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Let’s Hope Adams Channels Boss Tweed

BOB McMANUS Twitter: @RLMac2

WITH five months to go before his all-but-certain mayoral curtain rises, is Eric Adams coalition building? Or is he just floating mischievous balloons? Or maybe both? If it’s only the former, good for him. Advancing just his publicsafety agenda is going to require uncommon political dexterity, and there’s no better time to begin than right now.

But let’s say it’s solely the latter. Let’s say he is really checking out whether there can be a place in his orbit for someone like, say, de Blasio administration homelessness czar Steven Banks, the fellow who brought vagrant colonies back to the Big Apple in the name of progressive compassion.

Or maybe on behalf of the city’s well-established, $2 billion-a-year, nonprofit public-shelter industry.

Either way, can we all agree that there is no proper role for Banks in an administration dedicated to the reclamation of Gotham’s streets?

Indeed, when they finally autopsy

Mayor de Blasio’s tenure, it’s unlikely that folks will be speaking well of “the amazing things that

Banks has done” — as Adams did last week, unprompted and without apparent irony.

And probably to the puzzlement of folks who used to enjoy Broadway’s median benches on the Upper West Side, Washington Square

Park, reasonably safe subway platforms and derelict-free publictransit hubs.

Although, in fairness, it’s awfully early to be giving the stink eye to the Adams transition. Maybe the

Banks thing is just battle-prep: preemptive flank-guarding in a city otherwise firmly in the grip of progressive ideologues. Or perhaps it’s to let the reaction inform the progressives that patience with their corrosive nostrums is growing thin.

In that sense, there is something tantalizingly Tweed-like about the Eric Adams phenomenon. The Irish knew how to build effective ethnic and economic governing coalitions in times of social and demographic upheaval, and it

seems that the mayor-all-but-elect understands the game, as well.

The ethnic aspect? The former NYPD lieutenant and internal

scold built a race-based alliance that carried him first to the state Senate, then to Brooklyn Borough Hall and now, almost, to the mayoralty. Is it any wonder that virtually the first post-primary box he checked was a visit to Al Sharpton and the National Action Network?

What could be more Tammany than publicly acknowledging key allies? He will need them later.

Seizing political opportunities and sharing their fruits? Adams’ agility in this respect is well-demonstrated: The insider-driven slotmachine scheme he helped engineer at Aqueduct Racetrack 10 years ago earned him tsk-tsks from the good-government crowd, but it got a good deal done. And while Adams sure didn’t invent that game, mayors who can’t apportion patronage probably can’t govern well, either.

What remains to be seen is whether he can navigate the city’s treacherous ideological shoals. So far, so good, of course — he did top a crazy-quilt Democratic primary field, after all.

But his post-primary coziness with likely Manhattan DA-elect Alvin Bragg is startling. Adams famously ran on a safe-streets platform, and Bragg seems to think the

‘ Maybe the Banks thing is just battleprep: preemptive flank-guarding.’

NYPD, and strict law enforcement generally, is the problem.

Not to worry, says Adams: “He may take one street. I may take another, but the destination is the same.” This is inauspicious, to say the least, especially if those streets are dark, and there are gun-toting gangbangers lurking on the corner.

Then again, Bragg also is black, and Adams was speaking at Sharpton’s NAN meeting, so maybe it was one of those ethnic alliance-building things. Because there certainly is no sense drawing lines in the sand five months before either man is inaugurated. There will be time enough for Adams to make good on his promise to bring back a modified stopand-frisk program and aggressively go after the gangbangers and their weapons.

And that’s when New York will find out how much Boss Tweed is in Eric Adams. Beyond crime, can he forge consensus on addressing the city’s failing schools, its frayed safety net and its tattered postpandemic economy? Tammany had its excesses, but it knew that good policy made good politics. Signs are Adams does, as well.

Apart from the Steven Banks balloon, that is. Please, no, Your Presumptive Honor. The city has suffered enough.

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2021-07-27T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-07-27T07:00:00.0000000Z

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