Eric Adams needs to mind the gap in Fear City

About that NY1-Siena poll showing that just 29% of New Yorkers think Mayor Adams is doing an excellent (7%) or good (22%) job, his spin is that it shows 65% of the city is behind him once you add in the 36% who say he’s doing a fair rather than a poor (18%) job.

Fair enough, I guess.

But that 29% number lines up with the 32% of New Yorkers who think that the city is on the right track compared to 56% who say it’s headed in the wrong direction.

Notably, the same poll shows broad support for a lot of what Adams is talking about and how he’s talking about it, with 53% approving of his style to 37% disapproving, suggesting unhappiness with how he’s delivering so far.

Just as there’s a widening gap between Adams’ swelling national reputation among mainline Democrats and his shrinking local approval numbers, there’s a gap between how pessimistic New Yorkers are about the city’s direction and the 76% who say they are very (31%) or somewhat (45%) satisfied with the quality of life in their neighborhood.

Some of that gap always shows up between how people see things in general and how they see them in their own immediate surroundings — almost always preferring their member of Congress and their school to Congress and schools writ large — but some of it is about how common spaces like the subways and office districts broke down over the course of the pandemic and the city’s shutdown response to it.

And, as Nick Pinto pointed out at the news site Hellgate, Adams the politician is making things tough for Adams the mayor with his Fear City rhetoric about how the city has never been more dangerous and how New York has become, in his Trumpy construction, a “laughing stock.”

While Adams complains about news coverage giving the impression of an outof-control city on his watch, New Yorkers seem to be put off by his performance rather than his priorities.

Just 18% of New Yorkers say he’s doing an excellent (5%) or good (13%) job of addressing homelessness, even as a sizable majority (60%-32%) supports breaking up homeless encampments, something Adams has made a point of promoting while continuing the sweeps the de Blasio administration quietly carried out.

And a sizable majority of New Yorkers (64%-34%) like his (bad, in my opinion) idea of installing metal detectors at subway entrances. Another answer in the survey helps explain why: 69% of New Yorkers say they’re very (43%) or somewhat (26%) worried that “a shooting in which a gunman targets people based on their race, religion or ethnicity, will happen in your neighborhood.”

Overall, just 3% of New Yorkers say they feel more safe when it comes to crime and safety across the city since the pandemic while 70% say they feel less safe. Seventy-six percent say they are very (38%) or somewhat (38%) concerned about becoming the victim of a violent crime.

Even as 69% of New Yorkers say they’re very (22%) or somewhat (47%) satisfied with the level of police protection in their own neighborhood, just 21% say Adams, who won office on a vow to fairly restore public safety, is doing an excellent (5%) or good (16%) job fighting crime, while 32% say he’s doing an excellent (9%) or good (23%) job of “transforming NYPD info a force that serves and protects all New Yorkers.”

Fifty-one percent of New Yorkers, and 59% of women, say they’ve changed part of their daily routine in order to feel safer going about their day.

Meantime, 52% of New Yorkers say they want the NYPD budget to go up, while just 17% want it to decline. Eighty-five percent say they want more cops on trains. And while Adams has fought to keep the feds from taking control of Rikers, just 16% say he’s doing an excellent (4%) or good (12%) job of “tackling the issue of safety there.”

My gut is that this poll will be a low water mark for Adams, who is paying now for the dark talk and promises of a rapid recovery that helped get him elected mayor in the first place.

Last month, Adams admitted he’d expected to turn a corner on gun violence by February and there are signs we’re getting there now as New Yorkers’ patience is running out. Shootings are down about 10% so far this year compared to last year, and 25% this May compared to last May even as the overall major crime rate has continued to go up.

In any case, Adams has three years before New Yorkers get to register their opinions again at the voting polls. Gov. Hochul, on the other hand, whose numbers in the city are nearly as weak, may be in for a rough ride to November even if she cruises through her primary.