Editor’s note: Mayor Eric Adams’ ‘Hector LaSalle’ moment

Is New York City Mayor Eric Adams experiencing his own Hector LaSalle moment? Last year, the state Senate made it clear to Gov. Kathy Hochul that the chamber would reject LaSalle, the governor’s first pick to lead the state Court of Appeals, over concerns about his relatively conservative politics. But Hochul wouldn’t take no for an answer and threatened to sue the Senate unless they held a full hearing and floor vote on LaSalle’s nomination – which ended in an embarrassing rejection for the poor judge.

Adams is putting similar pressure on the New York City Council to confirm Randy Mastro, his nominee for corporation counsel. A majority of the council had said they would not vote for Mastro, whose work for former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and in private practice they viewed as disqualifying. But Adams refused to pull the nomination and Mastro sat for a brutal council hearing that lasted for more than 10 hours, even though he had virtually no chance of being confirmed.

Like Hochul, Adams seems to believe that a legislature’s “advice and consent” role is perfunctory; his job is to choose the corporation counsel, and the council’s job is to confirm his choice as long as the person is qualified. But the council, like the state Senate, isn’t content with being a rubber stamp. Council members correctly view these nominations as fundamentally political decisions and believe that it is their role to reject nominees whose politics they find objectionable. So long as the mayor refuses to acknowledge the council’s political independence and authority over nominations, it’s people like Mastro who pay the price.