NYC’s Eric Adams: No mayor has had more fun losing his job — from rat buckets to a stair-averse Robocop to trash on wheels
Eric Adams was once considered a rising star of the Democratic Party — but he’ll leave office in the New Year as more of a punchline.
Less than four years on from being sworn in as New York City Mayor, Adams has crashed out and announced he is abandoning his bid for a second term with just five weeks to go until Election Day.
“Although this is the end of my reelection campaign, it is not the end of my public service,” vowed Adams, who opted out of the Democratic Party primary earlier this year to run as an independent candidate.
“I will continue to fight for this city — as I have for 40 years, since the day I joined the NYPD to make our streets safer and our systems fairer,” he said. “The quest for justice is far from over. Inequality persists. Innocents still suffer. New Yorkers deserve better every single day, and until the last day of my term, I will fight for just that.”
It has been a tumultuous few years for the retired NYPD captain after being sworn in on Jan. 1 2022.
Adams has been dogged by scandal and accusations of corruption throughout his only term in office, and at the end of last year, he became the first sitting Big Apple mayor to be hit with federal criminal charges, later dropped by President Donald Trump’s Justice Department.
Criminal allegations aside, which Adams denies, he has also provided some truly head-scratching and meme-worthy moments both as mayor and in his previous elected position as Brooklyn Borough president.
The Independent looks back at his wild and wacky time in elected office…
As Brooklyn borough president from 2013 through 2021, Adams believed he had come up with the solution to the problem that has become a signature of his administration — the war on rats.
In 2019, Adams proposed drowning the rodents in alcohol, submerging them in buckets of booze that sparked outcry among animal rights campaigners.
Not content with only a press release for the bonkers plan, Adams held a live demonstration in front of horrified reporters at Brooklyn Borough Hall, where he touted himself as the “pied piper” of Kings County.
It was unclear how the traps — derided as “cruel and barbaric” — would get to the root problem of the city’s rat epidemic.
In his role as mayor, Adams continued to do battle with the rodents and held the first “urban rat summit” in 2024. He appointed a “rat czar,” Kathleen Corradi, to “fight the real enemy” in April 2023.
Corradi stepped down from her role last week after leading an effort in the decline of rat sightings across the city.
