New York City Mayor Eric Adams surrendered to authorities in a Manhattan courtroom Friday morning to plead not guilty to federal charges of bribery. The five count indictment against the mayor has some people calling for his removal from office. If he chooses not to resign, Governor Kathy Hochul has the option to remove Adams from his office, which raises the question: should the governor force the mayor’s hand and make the call herself? One person who can relate to what Hochul might be thinking is former New York Governor David Paterson. Speaking on 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning program, Paterson says that he would not remove Adams if he were in Hochul’s place today.
“You would have to have clear and convincing evidence that this person should not serve on the job anymore,” Peterson told Berman and Larry Mendte, sitting in for Riedel. “So, for instance, if you had a video of them assaulting somebody, that would be no call at all. You would have immediately removed them from office. But in a situation like this, it would be impossible for a governor to go through all the machinations and all the difficulties that a mayor has to to determine whether he or she is doing a good job. So no, I would have allowed the person to stay- they’re up for re-election next year [and] the people can decide- and they might be up for a special election if the mayor resigns and the public advocate takes over and calls a special election.”
Paterson further contends that Damian Williams, the US Attorney who laid out the charges against Adams at a press conference Thursday, practically buried the lead when explaining the federal case. “The real damage would be accepting money from foreign governments for fundraising, and that he’s being accused of accepting money and then putting it in the campaign finance arena, where you get an eight-to-one match. So here you’ve matched one dollar with eight dollars, and the one dollar didn’t even come from an American. That’s the real charge, and I’m surprised they didn’t talk about that right away. It was almost like, ‘oh, by the way’ 35 minutes into his speech.”
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