NEW YORK (1010 WINS) – Mayor Eric Adams said Friday that Democrats lost significant ground to Republicans in New York in last week’s election because they “stopped talking about working-class people issues.”
The Democratic mayor told ABC's “The View” that his party should “get back to the message” if they want to curb the city and state’s rightward shift. “What are we doing for everyday people in the country?” he said.
Vice President Kamala Harris won New York by 12 points—significantly less than President Joe Biden’s 23-point margin in the state in 2020. Election results have shown a similar pivot to the right among voters across much of the country in the 2024 Election, but the gains in traditionally deep-blue New York are notable.
“What you saw in this city in this election, where you saw a shift and the city and the state becoming redder—it’s because we stopped taking about working-class people issues,” Adams said. “With mom-and-pops afraid – ‘I can’t pay my college tuition, the rent is too damn high, health care is too expensive’ – we stopped talking to everyday New Yorkers and Americans.”
“When I’m in the street talking to them, they’re not asking me, ‘Eric tell me about fascism.’ They talking about finance. They’re not talking about Hitler. They’re talking about housing. We need to talk to everyday working-class people, and we stopped doing that. And those are the issues that they’re afraid of. They’re afraid of the future of their children.”
Adams made similar comments at his City Hall Q&A with reporters on Tuesday, saying he wasn't surprised Democrats lost ground in the city, pointing to "this far-left agenda that I’ve been talking about for a long time, where we’re not focusing on working-class people." He drew parallels to Democrats “ignoring” the issues of crime and the migrant crisis in 2022 and 2023, respectively.
Adams also denied Friday that he has come to President-elect Donald Trump's defense recently, saying he has only been denouncing “the rhetoric we’re using across our country.”
“We’ve reached a point in this country where we no longer want to engage in conversation. They were even calling him Hitler—that was an insult to the millions of Jews and others who died. We know what Hitler did,” the mayor said.
Asked if he has “embraced” Trump in the hopes of a pardon in his federal criminal corruption case out of Manhattan, Adams didn’t directly address the question, noting he can't talk about the trial and saying, “I think nothing is more challenging than not being able to defend yourself in public.”
Trump announced Thursday that he had tapped former SEC chair Jay Clayton to serve as the U.S. attorney of the Southern District of New York. Clayton would replace Damian Williams, the current U.S. attorney for Manhattan, who brought the criminal charges against Adams in September.