The mayor goes to Washington, and another Adams is running for mayor

And these are on Sunday now until the news stops going through the weekend #116

On Saturday, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams walked on to a stage inside the Rochdale Village Shopping Center in southeast Queens to cheers and Lizzo’s “Good as Hell” and as she announced her run for mayor.

It was a contrast to the other late-entry in the mayor’s race, Andrew Cuomo, for a few reasons. Her audience wasn’t bussed in like at his event at the Carpenters Union last week and some even just stuck around after going food shopping and seeing what was going on. She didn’t have months of speculation that she would run, her possibility bubbling up only over the last few weeks.

She also doesn’t have the money or the major union support or name recognition that Cuomo has. Adams enters as an underdog and carries that council speaker curse of nobody in that role ever winning another election.

But the energy was bright and positive inside the shopping center as SpeakerAdams discussed her competency, her knowledge of the city, and her deep Queens roots. The vibe in the room was of a local girl made good, without the federal indictment of that other Adams from southeast Queens who she did go to high school with or of the former “Queens boy” governor.

“No drama. No scandal. No nonsense,” she said. “Just competence and integrity to make you proud.”

As a very pro-Queens person it’s nice to see so many borough folks running for mayor — Sen. Jessica Ramos, Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, Speaker Adams and Cuomo, although he left the borough decades ago and only recently moved back to the city. (More on that here.)

Adams will be negotiating a budget AND running for mayor over the next few weeks, and I’m interested to see how that gets juggled (the council finance chair is also running for comptroller and the mayor is, allegedly, still running for mayor although there seems no real evidence of his campaign.)

Read coverage of her run here, and listen to this 2017 radio feature on Adams and other candidates by my colleague Brigid Bergin.

I asked the mayor how he was feeling and he asked the mayor of Chicago if there were reporters like me there.

Also this week, Mayor Adams traveled to Washington, D.C. for a congressional hearing about sanctuary cities. I traveled down very early (too early, my body later made a point of telling me) to watch what we all expected would be a fiery attack on the city’s mayor.

But instead, the leader of the nation’s largest city/greatest city in the world felt like a runner-up to the mayors of Boston, Chicago, and Denver. The focus was on them — their cities and their policies — and their responses also seemed more thoughtful and buzzy for

Adams was mostly asked about his federal indictment and what Tom Homan said he’d do to his butt if he didn’t obey federal orders. I did almost cheer when the mayor stood up to Rep. Laura Gillen from Long Island, who said he should resign.

“Thank God you don’t live in New York City, you live on Long Island,” the mayor said, which is the appropriate response from a city resident to our neighbors who love running their mouths about the five boroughs.

You can read my full coverage of the day here.

And don’t forget we are doing a weekly election newsletter over at THE CITY. This week I wondered if a villain or a hero motivatees folks to the polls. Read here and sign up there too.

Other interesting stories

→The third-party legal expert assigned to Adams’s federal cases recommends it be dropped with prejudice, which means gone for good. We still await the judge’s ruling [THE CITY]
→The mayor announced new deputy mayors and his deputy mayor for operations still lives in Peekskill [THE CITY]
→Nonprofits may return to Rikers Island after they got the boot [THE CITY]
→The head of immigrant affairs is muted on Trump’s deportation agenda [THE CITY]

→ICE arrests prominent Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia University protests [AP]

“One of the agents told Greer by phone that they were executing a State Department order to revoke Khalil’s student visa. Informed by the attorney that Khalil, who graduated in December, was in the United States as a permanent resident with a green card, the agent said they were revoking that too, according to the lawyer.

The arrest comes as President Donald Trump vows to deport foreign students and imprison “agitators” involved in protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.”

🎧LISTEN🎧

We spoke to Zohran Mamdani on the pod about his mayoral run. [FAQ]
”Chill Pill” mixes from the Sounds of JHS Brooklyn [YOUTUBE]
”Valentine” by Daithí [YOUTUBE]

SPORTS!

My college basketball team from Queens is very good. This story is inspiring and so is this photo:

Thanks for reading!