Exclusive: Mayor Adams reflects on the best and worst moments of his first 100 days in office
NEW YORK -- Mayor Eric Adams is coming up on 100 days in office and he has wasted no time letting New Yorkers know there's a new sheriff in town. He has taken down homeless encampments and started a new anti-gun unit.
CBS2's Marcia Kramer recently sat down with him for an exclusive interview about what it's like to be the boss of the Big Apple.
Mark Twain once said that clothes make the man and Adams has taken that to heart. He may have looked casual on the campaign trail, but now that he's the mayor, it's spiffy suits and carefully chosen ties. Ask him why and you get you get an unvarnished Eric-ism.
"Before people eat a meal, they see the meal. Before people hear what I have to say, they must look and say he knows what he's saying," Adams said.
Adams has no shortage of confidence in himself, his legendary swagger. But when Kramer asked him how his life has changed since he took the oath of office on Jan. 1, he said it wasn't the type of problem but the number.
"The volume is a lot every day, all day. No more drinking out of a garden hose. You're drinking out of a fire hose," he said.
He said his best day so far was announcing a program to create jobs for foster children. He said his worst day was when NYPD officers Jason Rivera and Wilbert Mora were killed and he had to face their families at the hospital.
"It was just so panful. I remember walking into the room and watching the faces and, you know, sometimes pain reaches an intensity point and then starts to dissipate and in that hospital it never dissipated. It just stayed at the level of pain. It was hard. It was hard," Adams said.
"Repeatedly over the past few days you've said you inherited a dysfunctional city. Who's to blame for that?" Kramer asked.
"It's a combination. We create crises and we've normalized them by siloing government. So people say, 'Eric, what's the one thing that you're going to do?'" I'm going to make government work together as a team," Adams said.
"Some people say you're the anti-de Blasio. Do you think that's true?" Kramer asked.
"No, I'm just a pro-Eric, because you know people want to compare you to de Blasio. They want to compare to Giuliani. They want to compare you to Dinkins," Adams said.
"So who do you want them to compare you to?" Kramer asked.
"I think the perfect combination for me is, I always say two, but it's actually three," Adams said.
Adams mention David Dinkins, Mike Bloomberg and Ed Koch, adding he sees a lot of Koch in himself.
"Mayor Koch, Koch was a character," Adams said.
On day one Adams pledged to, in his words, "get stuff done."
And so far that includes putting more cops in the subway, establishing neighborhood safety teams to get guns off the street, issuing a promise to improve safety at 1,000 traffic intersections, and offering a blueprint for economic recovery.
He also ran into a buzzsaw of criticism when, as part of that economic recovery, he decided to lift the vaccine mandate for sports and entertainment figures like Kyrie Irving. Public employees were furious because more than 1,400 lost their jobs because they wouldn't get the vaccine. Thousands more could lose their appeals.
Kramer asked the mayor if he would rehire those who lost their jobs, especially the cops, firefighters, and emergency medical personnel. The answer was a firm "no." He said they just have to get the vaccine.
"If you love the job, you're not going to allow a COVID shot to get in the way," Adams said.
Adams is already deep into planning his next 100 days, but first he says he's going to give a major address to New Yorkers to tell them the scope of the problems he has discovered since taking office.
He calls it an "FDR moment."