Unlike their predecessors, Governor Hochul and Mayor Adams have a functioning relationship. Can it last? RossBarkan reports
Hochul and Adams at his Election Night victory party. Photo: Pablo Monsalve/VIEW press via Getty Images On the night Eric Adams was elected mayor, a wide array of city and state politicos packed the ballroom of the Brooklyn Marriott for his victory party. They were there to pay tribute to a man whose win was inevitable: Since the summer, Adams had been a mayor-in-waiting, and the city’s power elite were hungry for their face time with the brash Brooklyn borough president.
This particular mayor-governor dynamic is naturally fraught because there is nothing quite like it in America. New York City has such an outsize presence in the state, serving as its economic engine and overwhelming population center. But Albany — the governor and the state legislature — determines much of what happens in the five boroughs. The city is a creature of the state.
Those close to Adams and Hochul hope for meaningful collaboration. So far they’ve had it, with their respective offices speaking regularly about pandemic response and press events. Top Hochul officials, such as Kathryn Garcia, Jackie Bray, and Amit Bagga, are veterans of the de Blasio administration, as are those running City Hall, including Lorraine Grillo, Adams’s first deputy mayor. “They don’t collide very much,” said the source close to Hochul.
For now, there is evident mutual respect between the two executives. Adams and Hochul each are known for their retail politicking and relative hustle. “You won’t see the personal, toxic stuff,” the Adams source said. “A lot of the stuff they care about, we care about,” said the Hochul source. There will inevitably be clashes. Adams will seek a renewal of the city’s control of public schools this year, and some members of the Democrat-run legislature, uneasy with the centralization of authority in the Department of Education, could try, with Hochul’s backing, to pare it back. There is also the question of the renewal of a controversial tax break for real-estate developers known as 421-a. In addition, Adams reportedly wants a $1 billion expansion of the earned-income tax credit.
One major difference from the Cuomo–de Blasio years is the composition of the state legislature. De Blasio, a left-leaning Democrat, had to run up against a Republican-controlled body for most of his time in office. The split control made the legislature much weaker overall, unable to effectively oppose Cuomo.
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