New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Sunday brushed aside the suggestion that Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s reelection loss was merely a warning sign for Democratic mayors, instead calling it a “warning sign for the country” at large.
“I showed up at crime scenes. I knew what New Yorkers were saying. And I saw it all over the country. I think, if anything, it is really stating that this is what I have been talking about. America, we have to be safe,” Adams told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”
Adams was elected mayor in 2021 after a campaign focused on public safety and combating rising crime.
Lightfoot, who was first elected in 2019, lost her reelection bid last week, failing to make one of two runoff spots. Chicago is now the third major city in recent years with a mayoral election that has tested attitudes – among a heavily Democratic electorate – toward crime and policing.
Violence in Chicago spiked in 2020 and 2021. And though shootings and murders have decreased since then, other crimes – including theft, carjacking, robberies and burglaries – have increased since last year, according to the Chicago Police Department’s 2022 year-end report.
“Mayors, we are closer. We’re closest to the problem,” Adams said Sunday, calling public safety a “prerequisite to prosperity” in American cities. “We are focused on public safety because people want to be safe.”
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Article URL : https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/05/politics/eric-adams-lori-lightfoot-crime-cnntv/index.html