New York City Election: N.Y.C. Election Highlights: Adams Elected Mayor; Bragg, Williams and Lander Clinch Victories (Published 2021) (2024)

Eric Adams, a former New York City police captain whose attention-grabbing persona and keen focus on racial justice fueled a decades-long career in public life, was elected on Tuesday as the 110th mayor of New York, and the second Black mayor in the city’s history.

The Associated Press declared victory for Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, 10 minutes after the polls closed at 9 p.m.

At his campaign celebration, held at the New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge, just around the corner from his office at Brooklyn Borough Hall, Mr. Adams walked to the stage buoyantly to “The Champ Is Here” by Jadakiss less than an hour later, and urged New Yorkers to come together.

“We are so divided right now and we’re missing the beauty of our diversity,” Mr. Adams said in remarks that echoed the “gorgeous mosaic” that David N. Dinkins, New York’s first Black mayor, famously discussed. “Today we take off the intramural jersey and we put on one jersey: Team New York.”

Mr. Adams, who will take office as mayor on Jan. 1, faces a staggering set of challenges as the nation’s largest city grapples with the enduring consequences of the pandemic, including a precarious and unequal economic recovery and continuing concerns about crime and the quality of city life.

His victory signaled the start of a more center-left Democratic leadership that he has promised will reflect the needs of the working- and middle-class voters of color who delivered him the party’s nomination and were vital to his general election coalition.

Mr. Adams, whose victory over his Republican opponent, Curtis Sliwa, appeared to be resounding, will begin the job with significant political leverage: He was embraced by both Mayor Bill de Blasio, who sought to chart a more left-wing course for New York, and by centrist leaders like Michael R. Bloomberg, Mr. de Blasio’s predecessor.

Mr. Adams was the favored candidate of labor unions and wealthy donors. And he and Gov. Kathy Hochul — who joined him onstage at his victory party — have made clear that they intend to have a more productive relationship than Mr. de Blasio had with Andrew M. Cuomo when he was governor.

Mr. Adams has made clear that large companies have a role to play in shepherding the city’s recovery, and there are signs that he may have a far warmer relationship with business leaders than Mr. de Blasio, who won on a populist platform.

But on the campaign trail, there was no issue Mr. Adams discussed more than public safety.

Mr. Adams, who speaks about growing up poor in Queens, has said he was once a victim of police brutality and spent his early years in public life as a transit police officer and later a captain who pushed for changes from within the system.

During the primary, amid a spike in gun violence and jarring attacks on the subway, Mr. Adams emerged as one of his party’s most unflinching advocates for the police maintaining a robust role in preserving public safety. He often clashed with those who sought to scale back law enforcement’s power in favor of promoting greater investments in mental health and other social services.

Mr. Adams, who has said he has no tolerance for abusive officers, supports the restoration of a reformed plainclothes anti-crime unit. He opposes the abuse of stop-and-frisk policing tactics but sees a role for the practice in some circ*mstances. And he has called for a more visible police presence on the subways.

“We’re not going to just talk about safety,” Mr. Adams declared. “We’re going to have safety in our city.”

Eric Adams claimed victory as New York City’s second Black mayor on Tuesday night and promised to unite the city while focusing his administration on the communities of color and the working-class and poor residents he said had carried him to success.

“New York has chosen one of its own,” Mr. Adams said. “I am you.”

Just 17 minutes after the polls closed, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, one of Mr. Adams’s top aides, ran onstage at the Marriott in Brooklyn and shouted, “We won,” doubling over as if in disbelief.

But the outcome of the election was never much in question. Mr. Adams, 61, easily triumphed over Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels patrol group and a radio host.

Gov. Kathy Hochul joined Mr. Adams onstage in the middle of his speech.

In a show of where he intends to focus his administration, Mr. Adams’s remarks were preceded by a performance from a group of young people of color from the Devora Dance Center in Jamaica, Queens. They performed to “Empire State of Mind” by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys and the sounds of African drummers.

Mr. Adams made his way to the stage by walking through the center of the crowd, and hugged his brother onstage before greeting supporters.

“You don’t know how much you fuel me,” Mr. Adams said, explaining that he rejected the recommendation of advisers to enter from the back of the stage.

Mr. Adams said it was neighborhoods like those in southeast Queens, where he grew up, that now needed his attention the most.

During his victory speech, Mr. Adams, as he did throughout the primary and general election, leaned on his biography: The teen who was beaten by the police and sat in the station house will now be in charge of the precinct. The child who had a learning disability and struggled in school will now be in charge of educating one million students.

“This is about carving out a pathway so people can enjoy the prosperity this city has to offer,” Mr. Adams said.

Mr. Adams said he would also reach out to the business community to help the city recover from the pandemic, crime and economic difficulties that people are experiencing. He also promised not just to “talk about safety” but to “have safety” in the city.

His victory comes 32 years after David N. Dinkins was elected the city’s first Black mayor.

“It’s been a long time,” said J. Phillip Thompson, a deputy mayor for strategic policy initiatives under Mayor Bill de Blasio, who also worked as an aide to Mr. Dinkins.

Mr. Thompson said he was optimistic that Mr. Adams could live up to his promises to help the city’s most vulnerable.

“There is an opportunity to tackle poverty and racial equality,” Mr. Thompson said. “More importantly, Eric Adams understands the opportunity is there.”

Alvin Bragg was elected Manhattan district attorney on Tuesday and will become the first Black person to lead the influential office, which handles tens of thousands of cases a year and is conducting a high-profile investigation into former President Donald J. Trump and his family business.

The Associated Press called the race for Mr. Bragg on Tuesday night.

Mr. Bragg, 48, a former federal prosecutor who campaigned on a pledge to balance public safety with fairness for all defendants, will succeed Cyrus R. Vance Jr., a Democrat who did not seek re-election.

“We have been given a profound trust tonight,” Mr. Bragg told a crowd gathered in the outdoor pavilion at Harlem Tavern, in the neighborhood where he has lived most of his life and that has served as the constant backdrop of his campaign over the last two years. “The fundamental role of the district attorney is to guarantee both fairness and safety.”

He said that under his administration the racial disparities in the system would be “shut down,” and mentioned personal experiences that would shape his perspective in office.

“I think I’ll probably be the first district attorney who’s had the police point a gun at him,” he said.

Mr. Bragg said dealing with the “humanitarian crisis” on Rikers Island was an urgent priority, and that included sending fewer people to jail.

Mr. Bragg had been heavily favored to prevail over his Republican opponent, Thomas Kenniff, given that Democrats vastly outnumber Republicans in the borough.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office continues to disproportionately prosecute Black defendants, and Mr. Bragg throughout his campaign has drawn on his personal experiences growing up in New York to illustrate the types of changes he wishes to make. Mr. Bragg has said he would show leniency to defendants who commit low-level crimes and has emphasized the importance of accountability for the police and the office’s prosecutors.

His victory comes as Democrats are seeking to balance sweeping changes to the criminal justice system with some voters’ concerns about rising gun crime. In 2020, millions of people around the country took to the streets to protest the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and call for change. But after rises in homicides and shootings in New York and other cities, some voters have moderated their stances.

The most high-profile case confronting Mr. Bragg is the investigation into Mr. Trump and his family business. Over the summer, the business and one of its top executives were charged with running a yearslong tax scheme that helped executives evade taxes while compensating them with off-the-books benefits.

Mr. Vance’s investigation into Mr. Trump and his business is ongoing; Mr. Bragg has faced questions about it throughout his campaign and will continue to do so. Though he cited his experience of having sued the former president over 100 times while at the state attorney general’s office, Mr. Bragg has said he will follow the facts when it comes to the current inquiry.

Mr. Bragg voted Tuesday morning at the Wyatt T. Walker senior housing building on Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem.

He said that voting for himself, the first time he has done so, had been humbling.

“Just to be engaged in our democracy from this new perspective has been so important to me, so meaningful on a personal level,” he said.

Mr. Bragg then drove to a polling place on 134th Street, where he was greeted by Jumaane D. Williams, the city public advocate; and Cordell Cleare, a Democratic State Senate candidate.

Upon seeing Mr. Bragg, Mr. Williams offered an enthusiastic greeting: “The D.A. is here!”

After a lengthy, bitter primary constrained by the coronavirus and a contentious general-election campaign, New Yorkers went to the polls on Tuesday to pick a mayor to lead the nation’s largest city out of the throes of the pandemic and into a new political era.

After eight years under Mayor Bill de Blasio, voters were choosing between two candidates with sharply distinct visions: Eric Adams, the Democratic nominee and a former police officer who is currently Brooklyn’s borough president; and Curtis Sliwa, the Republican founder of the Guardian Angels, who has never held public office.

They chose Mr. Adams, who ran a campaign tightly focused on public safety and was heavily favored in a city where Democrats vastly outnumber Republicans.

Mr. Adams has promised to lead New York in a more equitable direction, pointing to his working-class roots to suggest he would be an advocate for issues of concern to less affluent New Yorkers.

Still, in contrast to the message of economic populism that Mr. de Blasio rode to victory in 2013 and 2017 (he was prevented by term limits from running again), Mr. Adams made explicit overtures to big-business leaders, arguing that they too have a significant role to play in the city’s recovery.

After voting in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, on Tuesday, Mr. Adams wiped away tears.

“Because I’m standing here, everyday New Yorkers are going to realize they deserve the right to stand in this city also,” he said. “This is for the little guy.”

Mr. Sliwa was keenly focused on public safety and addressing homelessness, but on other matters and certainly in personality, he and Mr. Adams had significant differences.

Mr. Sliwa’s campaign was marked by antics and eccentricities that often drew more attention than his policy positions. His trip to the polls on Tuesday grew into a fracas when he tried to bring one of his many cats with him to vote, then fought with election officials who asked him to remove his red campaign jacket when they deemed it was a violation of electioneering rules.

During the campaign, Mr. Sliwa sought to draw a contrast with Mr. Adams, whom he called elitist.

He highlighted still-simmering questions around Mr. Adams’s residency and his financial dealings. Mr. Sliwa also tried to capitalize on anger in some corners of the city around vaccine mandates. In the end, it was not nearly enough.

In his concession remarks at the Empire Steak House in Midtown Manhattan, Mr. Sliwa told supporters he was “pledging my support to the new mayor Eric Adams.”

He added: “We’re all going to have to coalesce together in harmony and solidarity if we’re going to save this city that we love.”

Julianne McShane and James Thomas contributed reporting.

Brad Lander, a three-term New York City councilman, won Tuesday’s race for city comptroller against Daby Carreras, a Republican aligned with the Trump wing of the party, according to The Associated Press.

Mr. Lander, 52, a left-leaning Democrat from the liberal stronghold of Park Slope, Brooklyn, amassed endorsem*nts from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Senator Elizabeth Warren and New York City’s public advocate, Jumaane Williams.

The comptroller audits city agencies and oversees the city’s public pension funds, with assets totaling nearly $300 billion. The post frequently attracts politicians with higher aspirations. The departing New York City comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, ran for mayor, as did his two predecessors, John C. Liu and William C. Thompson Jr.

Mr. Lander has promised to expand efforts to make the city’s pension fund investments more environmentally friendly. During the campaign, he pledged to help overhaul the way the city invests in infrastructure to make it more efficient, and to conduct “sharp, strategic” audits of agencies.

“We are going to carry our city forward in a way that is more just and equitable and sustainable,” Mr. Lander said in a victory speech Tuesday night.

His victory means that Eric Adams, the city’s next mayor, will have to contend with both a comptroller and a City Council that are further left than he is on many issues, including policing and urban development.

Mr. Carreras, who Bloomberg reported is a financial adviser at Spartan Capital Securities LLC, ran as a far-right Republican and had suggested he would focus entirely on pension investment returns if elected.

Jumaane D. Williams was re-elected New York City public advocate on Tuesday, The Associated Press reported, a victory that gives him a stable base to pursue another office that he’s interested in: governor.

Mr. Williams, 45, has formed an exploratory committee and has said he will make a decision in the next few weeks about whether he will run for that job. He seemingly alluded to that possibility as he declared victory on Tuesday night.

“You gave me your trust, and your voice when you put me in this role and I work every day to live up to that trust, to raise your voice,” Mr. Williams told supporters at a rally in Brooklyn.

He then added with a grin: “I will never take that for granted — no matter where I go, no matter what I do.”

The 2022 governor’s race has grown competitive lately. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who took office when former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo resigned, is running, and Letitia James, the state attorney general, announced her candidacy last week.

Other possible candidates include New York City’s outgoing mayor, Bill de Blasio, and Representative Thomas Suozzi from Long Island.

The public advocate serves as an all-purpose ombudsman and is also next in the line of succession to the mayor. While the post comes with little formal power and a budget of under $5 million, it offers a bully pulpit from which its occupant can push the concerns of New Yorkers that City Hall is not attending to.

Because of a quirk in political and electoral timing, this was the third time that Mr. Williams had to run for public advocate in less than three years.

Eyeing a campaign for governor while running for public advocate left Mr. Williams, a former Brooklyn city councilman, open to criticism from his Republican opponent, Dr. Devi Nampiaparampil, that he would not pay attention to the job of public advocate if re-elected.

Mr. Williams has said that if he runs for governor, he would do so to address two of the most important issues facing the state — criminal justice reform and affordable housing — from his perspective as a progressive.

After a surprise run for lieutenant governor in 2018 brought him closer to victory than many expected, Mr. Williams said that he was getting a warm reception during state listening tours.

City Council District 32, which has been held by Eric A. Ulrich since 2009, is a political rarity: It is the only Republican-held Council seat in Queens.

And after Tuesday, it will stay that way.

The race to succeed Mr. Ulrich had attracted attention from across the political spectrum. In the end, Joann Ariola, a longtime civic leader and the chairwoman of the Queens Republican Party, defeated Felicia Singh, a Democrat and teacher.

It was something of a test of the enduring power of the Republican Party in Queens. While the county has long leaned Democratic, it is still home to roughly 140,000 registered Republicans, the most of any borough.

District 32 sits in southeast Queens, spanning parts of many different neighborhoods around Jamaica Bay, from the western Rockaways up through Howard Beach, and into Ozone Park, Woodhaven and Richmond Hill. While the southern portion includes white conservative strongholds like Breezy Point, the northern end skews Democratic and includes large communities of South Asian and Caribbean immigrants.

In Ozone Park, which lies in the northern part of the district, Rezbana Alam, 36, said on Tuesday she had voted for Ms. Singh. Ms. Alam, a Democrat and full-time parent, said that she believed Ms. Singh could make the neighborhood safer. Her public safety proposals included reallocating funding from the police budget to violence-intervention and mental health programs.

Ms. Singh, who grew up in Ozone Park and has Indo-Caribbean roots, was among several candidates who could have become the first people of South Asian descent elected to the Council. She would also have been the first nonwhite representative of District 32.

Ms. Alam said that Ms. Singh had visited her house while campaigning and seemed “very open-minded.”

But Ms. Ariola’s tough-on-crime platform resonated with voters who were frustrated with Mayor Bill de Blasio and the national Democratic Party. Ms. Ariola had called the city “a derailed train” and strongly criticized bail-reform measures and cuts in police funding.

Eddie Rivera, 66, a retiree who also lives in Ozone Park and is not registered with either party, echoed those concerns, saying Democrats “have lost their way.” He called Ms. Ariola’s platform “common sense.”

Zamil Ahmed, a 41-year-old server who lives in the neighborhood, is a registered Democrat, but he blamed the party for a rise in gun violence and said that quality of life had declined.

“It’s like the whole city is almost destroyed,” he said. Ms. Ariola picked up his vote.

In New York City, a global beacon that draws a diverse population from all over the world, the City Council has never had a person of South Asian descent — or a Muslim woman — among its membership.

That changed on Tuesday, when Shahana Hanif, a former City Council employee, won her election in a Brooklyn district that covers Park Slope, Kensington and parts of central Brooklyn.

Ms. Hanif, who is Bangladeshi American, was the first Muslim woman elected to the Council in its history, despite the fact that the city is home to an estimated 769,000 Muslims.

She was one of two history-making South Asian candidates to win as well; the other, Shekar Krishnan, won a seat representing Jackson Heights and Elmhurst in Queens. (A third, Felicia Singh, another South Asian candidate, lost to her Republican opponent in a closely watched Queens race.)

In a statement on Tuesday night, Ms. Hanif said that she was “humbled and proud” to be the first Muslim woman on the Council — and the first woman of any faith to represent District 39. She cited volunteers and endorsem*nts from community and progressive groups, including the left-leaning Working Families Party.

“Together we are building an anti-racist, feminist city,” she said. “We deserve a city that protects its most vulnerable, a city that has equitable education, a city invested in climate solutions that are local and driven by communities, a city where our immigrant neighbors feel at home and heard and safe. This work requires all of us to keep showing up even though the election is over.”

The City Council will have a total of five new Asian American members next year, more than ever, including its first Korean American members — Julie Won and Linda Lee were elected to lead districts in Queens — and a Cambodian American member, Sandra Ung, who will represent another Queens district, based in Flushing.

And the Council will have its first out gay Black women as members: Kristin Richardson Jordan scored an overwhelming victory in a Harlem district, as did Crystal Hudson in a Brooklyn district that encompasses parts of Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and Bedford-Stuyvesant.

A number of other L.G.B.T.Q. candidates clinched victories, including Tiffany Cabán in Queens. Chi Ossé in Brooklyn and Erik Bottcher in Manhattan had run in uncontested races, and Lynn Schulman was expected to win a seat in Queens.

The candidates are part of a larger shift in New York’s City Council, which is poised to be nearly as diverse next year as the city it represents. More than two dozen women are positioned to take a majority of the Council’s seats, for the first time ever.

As New Yorkers cast their ballots on Tuesday, a broad range of issues, from public safety to education, were top of mind. But some said what was most significant about the current moment was its potential to usher in history.

New York has had 109 mayors; Eric Adams, who won Tuesday’s election, will be only the second Black man to take the city’s helm.

To Djene Keita, 30, who is Black, voting for Mr. Adams felt like casting a vote for her young son’s future. “Just having someone for him to look up to and be inspired by would be great,” said Ms. Keita, who is from Harlem.

Mark Godfrey, 65, said Mr. Adams’s ascendance felt similarly personal, a sign of “subtle changes that are occurring in the U.S.” in racial equity and representation.

Mr. Godfrey, a resident of Ozone Park in Queens who said he was an independent, said Mr. Adams’s identity as a Black man and his experiences as a police officer and a victim of police brutality meant that he “understands what being profiled is like.”

Mr. Godfrey said he hoped those experiences would give Mr. Adams a unique and valuable perspective.

David N. Dinkins, the city’s first Black mayor, was elected to a single term in 1989 and died in 2020. He has been remembered as a mentor who inspired other Black leaders to run for office.

Some voters like Esmirna Flores, 38, recalled watching Mr. Dinkins as mayor as they cast their ballots on Tuesday. The prospect of electing a second Black mayor was “absolutely awesome,” said Ms. Flores, who is Latina and lives in the Kingsbridge area of the Bronx.

“It’s about time that we have more Black representatives, more brown people representing,” she said.

Still, others like Mable Ivory, 45, a Black voter in Harlem, said they saw Mr. Adams’s identity as something positive, but noted that it did not play a significant role in shaping their vote or compelling them to head to the polls.

There were also mixed feelings among some voters, who appreciated the chance to make history, but disagreed with aspects of Mr. Adams’s platform.

Gabriel Nott, 27, called the milestone an “important step forward.” But he said he remained unsure whether Mr. Adams was the best option for the job among the many Democrats he beat in June’s primary.

“It’s really key to kind of consider what is he going to do for those communities in New York City,” said Mr. Nott, who is from the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn. “But I think that it’s really still significant.”

The tension between left-wing Democrats in New York and those who consider themselves more moderate, a rift that has characterized the state’s politics for years and was a major battle in the mayoral primary in June, remained evident on Tuesday.

In left-leaning New York City, Eric Adams, the city’s new mayor-elect, has declared himself the new face of the Democratic Party, suggesting his platform and profile would be a model for other politicians across the country.

But his positions received mixed reviews from voters in the city on Election Day, with some embracing him enthusiastically and other Democrats admitting they were hesitant about casting their votes.

Allister Klingensmith, 40, expressed some ambivalence about voting for Mr. Adams because he did not see most of his political views reflected in the candidate’s platform.

“I’d like to see more done with the environment, especially environmental causes,” Mr. Klingensmith, a Democrat, said. “I just don’t think he’s doing enough there.”

On the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Edward Horton, 66, said he supported Mr. Adams in the primary election, largely because he thought the candidate would be able to increase affordable housing and tackle the city’s homeless crisis.

Steve Rush, 65, a retired city worker who identified himself as a moderate Democrat, said he believed that Mr. Adams could handle issues of police reform with sensitivity — he was a police officer for more than two decades before entering politics— and without compromising safety.

“I think he has a healthy caution about N.Y.P.D,” Mr. Rush said of Mr. Adams. “We have to do public safety in a way that doesn’t hurt minority communities, as it has.”

But that same relationship with the Police Department made Shahreen Akhter, a 30-year-old registered Democrat in Ozone Park, Queens, skeptical that Mr. Adams would move quickly on police reform.

She also said she worried over how he might achieve his goal of expanding the city public school system’s gifted and talented program, which Ms. Akhter said currently widened inequity among students.

Ms. Akhter’s concerns led her to cast her vote for the Socialist candidate, Cathy Rojas, instead, she said.

Audrey Dursht, a Morningside Heights resident and a former teacher, said that education was her top priority, and that her vote for Mr. Adams was a reluctant one.

Ms. Dursht, 65, added that she felt this year’s slate of mayoral candidates was “not a great selection,” but said she did not want to see Curtis Sliwa in office.

Eric Adams leaned heavily on his biography on the long road to becoming New York’s 110th mayor — and just the second Black person to hold the office.

When he talked about public schools on the campaign trail, Mr. Adams reminded voters that his dyslexia went undiscovered for most of his youth.

When he spoke about homelessness, Mr. Adams recounted carrying a trash bag of clothes to school because he was worried that his family would be evicted before he returned home.

On crime and safety, Mr. Adams promised that he could both promote public safety and protect Black and Latino residents from civil rights abuses. He said that his experience of being beaten by the police as a teenager inspired him to join the department and speak out against discrimination from within its ranks, eventually leading a group called 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care.

After retiring from the Police Department, Mr. Adams, 61, served four terms as a state senator before being elected, then re-elected, Brooklyn borough president.

But while he has emphasized his working-class bona fides and vowed to fight for New Yorkers struggling to make ends meet in an expensive city that had left them behind, Mr. Adams has had no qualms about courting New Yorkers at the top of the heap.

After winning a bruising Democratic mayoral primary in June — where he ran as a moderate in a field crowded with progressives — Mr. Adams held a raft of fund-raisers with New York’s rich and powerful. He consulted with the billionaire former mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and dined with the billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch while promising that city government would be more friendly to business than it has been under Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Mr. Adams’s charm and ease in depicting himself as many things to many people and his ability to convincingly shape-shift at will may be his greatest skill, but it leaves some people uneasy.

Even those who have known him for decades aren’t sure which version will show up to City Hall in January. Sometimes, even Mr. Adams does not seem sure.

“I’m so many formers,” he said over the summer during a visit to the White House, where he declared himself the new face of the Democratic Party, “I’m trying to figure out the current.”

Here is a lightly edited transcript of Eric Adams’s speech on Tuesday at the Marriott hotel near the Brooklyn Bridge in Brooklyn after he was declared the victor in the mayor’s race:

The team told me to come through the back, come around the stage, come directly in, and they said this is the way we want you to move. And I said to them, “I’m the mayor.”

And if they only knew the level of energy I get when I walk in your crowd. There’s days on this journey when I was just so depleted, and tired and just weary. And historically, I was able to just go out to Queens and sit down with Mommy and she would re-energize me.

Then when Mommy transitioned in April, I would move among you somewhere, at a train station, at the grocery store, walking inside the laundromat or just going to some of the barbershops late at night in Brownsville and Bed-Stuy, and go inside when they finish cutting heads, and we’d just sit there and just talk.

You don’t know how much you fuel me. You just fuel me every day, and let me tell you the uniqueness about the fuel that it’s a Shakespearean tragedy that many of you don’t know. It doesn’t matter if you are in Borough Park in the Hasidic community, if you’re in Flatbush in the Korean community, if you’re in Sunset Park in the Chinese community, if you’re in Rockaway, if you’re out in Queens, in the Dominican community, Washington Heights — all of you have the power to fuel us.

We are so divided right now, and we’re missing the beauty of our diversity. We have to end all of this division of who we are, where we go to worship, what do we wear — no! Today we take off the intramural jersey and we put on one jersey, Team New York.

So New York City, brothers and sisters — and I just need to pause for a moment because it’s so important for me to do this. Five people I must acknowledge, and I will acknowledge all of you within time, but there are five people I must acknowledge.

First is my sister Ingrid Martin. Where is Ingrid? If I can quote one of the most philosophical geniuses of our time, Drake: “Started from the bottom, now we’re here.” Her husband and I were rookie cops together in the police academy. When her son was born, her husband gave me a picture of him laying on his chest. I put that picture inside my police hat and every time I went on patrol I looked at him. He’s now a grown man, he’s an adult now. But it reminded me what we were doing every day, that we were on patrol. And she never, never left my side, never left my side, no matter how challenging it was, she fought. She built a foxhole. When she ran out of bullets, she picked up rocks. When she ran out of rocks, she picked up dirt. When she ran out of dirt, she just dug a tunnel. But she never left my side and I’ll never forget what she has done for me throughout this entire journey. Amazing, amazing woman.

Second is my man Nate. Nathan. I trusted him with my whole campaign, and I said, “Listen, you work it out and no one is going to get in your way. But one things for sure: you’d best not screw it up. Stayed up nights two, three, four in the morning calling him talking to him. Just calling from time to time and just saying I just wanted to know how you are doing. And just spending time bonding together, because when you are in a battle, there is someone you have to trust and expose yourself to and know that they are not going to take it and sharpen it and turn it to a knife and hold it at your throat, but they are going to be there throughout this entire journey. That’s who he was and I appreciate you for that.

And the man that captured my voice, my brother Evan Thies. Where is Evan? Communications director, all of you know who he is, you know how dedicated and committed he has been, and he just played a major role in putting together our communication.

And lastly, came to Borough Hall, there was a woman there speaking broken English, came from Peru, just wanted to eke out a living for her family. She came into my office one day and she said, you know I’m not supposed to do this but I just wanted to give you some advice. And she gave me that advice and she became the center of Borough Hall. She took over my entire life and made sure that we were able to be a functioning office and it’s so significant because sometimes we have the tendency to believe that because someone has not mastered our dialogue and our phonetics that there is a level of ignorance, and it is not, it is just the ability to give them the opportunity and they will rise to the occasion all the time. Mastering the sound of English does not make you the greatest leader or the greatest person and so Gladys, I thank you so much, Gladys.

Here we are, New York, here we are. I know many of you I want to acknowledge, but I just wanted to point out that group that I pointed out just now. So, brothers and sisters and the people of our city, they have spoken. And tonight New York has chosen one of you, one of our own. I am you. I am you. After years of praying and hoping and struggling and working, we are headed to City Hall.

For a young man from South Jamaica, Queens, who grew up with all of the challenges that every New Yorker faces, tonight is not just a victory over adversity, it is a vindication of faith. It is a proof that people of this city will love you if you love them. It is the proof that the forgotten can be the future. It is the proof that this city can live up to its promise.

The campaign was never, never, never about me; this campaign was about this city and the people in it, from every corner and every background in this city. Those who have been left behind and believed they would never catch up. This campaign was for the underserved, the marginalized, the abandoned. This campaign was for those who have been betrayed by their government. There is a covenant between government and the people of our city. You pay your taxes, we deliver your tax dollars through goods and services. We have failed to provide those goods and services. Jan. 1 that stops. That stops.

And the campaign was not just for them: It was by them. I am so proud of what we have accomplished and I can never repay the hard work and dedication of so many who worked tirelessly to get us here. This is your victory and I will carry your cause to City Hall.

This campaign was for the person cleaning bathrooms and the dishwasher in the kitchen who feels they are already at the end of their journey. It was for those who feel they were there but forgotten, and they are also those who make the city operate every day. They may right now be at Rikers Island, sitting in a cell or in a precinct sitting in the holding cells. I am speaking to them tonight.

My mother cleaned houses. I washed dishes. I was beaten by police and sat in their precinct holding cells, certain that my future was already decided, and now I will be the person in charge of that precinct and every other precinct in the City of New York because I’m going to be the mayor of the City of New York.

There may be a young person out there right now that believes they’re not smart enough to go to college and to succeed. I did too. But I overcame a learning disability and went to college and was able to obtain my degrees. And now I will be the mayor in charge of the entire Department of Education.

And you may be homeless. You may be living from one shelter to the next, and you may say to yourself that this is my destiny. But I want them to hear the story of my siblings up here carrying a garbage bag full of clothing to school every day because we thought we would come home and the marshals were going to throw us out. We know their story, we know their journey. I want them to get the energy from what we are doing today to know the possibilities are there. Where are you are is not who you are. We’re going to make sure of that.

And that’s why I ran for mayor. Because I wanted to turn pain into purpose. This city betrays New Yorkers every day, especially the ones who rely on it the most. My fellow New Yorkers, that betrayal stops on Jan. 1. We are going to make a difference.

My story is your story and I did not just want New Yorkers to hear my story, I wanted them to feel my story. I wanted them to know: I am you. The life I lived is the life many are living right now. We are the same. This is not about Eric Adams becoming mayor. This is about carving out a pathway so people can enjoy the prosperity that this city has to offer. And so, you’re going to find some blemishes, because I’m perfectly imperfect and the city is made up of perfectly imperfect people. That’s the combination that is going to allow us to create a perfect city where we leave no one behind. That’s the city we’re fighting for.

So this is not my moment. This is the moment for all the people who have hit the bend in the road. A bend in the road is not the end of the road as long as you make the turn. Tonight we are going to make the turn and take our city in a new direction.

And I also believe all of us together can accomplish this task. The past two years have been hard. Even New Yorkers, the most resilient people in the world, we’ve had moments. We had moments of doubt — I’m clear on that. We took a hit, we watched as Midtown turned into ghost town and our parking lots became morgues. Trailers filled with bodies of our loved ones and family members. We saw the most vibrant city on earth reduced to silence. Worst of all, the inequalities we already faced were deepened and widened. Then violence erupted, knocking us even further backward.

And as we stand here tonight, there are hundreds of thousands more New Yorkers without a job than there were pre-Covid. But when I think about those setbacks, I also think about how far we’ve come.

I think about those who gave everything to get us here. It gives me hope and I want you to have hope. I want you to believe again. Believe again. Let’s walk differently. Let’s hold our heads up. Let’s have the step in our pace, because we are New Yorkers. We must believe in who we are. So I think about Percy Sutton. I think about Shirley Chisholm and David Dinkins and Dennis deLeon. I think about Larry Kramer. I think about Peter Yew. Those were revolutionaries who won wars without firing one shot.

I think about my fellow officers and firefighters every day, New Yorkers who lost their lives saving others from the Twin Towers. And let me be clear on this: I am not creating a division between my firefighters, my police officers, my E.M.T.s, my teachers, my other civil servants. We are in this together. We will find a way to get through this together. No division, no division.

I think about the nurses and hospital workers who went to their job every day during the height of Covid, rising above the fear and uncertainty. And the reason I know so well what they were doing: because when others fled, I led. I went to those hospitals. I visited them. I delivered P.P.E. and food. I was on the ground with them to let them know that I’m not elected to be served, I’m elected to serve and I’m going to serve the people of the city.

And I think of Mommy, a domestic worker. And my siblings are here. It was six of us. And I say it all the time as much as I can: She loved them all, but she adored me. She was an amazing woman. Single parents all over the city who struggle day in and day out for lifetimes with only one goal: to create opportunities for their children that they never had. And that’s what Mommy did for all of us. She watched us continue to develop into responsible adults. And she had to do it on her own because the city was not there for her.

And I will never forget that my glory — my glory is not my story. I only had a badge as a cop because my mom used a rag and a mop to create a better future for me. I think about those heroes of New York and I am inspired. I am lifted up on the wings of their spirit. And I am reminded that we owe them a great debt of gratitude that can only be repaid with our belief in each other and our city. We will betray those who were on the front line for us if we don’t believe in the greatness of this city. They sacrificed themselves because they believed in that. Now is an opportunity to once again believe in who we are.

We will need the strength to face a three-headed crisis: We are fighting Covid, crime and economic devastation all at once. So we’re going to invest in each other. We are going to lift up those who are struggling with child care, health care and affordable housing. We are going to launch an unprecedented job program to link out-of-work New Yorkers not just with jobs, but with skills and training. And we’re going to talk — hear this, because this is very important — we’re going to talk to the C.E.O.s of our city’s biggest corporations and ask them to offer paid internships to students from underserved communities.

Listen folks. We have to get this out of our head: that our C.E.O.s in this city don’t want to participate in the uplifting of our inner city. The problem is we haven’t gone there and asked them to do so. So it’s time to build bridges that we’ve destroyed in the past. We need each other. That’s what we need in this city. We have to turn our economy around by reaching our hand out to the business world to grow the companies we have here, while attracting new emerging industries — life sciences and cybersecurity, and with a blue-collar green jobs initiative that boosts our economy while making our city more resilient. Every job we create in corporate America must be a pathway and pipeline to the inner city. We have some talent in NYCHA. Just get out of the way and give them the opportunity to fill these jobs in this city.

And we’re going to do this, particularly for the women who are in this room: We want universal child care. Universal child care. We all know what happens when mothers stay home to raise the children — their careers are stymied. They don’t get promoted, they don’t get the opportunities. Our child care, universal child care is not going to be day care or just sitting in a room somewhere watching TV. We’re going to build into our educational opportunity to develop these young minds before they get to pre-K and 3-K. We’re going to do it early and we’re going to give mothers doulas so they can learn about nutrition and what they need to do when that baby is born. If we don’t get this right — don’t let anybody kid you, if you don’t educate, you will incarcerate, and we don’t want to incarcerate our young people.

And we’re going to get the safety we need and the justice we deserve. They go together. By driving down gun violence and crime from our streets while we drive our biases and bad behavior from those who are tarnishing the shield.

And how dare people ask me, do I sit down and talk to gang members who are trying to get their life right? You're darn right I am. You’re darn right. You do an analysis of those gang members and know what you’re going to find? You’re going to find learning disabilities, dyslexia. You’re going to find all of those mental health issues, the problems we ignored and betrayed those young people for produced what you’re looking at. You’re seeing the hate that New York has created, and it’s time to stop that hate.

But let’s be clear, let’s be clear here. As I talk to my gang members, Jan. 1 the conversation stops. You won’t shoot up my city. You won’t stab young people in schools. You won’t sell drugs and guns on my streets.

I am extending an opportunity to get out of gangs and get in a job, to get into schools, become gainfully employed. We’re not going to just talk about safety, we’re going to have safety in our city. If we do these things, then New Yorkers will be able to fulfill their dreams. And that should be the goal of government — not to preach, but to provide. To allow people to reach their full potential. Sometimes, folks, we’re going to succeed. Sometimes we’re going to try and we’re going to fail. But damn it, we’re not going to fail at trying. That’s something we’re not going to lose at.

So let me be clear as I stand here before you, with a heart filled with hope and purpose and love for this city. Looking out over this horizon and seeing you gives me hope. This is our moment. This is our opportunity. This is our moment as a city.

And I tell you something. In four years, this city is never going to be the same, never going to be the same. Once we move forward, we will never go back. We will never go backwards. We will never go backwards. We will never go backwards. Because America is the only country, we are the only country on the globe with dream attached to our name. There’s no German dream. There’s no Polish dream. There’s no French dream. But damn it there’s an American Dream. You don’t leave a nightmare to come live in a nightmare. We have to allow those 10 million dreams to come alive and to benefit from what this country has to offer.

On Jan. 1, that’s the promise. That’s what we will accomplish. So tonight I have accomplished my dream. And with all my heart, I’m going to remove the barriers that are preventing you from accomplishing yours.

And if I’m allowed to say, in the words of one of the most famous Brooklynites, the owner of Snapple soft drinks, we are going to win because we are made of the best stuff on earth. We are New Yorkers.

I want to bring on my governor, where is she? We are here in the house, Gov. Kathy Hochul. We’re going to need her. So thank you so much for coming down. Please say a few words, governor.

— Walker Clermont