ALT Equating rent-stabilization with anti-Blackness is dangerous and deserves far more attention. The millionaire and billionaire landlords hungrily waiting out Bill de Blasio’s second term would want nothing more than a prominent person of color defending their predatory practices and tactics, a person who can speak up for their interests against an ascendant Left movement that has prioritized the struggles of working-class tenants in New York, many of whom are Black, Latino, and Asian. Mayor Eric Adams would be the apotheosis of woke capitalism. Stephen Ross could ask for nothing more.

ALT All policy criticisms of Mayor Adams, in the coming years, can be reduced to race if he so chooses. This is the terrain many liberals wanted to play on, and now they will compete with a master. Do you care about transportation issues, like how cars with city-issued placards can park illegally, creating dangerous hazards for pedestrians and cyclists? Adams thinks you’re a white supremacist. Do you wonder why he sleeps at Borough Hall and spends time at an apartment in New Jersey? You’re a racist. Concerned about Adams’ oversight of nonprofits that seem to have created glaring conflicts-of-interest? Well, you’re unfairly maligning a Black man when there are plenty of white politicians who get away with corruption. Adams will be a far more deft opponent than the Left realizes. He is schooled in the logic and the rhetoric. He is ready for this fight.