When New Yorkers chose Eric Adams to be Gotham’s 110th mayor in 2021, the general narrative about the election was that his victory demonstrated the city was ready to move toward the center after the eight calamitous years of Bill de Blasio’s hardcore leftist administration.
Adams had been all over the place politically throughout his career, but one of the things that cheered those who hoped he might try to return the city to the anti-crime and pro-development policies of predecessors Rudy Giuliani (1993-2001) and Michael Bloomberg (2001-2013) was the clear mutual antagonism between Adams and some of New York’s most prominent leftist politicians, such as “squad” ringleader Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.
After a year and a half of Adams’ rule, it’s obvious that while not as much of a disaster as de Blasio, he’s no Giuliani or Bloomberg. The Big Apple has continued its precipitous decline. He’s doing nothing to halt the rampant crime and homelessness that was illustrated by the death of Jordan Neely and subsequent outrageous prosecution of ex-Marine Daniel Penny.
Yet though it has largely flown under the radar of the national and even the local press, there is one element of AOC’s agenda on which he is not just fully in sync with the radical left but actually way ahead of it. His announcement last month that the city will place caps on the amount of meat and dairy served by city institutions such as schools and prisons is part of a wildly ambitious plan
