Sept. 3, 2021 | Sourced from WSJ by Tunku Varadarajan
Most Importantly, Will New Yorkers too?
Eric Adams has a plan, and his plan is to tell New Yorkers who live in Florida to get their booties back to New York!
Eric Adams | Photo credit: Barbara Kelley
Florida has become even more attractive last year as it quickly ended its pandemic restrictions. Many affluent New Yorkers had traded in the blistering cold for a place with a much warmer climate. The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles estimated this July that 33,500 New Yorkers — many who were able to work pretty much anywhere as long as there was an internet connection, made the move in the preceding 10 months. A real-estate firm's analysis of postage change-of-address forms estimated that about 26,000 moved from metro New York to Miami in 2020.
Mr. Adams, the Democratic nominee for New York mayor, wants New Yorkers to come back. He says he believes many of those who moved were “among the 65,000 New Yorkers who pay 51% of our income tax.” That is entirely plausible, given that New York City residents pay state and local income taxes at rates of up to 14.776%, while Florida has no income tax.
“I don’t blame them for leaving, New York has become too violent, too bureaucratic, too expensive to do business.”
He appreciates their financial contribution to the city: “We have cops on our street, teachers in our schools, and all of the other things because of those high-income tax earners.” ”
Mr. Adams has a law and order conservative approach. His rhetoric is conciliatory. "On day one," he says, "I'll go from borough to borough and have focus groups with my police officers and say, "It's time to hit the reset button. We need each other, the community and the police, and we want to rebuild trust." Trust, as in racial sensitivity? "Yes, I would say that. There's a lot of deep wounds and scars, and we need to really confront this," says Mr. Adams.
He wants the city cops to start their day with "the same energy fighting the lack of trust" that they muster in their fight against crime. "Too many good officers have been caught up in the behavior of the numerical minority that have done something wrong." He vows to "rid the department of those who tarnish the shield and the nobility of public protection."
A city that has gone through 9/11, gone through Covid, Mr. Adams believes that New York City can recover, saying “This city is built on people who have resiliency and we are going to move forward.” And, Mr. Adams truly hopes those Floridians will move back in the new year.
NOTE: The election for mayor isn’t until Nov. 2, but Mr. Adams appears to be a shoo-in. Democrats outnumber Republicans 6 to 1 on the city’s voter rolls. Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg won a combined five terms as Republican nominees between 1993 and 2009, but they didn’t leave an effective party behind. Joe Lhota, a former Giuliani aide who was the GOP mayoral nominee in 2013, received less than a quarter of the vote as he lost to leftist Democrat Bill de Blasio. The current GOP nominee, radio host Curtis Sliwa, founded the Guardian Angels anticrime group in the late 1970s.
for more on Eric Adams and how he'll reduce crime while restoring trust in police — check out the full op-ed
