BAN ON TRAVEL? NOT FOR ERIC & AIDE AS THEY MEET CONTRACTOR IN ST. LOUIS
Most voters say neither Joe, Don fit to serve
Mayor Adams jetted to Missouri on Wednesday to tour the offices of a local tech company that does a significant amount of work for the city — a trip that comes even as a ban on taxpayer-funded out-of-state travel remains in place for municipal government officials due to budgetary concerns.
Charles Lutvak, a spokesman for Adams, said the mayor’s trip to St. Louis is being exempted from the travel ban because it’s considered “essential.”
As a result, Adams and Chief Technology Officer Matt Fraser, the only city official accompanying him, are getting their airfare and other costs associated with the trip covered by city taxpayers, Lutvak told the Daily News.
Adams’ public schedule for the St. Louis visit included a 4 p.m. tour of the headquarters of World Wide Technology and a 6:30 p.m. appearance at a jazz gala, where he’ll receive an award.
Since Adams took office, World Wide Technology, or WWT, has been awarded two city contracts worth nearly $400 million, procurement records show.
The contracts relate to computer system integration and IT purchasing services WWT is providing city agencies, the records say.
Adams’ schedule notes WWT is a minority- and women-owned business enterprise, and holds the city’s largest M/WBE contract. The visit to the company’s headquarters will include discussions about “creating a more supportive environment for M/WBEs in New York City,” the schedule says.
In addition to airfare, city funds are being used to pick up the tab for a one-night hotel stay in St. Louis for both Adams and Fraser because Lutvak said there were no flight connections available to get them back to New York on Wednesday night. They’ll return to the city early Thursday, he added.
Lutvak didn’t immediately say how much the trip will cost.
The ban on nonessential out-of-state travel for city officials was implemented by Adams in September.
Along with the ban, he ordered deep budget cuts across all city agencies, including a governmentwide hiring freeze, arguing the spending reductions were needed to offset the billions of dollars his administration has spent on caring for newly arrived migrants.
Since then, Adams has ordered nearly all agencies to slash spending by a cumulative 10%. He was initially supposed to enact an additional 5% trim to all agency budget in April, but announced Wednesday that he’s calling that off.
American voters are broadly skeptical that President Biden is mentally fit to serve a second term, and most don’t think his presumed general election rival Donald Trump is mentally fit, either, according to a Quinnipiac University poll published Wednesday.
In the survey, 64% of respondents said Biden (inset, left) was mentally unfit for another term, a bleak data point for the president in a poll where he nonetheless outperformed his top-line numbers in many other surveys. Meanwhile, 51% of voters told the pollster they did not think Trump (inset, right) was mentally fit for a second term on Pennsylvania Ave.
The 81-year-old Biden — whose mental acuity has been under heightened scrutiny after special counsel Robert Hur‘s report this month characterized him as an “elderly man with a poor memory” — has pushed back on concerns about his cognizance and recall, and has shown no public signs of pulling back from his reelection campaign “I’m an elderly man, and I know what the hell I’m doing,” Biden told reporters at the White House two weeks ago. “I put this country back on its feet.”
As Biden marches toward the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, the 77-yearold Trump has been gliding to the Republican nomination while holding leads over the current president in public opinion polls.
Quinnipiac’s latest national poll was an outlier: Biden led Trump by 4 points, even as two-thirds of voters said they judged Biden to be too old to serve another full term in the White House.
Separately, an Economist/YouGov poll published Wednesday showed Biden a point behind Trump. Both Quinnipiac and YouGov are respected pollsters.
Many other surveys have shown Trump with larger leads over Biden.
In New York State, Biden led Trump by 12 points in a Siena College survey published Tuesday, underscoring the president’s recent struggles locally. In the 2020 election, Biden won New York by more than 23 points.
The Siena poll found more than 40% of New York voters saying they would prefer “somebody else” over Biden or Trump.
But the election is more than 250 days away, and public opinion on both candidates may shift markedly between now and November.
Biden’s campaign, seeking to rebut concerns that Democrats are unenthusiastic about the president’s reelection bid, has pointed to a surge in grassroots fundraising in January.