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Borough President Eric Adams, who is running as a Democratic mayoral candidate, appears in Flushing, Queens, to open a new campaign office in the New York City borough of Queens. | Spencer Platt / Getty Images
NEW YORK – Eric Adams, the front-runner for mayor, spent Wednesday morning trying to ask questions about where he’d sleep with a tour of his crowded Brooklyn basement apartment and an emotional explanation for his insistence on personal privacy.
On Tuesday, Politico reported that Adams, the Brooklyn borough chief, had been staying overnight and staying late into the night and early morning at the government building where he and his crew worked. When he does not lay his head in the taxpayer-owned building, official documents and information provided by his campaign have given conflicting accounts of where he is staying.
In response, on Wednesday Adams and his team sought to answer questions about his stay with a press conference featuring coffee and vegan pastries, providing new or revised details about his living situation while leaving many discrepancies pending.
The candidate, speaking outside his four-unit home in Bedford-Stuyvesant, flatly denied that he lives at the co-op he owns with his longtime partner in Fort Lee, NJ.
“How foolish would a person be to run for mayor of New York City and live in another municipality?” asked Adams, standing beside his son, Jordan.
However, he called for campaign events from the Garden State unit.
Adams contacted a pair of mayor’s forums in January and February from all over the Hudson, according to Politico comparing his hypothetical background with real estate listings and floor plans for the property. Campaign consultant Evan Theis confirmed the website Wednesday, shortly after Adams’ press conference.
Adams also appeared at five online events hosted by the mayor’s office in 2020 from his New Jersey apartment.
His opponents took advantage of questions about his whereabouts.
“I said Eric Adams is unprincipled. He doesn’t follow the rules of the road. Another top candidate, Andrew Yang, said at a campaign stop on Wednesday that corruption investigations are chasing him everywhere he goes.” Now, he likely lives in New York. Jersey.”
Yang, who was previously the front-runner in the Democratic primary, demanded that Adams release his E-ZPass records from the past few years, adding, “If you’re in Brooklyn, nothing shows up and then we move on.”
Adams said he used to go to New Jersey periodically on weekends to visit his partner, Tracy Collins, but he skipped cross-state trips altogether during the height of the pandemic last year, when he moved into his Brooklyn Borough Hall office to increase time. Work spent. He said he hadn’t seen her until Saturday for two months because of his hectic work schedule.
“I have never hidden that I have a collaboration in New Jersey with Tracy, but my permanent residence is in Brooklyn,” Adams said.
He said he spends most of his campaign days ahead of the June 22 Democratic primary, leaving him with little time to complete his official duties as mayor.
“I would enter town hall at 1 a.m., work until 3 to 4 with my employees who come because they think — and then get up at 6:30, 7 to go to the train station,” he said. “Where I am is not a mystery.”
Politico observed Adams entering the government building near midnight several times over Memorial Day weekend, and a rival campaign observed similar activity on four consecutive evenings last week.
Teese said Adams travels to New Jersey by government bus or car, and said he has instructed his government employees to provide E-ZPass records.
His interstate travel account was part of a heart-wrenching back story that was relayed by Adams outside his brownstone on Wednesday morning. He remembers an incident from his days as an outspoken member of the NYPD when someone shot his car during a pre-dawn drive – an event that has led him to closely protect his personal life ever since.
“My secret is my family,” he said. “I subscribed to this life. They did not subscribe to this life.”
However, at the same time, Adams and his team sought to remove inconsistencies regarding his living arrangements by providing new or modified details compared to the previous day.
Teese said Tuesday, for example, that Adams was living in the basement of the house. His son and a tenant lived on other floors of the property, and there was only one vacant unit. But on Wednesday, his son said he lives in New Jersey and stays up all night when he’s in town late for school or work. The vacant unit has now been filled, Thies said.
The interior of the basement unit, which Adams showed reporters, contained food and sneakers that did not appear to belong to the well-dressed 60-year-old vegan. Thiess said Jordan spends time in his father’s apartment watching cable, sometimes sleeps on the sofa, but goes upstairs when his father gets home.
He also said that Adams filled the vacant unit.
Adams bought the property in 2002, and according to Teese, he lived there on and off for years until he moved permanently in 2017. Sometime around 2013, he signed his share of the Prospect Heights co-op with his ex-girlfriend and moved into an apartment in McKeever Place while making Renovations to the Lafayette Avenue home – a schedule confirmed by its voting record.
His opponents did not buy him.
“Well, can we have a real minute talk here? Another lead candidate for mayor, Maya Wiley, said during her campaign stop in Manhattan.” “I think there are some straightforward questions that are just basic about where you live, Eric. Where are your tax returns? How many years have you collected rents on real estate without reporting it.”
Despite an effort for clarity, many information about Adams’ real estate portfolio remains unclear or inaccurately reported in government records.
His four-unit home is listed with the city’s housing agency as a three-unit home, and is not registered, as required in multifamily buildings. Thiess said the department’s website was inaccurate and a representative of the agency did not respond to questions from Politico.
Adams said he adjusted several years of his tax returns to reflect rental income that was omitted from 2017 through 2019 — which Politico discovered by comparing his returns with his financial disclosures on file with the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board. The Adams campaign has not yet provided the models shown.
Questions also remain at the Adams campaign offices. Thies said he used space inside MetroTech, a spacious campus near Borough Hall. It also happens where Frank Caron – the Brooklyn Democratic Party attorney who informally supports Adams’ campaign – has office space.
His campaign finance deposits do not reflect any office rent payments to Karon. Adams confirmed Wednesday that he is renting space from Carone at MetroTech — but campaign documents don’t show any such payments.
Thies said it was converted into a $7,500 petition fee that Adams paid Carone and will be specified more clearly in a future filing.
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