As the power of the city’s papers fades, a new political type emerges.
During April’s annual Inner Circle dinner, a musical review in which the New York press corps lampoons the politicians they cover, Eric Adams capped the show with the traditional mayoral comic rebuttal.
He stood on the stage, his backdrop a mock-up of a New York Post front page picturing the shirtless, buff mayor grinning below an all-caps headline: “SEXY IN THE CITY.”
After calling the event “my least favorite night of the year,” Adams, the Post noted, told the Ziegfeld Ballroom crowd: “I look forward to coming back to this for the next four years.”
We now know that the appearance would be his final Inner Circle gig, at least as a mayor of New York City. And with his exit Sunday from the race for City Hall, the bit, in retrospect, underscores that Adams may very well be our last made-for-the-tabloids mayor.
It could spell the end of an era — or an error, depending on your view (and your tolerance for tabloid-friendly puns). Also, depending on how you see the world: The tabs either educate the public on who the politicians really are or caricature them beyond recognition — denigrating civic engagement, trust in the media and the papers’ own relevance.
Assemblyman and Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani (D-Queens), who is leading in the polls, has built his insurgent mayoral run as a young Democratic Socialist largely on a mix of social media mastery (heavy on the food videos), made-for-the-people message clarity and an army of door-knocking volunteers.
It’s a very different form of political celebrity than the brand long forged by his last-standing rivals, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa. Cuomo’s public life began as a teenager when he helped run his father’s failed 1977 mayoral campaign. Sliwa, now 71, emerged during the same period as the city’s self-appointed red-bereted crimefighter.
The duo, like Adams — and the president who rescued the mayor from a corruption rap — knew how to play to the Post, the Daily News and, for a while, New York Newsday, as well as to local (and eventually national) TV news cameras. And they’ve largely stuck to their tried-and-true love-hate relationship with the press, even as the power of traditional media has waned. Many a reporter and editor have been on the receiving end of an angry Cuomo or Donald Trump rant.
Adams may be less hands-on, but his career trajectory owes just as much to the tabs. He first gained widespread attention in the 1990s as an outspoken leader of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, crusading for racial equity.
The activist cop morphed into the “swagger” mayor with his declarations of “my haters become my waiters” and “If you’re going to hang out with the boys at night, you have to get up with the men in the morning” — even if it wasn’t always clear where he was awakening, given confusion over his residency.
The laws of tabloid physics mandate that rises come with inevitable falls, usually self-inflicted. The archetype fits Adams as well as the designer-tailored suits he favors.
For perspective on how we got this point, check out journalist Jonathan Mahler’s insight-filled, “The Gods of New York,” which tackles (among other things) the late 1980s plummet of Ed Koch, whose mayor-as-celebrity reign dwarfed that of John Lindsay and even Fiorello LaGuardia. Mahler also chronicles the tabloid-propelled elevation of characters still in the public realm, among them Al Sharpton, Rudy Giuliani and Trump.
None are remotely god-like, but some have proven more resilient than others, as Andrew Cuomo has no doubt pondered.
Mamdani, born in 1991 during David Dinkins’ mayoralty, is busy writing his own TikTok-friendly script as he defies the laws of tabloid physics. Take his relative lack of experience, his past criticism of the “racist” NYPD (he says he plans to apologize, but has yet to do so) and his threat to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu should the Israeli prime minister step foot in New York during his mayoralty. All have landed Mamdani on screaming front pages (or “woods,” as we old ink-stained wretches call them) — and all would have made his candidacy a nonstarter in times past.
But he’s brought to the polls young voters unconcerned with Rupert Murdoch’s Post deriding him as a virtual communist (one July front page pictured Mamdani with the Soviet hammer-and-sickle). The Daily News, my former employer, hasn’t been much friendlier. Even The New York Times’ vexing Democratic primary non-endorsement editorial telling New Yorker not to vote for Mamdani also failed to sway his fans.
The 33-year-old Democratic nominee's approach is working for him — so far. But the dynamic will almost certainly change should he become mayor of New York, a platform for aspiring larger-than-life figures with varying degrees of inflated egos screaming out to be punctured. The question is how much: Will the tabs set the tone, or will the media-savvy mayor?
Mamdani’s mayoral hero, Bill de Blasio, became defined in the press by his much-criticized chauffeured rides from Gracie Mansion to his beloved Prospect Park YMCA, perhaps speaking to a stubbornness that at times hampered his effectiveness.
Mike Bloomberg, the nonplayboy billionaire, played an unnecessary cat-and-mouse game with reporters by trying to keep weekend jaunts to his homes in Vail, Bermuda and elsewhere a secret.
Both could be prickly, but not as nearly as much as Koch and Giuliani, who relished verbal battles with the press and other perceived enemies. Both became the pugnacious face of the city of his time (before Giuliani’s response to 9/11 would briefly earn him the honorary moniker of “America’s Mayor”).
Cuomo falls into the combative category, both cultivating and cudgeling generations of journalists, including some who later reported on the multiple sexual harassment allegations that drove him out of Albany in 2021 (he denies the accusations). He’s been kicked around in recent months by the Post, though the paper is softening up a tad with Adams out of the race (the editorial board recently advised Cuomo to show more warmth on the campaign trail).
If he’s elected mayor, how Mamdani will be pegged by the press — and how much it matters — will depend on how he rises to the challenges of leadership and how he engages with the media day-to-day. Much also will depend on whether Trump makes good on his vow to make Mayor Mamdani’s life hell.
Even as a frontrunner, Mamdani has generally engaged with reporters, showing some earned confidence. But he should keep in mind another tabloid maxim: Anything can happen between now and Election Day.
The only certainty is whoever’s standing on the stage at next year’s Inner Circle will have the last laugh, at least for one night.