Adams: Dems Misread Mood on Immigration and “Not Surprised” by Republican Gains
Democrats lost sight of what working class people were concerned about in the current election cycle, Eric Adams said at his weekly press conference on November 12 and the resulting losses were not surprising, he said.
| 14 Nov 2024 | 07:00
Mayor Eric Adams said the Democratic party’s failure to identify immigration as a major concern for voters cost the party in the Nov. 5 election. He said he was “not surprised” by the outcome. (
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When asked about Republican gains in the city at a recent press conference, Mayor Eric Adams said, “It doesn’t surprise me” because he said too many in the party focused on “this far left agenda.”
He said three years ago, public safety was the top issue and now the top isssue is immigration.
“And when I talked about public safety in 2021, it was ignored,” he said at his weekly City Hall press conference on Nov. 12. “When I talked about migrants and asylum seekers in 2023, it was ignored. 2021, the top of the issue: public safety. 2023, the top of the issues of voters: immigration.”
Adams had been sharply critical of the Biden Administration for not bailing out New York City and other cities during the migrant crisis, when 220,000 asylum seekers poured into the city over two years, costing the city billions of dollars to house and feed them.
He said the city received only about $200 million in aid money during the crisis which put the city budget in a $7 billion hole. Aside from missing the public’s concern with the immigration crisis, he said Dems were ignoring working class issues overall.
”These working class people are concerned about the future for their families. And when you’re not talking to— when you’re talking about things that are not impacting them, how do I get the MetroCard? How do I make sure that I can put food on the table? These are real issues. And so when you’re not talking about those real issues, then it doesn’t surprise me that people are saying, listen, you’re not speaking on my behalf anymore.”
The problems, he said were amplified across the country, where TRump for the first time actually won the popular vote after losing the popular vote by three million to Hillary Clinton in 2016 but winning in the electoral college. In 2020 he lost by seven million popular votes and lost the Electoral College to Joe Biden.
“I’m looking at all of these analyses that are coming from after the election, it’s no different from New York than other municipalities. It’s not only New York where people decided that we don’t believe people are speaking on behalf of those issues that are important to us. And I talk on the issues that working class people talk on, public safety, affordability, making sure they can provide for their families.”
Kamala Harris still won Manhattan by a wide margin, but did not do as well as Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Joe Biden in 2020. And a solitary electoral district in Chinatown actually cast most of its votes for Trump. It was an electoral district made up of the Knickerbocker Village, an affordable housing project on the Lower East Side where most of the residents are Chinese American. Trump pulled about 51 percent to 48 percent for Harris, according to the New York Post.
Some unofficial tallies were actually showing several electoral districts in the Two Bridges area of the lower east side turning red while the rest of Manhattan was blue.,
Overall in New York City in 2020, Joe Biden received 76.19 percent of the vote and Donald Trump received 22.69 percent.
In the 2024 race, in New York City vote Harris received 1,748,140 votes or 67.70 percent and Trump received 786,294 votes, 30.45 percent. While the Republication ticket was up by some 30,000+ votes, it also showed a lot of Democrats staying home, as there were over 140,000 more Democratic voters turning up in 2020 than in the current election cycle.