do you say to people who think you’re too gentle on cops?

First, the phrase I am trying to bring back stop and frisk is incorrect. [Adams told CBS New York last year, of stop-and-frisk, “Used it, used it often, great tool. We should never have removed stop-and-frisk.”] I testified in federal court because the police abused stop-and-frisk. And therefore judges [Shira] Scheindlin mentioned me in her judgment. We cannot return to these days and I will not allow the city to return to these days. My opponents are trying to use this as a talking point because they weren’t there when I was struggling to stop the abusive stop-and-frisk. That’s what [been] my life’s work. We have to deal with gun violence [but] we don’t need to use an abusive tool to do this.

So you think there is some way to use stop-and-frisk that isn’t abusive?

Well, a word is missing. It’s called Stop, Question and Frisk. So at 2 a.m. you look out your door, you see a person standing in front of your house. He puts a gun in his waistband. You’re going to call the police, I hope. This cop answers. He needs to be able to question this person, “What are you doing with that gun?” If we police officers tell you not to question people, we are endangering the security of the city. Police officers must follow the rules to determine if there is any reasonable suspicion that someone is carrying this firearm. We didn’t do that. We stopped and searched people based on their ethnicity and based on the communities they were in. That will never happen under my government.