Who is Eric Adams, the First Sitting Mayor of NYC to be Indicted?

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is currently set be indicted on federal charges after a sweeping corruption investigation, according to multiple reports on Wednesday night—a staggering fall for a mayor that has been confusing and perplexing New Yorkers for years.

Before entering politics, Adams spent over 20 years as a police officer—first in the New York City Transit Police and then the New York Police Department after the two agencies merged in 1995. He retired from the force in 2006, shortly before launching his campaign for state senate.

In 2013, he was elected Brooklyn Borough President. As he ran up against his term limit in 2021, he launched a campaign for City Hall in a crowded field of Democratic candidates. Adams’ law-and-order message stood out—earning him endorsements even from conservatives on the New York Post’s editorial board.

Adams secured the nomination after the primary in June 2021, and easily defeated his Republican opponent, Guardian Angels founder Curits Sliwa, with over 67% of the vote.

The Fridge Incident

The spotlight of the 2021 mayoral campaign began showing New Yorkers some of Adams’ eccentricities. For weeks, Adams’ campaign was on the defensive after local publications, including City Limits, couldn’t find exactly where Adams lived.

A Politico report also revealed he had a unit in a co-op building in Fort Lee, New Jersey—leading some to speculate whether the prospective mayor was not a real New Yorker.

Finally, his campaign clarified: Adams lived in a one-bedroom duplex apartment in Bed-Stuy, and rents the upper floors out to other tenants. The campaign invited reporters to tour the building in June before the primary.

During the tour, Adams, an outspoken vegan who even published a cookbook of plant-based recipes, had a bizarre refrigerator full of refrigerated croutons, sketchy leftovers, and a half-peeled banana. Although he claimed the apartment as his primary residence, the fridge was stocked full of what appears to be meat and salmon. Adams’ campaign said the non-vegan items belonged to his son, who sometimes slept there.

Hatred for the Rat Race

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For much of his public life, Eric Adams has spoken of his strong animosity toward the rodents scurrying around the streets of his hometown. “I hate rats,” he declared to kick off his remarks at the inaugural National Urban Rat Summit, a hyper-specific pest control convention held at the mayor’s behest in 2022.

In fact, some point to a now-infamous rat control press conference then-Brooklyn Borough President Adams held in 2019 as the moment that he vaulted onto the scene as a candidate for citywide office. In it, he championed a new, bucket-shaped rat trap as the solution to the city’s centuries-old struggle against its rodent interlopers. The trap works by drowning unsuspecting rats in a chemical solution—a “ghastly spectacle” that produced a “stomach-churning” odor, according to a New York Times reporter who saw it in action that day.

Some voters even pointed to Adams’ rat-control efforts as the reason they voted for him during his 2021 mayoral primary (or at least as the reason they remembered who he was).

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Last year, he also announced the formation of a new position: the citywide director of rodent mitigation, dubbed by Adams as the “rat czar.” Longtime Department of Education staffer Kathleen Corradi was tapped to lead the effort.

“The rats are going to hate Kathy, but we’re excited to have her leading this important effort,” Adams said in his public announcement.

The embattled mayor attributes his hatred toward rats to a pet he and his siblings adopted. They named it Mickey Mouse, and kept it in a box, he told the New York Post in 2021, but he remains frightened of the creature to this day. “I have a fear – I just remember him being afraid also,” he said. “I’ll face the biggest criminal before I’d face a rat,” he said

Nightlife Mayor

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After taking office, Adams began efforts to rebuild tourism in New York City after the pandemic. He gleefully referred to himself as the “Nightlife Mayor,” and quickly became associated with the glitzy NoHo private nightclub Zero Bond.

Zero Bond charges annual membership fees of $4,400 for people his age, alongside a $1000 “initiation fee.” The mayor has been seen partying there with celebrities like Ja Rule and Chris Rock, who both attended his election night victory party at the swanky club.

He even appointed the club’s owner, Scott Sartiano, to a seat on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s board in 2022, Politico reported, although it is unclear if he is still serving in the role.

History of “Folksy” Sayings

As New Yorkers began hearing Adams more frequently, they began to recognize his strange but often frequently repeated stories.

In 2022, he gave the Pace University commencement speech, where he proclaimed: “There’s going to be a lot of people who will hate you. All I can say, have your haters become your waiters when you sit down at the table of success.”

It turns out, Adams has been using this phrase for years, with Defector tracing it back to at least 2015.

Local publication HellGate has since used the phrase “Table of Success” to refer to their ongoing chart connecting all of the City Hall and campaign officials caught up in corruption scandals.

Earlier this year, Adams was mocked for calling New York “the Port-au-Prince of America”—a phrase that Adams has been using for years by inserting different cities from around the globe.

He even used the tagline in a Turkish rom-com he guest starred in while still serving as Borough President. “Brooklyn loves Turkey. Brooklyn is the Istanbul of America. We love your food, we love your music, but I don’t understand Turkish. We can take a selfie, though.”