Opinion: Heavy is the head that wears the crown

A wise professor in college once said to me: “Life is a series of choices.”

New York state’s governor has to make a choice in the coming days that has tremendous consequences, and whatever she does is likely to upset a subset of New York City voters.

Embattled New York City Mayor Eric Adams is in a vise – the wheel is turning slowly and squeezing him. His seemingly cozy relationship with President Donald Trump has made his legal troubles disappear (for now at least), but it has only increased his growing isolation in the Democratic Party.

Numerous leaders around the state have called for his resignation or ouster. And I’m not just talking about the obvious ones – his seven opponents in the Democratic primary in four months. Their scorn is inevitable and unsurprising.

But they’ve been joined by a growing chorus of leading Democrats: state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, deputy state Senate Majority Leader Mike Gianaris and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams have all encouraged the mayor to resign. Gianaris has said that if the mayor doesn’t resign, then Hochul should remove him from office.

Yesterday, Hochul had a packed day of meetings with leading Democrats, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, erstwhile activist Al Sharpton and city Comptroller Brad Lander, among others. The governor’s listening tour is meant to inform her monumental decision.

But there is no precedent for a New York state governor removing a duly elected mayor. The closest thing happened in 1932, when then-Gov. Franklin Delano Roosevelt held formal hearings into the behavior of Mayor Jimmy Walker, a flamboyantly corrupt politician who shared Adams’ love of the nightlife. Roosevelt agonized over whether or not to remove Walker, fearing the political blowback from taking on Tammany Hall’s man in Gracie Mansion could derail his own presidential campaign. Ultimately, Walker resigned and fled the city for Europe, sparing Roosevelt from having to formally remove him.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

And now, almost a century later, comes another governor facing an imperiled mayor who is teetering on the edge of extinction. With the devastating mass resignation of four deputy mayors earlier this week, the city faces a crisis of leadership but no clear path to a remedy.

While Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigned in 2021, in the face of likely impeachment by the state Legislature, the New York City Charter contains no impeachment provision. 

The city charter does contain a section, inspired by the 25th Amendment, allowing an ad hoc committee of citywide officials to come together and declare that the mayor is temporarily or permanently unable to discharge his duties. If the committee agrees that the mayor cannot do the job, a two-thirds majority of the City Council can vote to remove him.

Otherwise, only the governor can initiate a removal process. The city charter doesn’t contain much information about how exactly the process should play out, but it’s clear that to remove the mayor, the governor has to bring “charges” against the mayor (though they don’t necessarily have to be accusations of criminal behavior) and then hold hearings to allow the mayor to defend himself. The governor would preside over the hearings and make the final call on whether to remove the mayor, making her judge, jury and (maybe) executioner.

Right now, Hochul faces a series of unappealing choices.

Leave Adams in office for the next ten months, even if he decides not to run or loses the June Democratic primary, and she will come under attack for allowing Trump to have a puppet running the city and allowing mass deportations of undocumented migrants.

Remove Adams from office – after a relatively quick process, but after March 26th – and she will have Mayor Jumaane Williams as her governing partner for the rest of the year. That’s the same person who challenged her for lieutenant governor in 2018, running a much closer race than was expected, and then launched another primary challenge against her in 2022 when she ran for election for governor. Plus, the far-left Williams is hardly her ideological twin, like Adams is.

Williams would likely be a thorn in Hochul’s side and the personification of a robust resistance in New York against an unpopular president and his perceived anti-immigrant policies in most precincts of the city. Williams will likely antagonize Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan, Adams’ new BFF, which could lead to the city and the state losing billions of dollars in federal aid.

Such a scenario would make Hochul’s life extremely difficult in 2025 and could even imperil her reelection prospects in 2026.

But there’s an even more scary scenario that must be rattling around in the governor’s consciousness these days: if Adams is ousted before March 26, a nonpartisan special election to replace him would need to be held within 90 days. The winner would immediately become mayor and serve out the rest of Adams’ term, while also likely running for reelection as an incumbent in November.

Who’s the odds-on favorite to win that quick special election? None other than Hochul’s one-time boss, Andrew Cuomo, who was rumored to be considering dropping her from his ticket in 2022, but had to resign from office a year earlier. The former governor has the sky-high name recognition and support from moderates that would be key to succeed in an abbreviated special election that’s open to all voters, regardless of party affiliation.

A reunion with Cuomo as her governing partner is probably one of Hochul’s bigger nightmares – maybe even more than pairing up with Mayor Jumaane Williams. Cuomo would likely charge back into office at City Hall and look to use his bully pulpit aggressively to spearhead his comeback tour and revive his political future. He still holds a grudge against Hochul for taking his place, and he will not take a back seat to the governor without a fight.

So if you were Hochul, what would you do?

Being the collaborative public servant she is, she’ll likely solicit a lot of input from other Democratic leaders and attempt to do what is in the best interests of the citizens of the city.

But that decision is not a clear-cut one, and we can expect lots of twists and turns in the coming days and weeks.

Not all the political drama is emanating from Washington, D.C. these days.