10 months ago
NEW YORK — Two years ago, Eric Adams and the New York Post teamed up to deliver an incessant warning: Crime is out of control. The rhetoric proved devastating to Democrats, who lost four competitive House races in districts where the blood-and-guts headlines resonated with voters.
Now, history is repeating.
The moderate Democratic mayor rarely lets a week go by without issuing new pleas for Washington to help stem the flow of migrants into the nation’s biggest city. Neither does the Post, an influential conservative tabloid that seems equally fixated.
The ceaseless, dire messaging is threatening Democrats in a pivotal election year, giving suburban New York Republicans another potent issue in competitive congressional races.
Since Adams began raising concerns about migrants in 2022, the Post has published 54 covers focused on the issue — all with blaring headlines like “Kids ‘Sacrificed’” (about the city using school gyms to house migrants), “Border Storm” (alongside a photo of Adams predicting a “financial tsunami”) and “New Year’s Wave” (next to a photographed migrant convoy approaching the border).
The Rupert Murdoch-run Post even gave migrants top billing the day other outlets featured Donald Trump being kicked off the Colorado ballot.
There are clear indications the migrant talk is connecting in the same way crime did in 2022, and not just in the suburbs: A December poll found 85 percent of New York City voters were concerned about the city accommodating the surge of migrants, up from 63 percent 10 months earlier.
“If you listen to the mayor and you read the New York Post, you believe that everywhere you look in the city, there are migrants and asylum seekers on the street and you’re stepping over them,” said Alyssa Cass, a Democratic political consultant.
For New York Democrats hoping to retake some of those lost House seats, the surge from the Southern border is tricky terrain made more difficult by Adams and the Post. For Republicans, the current migrant policies — like crime two years ago — are being attacked in campaign ads as a threat to New Yorkers’ way of life, even in districts that aren’t directly affected.
“It’s one of the top-polling issues,” vulnerable Republican Rep. Anthony D’Esposito said in an interview. “The migrant issue equates to crime.”
D’Esposito was among the Republicans swept into office in 2022 by his party’s case that Democrats were worse equipped to keep the suburbs safe. As he and colleagues in swing districts look to retain their seats against formidable Democratic challengers this year, their messaging is reinforced by Adams, who has warned that the migrant crisis will “destroy” his city if he doesn’t get adequate federal resources.
But migrants aren’t as visible a presence in much of the city, including in corners where outcry against sheltering them has been the loudest and angriest.
“In neighborhoods where it’s just something you see on the news or read in the paper, it becomes a specter that demagogues can use as the threat du jour,” Democratic City Council Member Justin Brannan said in an interview. “It used to be ‘defund the police’ or bail reform. Now this is the new thing they can divide and conquer on.”
Brannan was referring, of course, to Republicans. In purple districts like his in southern Brooklyn, the rhetoric is impactful and the rallies against migrants are forceful.
Former GOP mayoral nominee Curtis Sliwa would know — he leads many of the massive protests around newcomers being housed in pockets of the city.
“I’m invited and called in like what they used to call Barack Obama — a community organizer,” Sliwa said in an interview. “I know how to organize people.”
In politically moderate suburbs surrounding the city, concerns about migrants flooding neighborhoods beyond the five boroughs has remained just that — a concern.
“Thankfully, we have a strong county executive who’s made sure it’s not a sanctuary county. But we are dealing with it coming so close to the city line,” D’Esposito said.
Laura Gillen, the Democrat and former Hempstead Town supervisor seeking to unseat D’Esposito, countered: “All he wants to do is fearmonger, and he should be ashamed of himself.”
“He mainly points to the migrants who are being housed in New York City. Migrants are not being housed right now in Nassau County,” Gillen added in an interview.
In the most recent election cycle the issue was nonetheless featured in political ads from Long Island to upstate New York.
In one such ad, new Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine, a Republican, said he would “say no to Suffolk becoming a sanctuary for unvetted migrants” — unlike his Democratic opponent Dave Calone.
An ad from Chrissy Casilio, a Republican who unsuccessfully challenged the Democratic Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz, told voters her opponent “invited the migrant crisis here.”
“Then migrants were arrested for rapes, stabbings and destroying property. I’m Chrissy Casilio and this would not have happened under my watch,” the ad continued.
The migrant crisis undoubtedly has had a major impact on New York City: More than 160,000 people have been processed in the five boroughs since last spring, and about 68,000 of them remain in shelters, according to City Hall.
The Adams administration has struggled to stand up enough emergency facilities to continue housing the newcomers, and the mayor estimates the crisis will cost $12 billion over three years. He’s blamed the lack of aid from the federal government for steep cuts he’s mandated to police, schools and sanitation to plug a $7 billion budget hole.
The mayor’s recent executive order limiting when buses carrying migrants can arrive from Texas to the city underscored his desperation. “We’re dealing with a bully right now,” Adams said Tuesday of GOP Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, “and everything is on the table that conforms with the law.”
But the mayor’s fiery rhetoric has also served as useful fodder for Republicans in their electoral quest.
Recently, the Republican National Committee posted a clip of his comments about the White House, writing on X, “Democrat New York City Mayor Eric Adams on the flood of illegal immigration: ‘Help is not on the way.’”
Adams is almost an anomaly in Democratic messaging, having been elected to office in 2021 as a conservative Democrat who promised to usher in a new era of public safety.
“The mayor is the first through the door on the immigrant issue, sounding the alarm on why this is bad for cities, which is (made up of) mostly Democrats,” said a City Hall adviser granted anonymity to speak freely. “And still, he is called a Republican, he is called ultra-conservative for simply pointing out how people feel.”
But there are no plans to pivot, the person said, adding: “He’s done with worrying about what it means nationally or how other people try to use his words in political fights.”
One person involved in a competitive Democratic campaign this year said the mayor’s comments on the migrant crisis in recent months have “affected the way Democratic voters thought about it and made it more conservative how they were thinking about it.”
The person, also granted anonymity to speak freely, said, “There were definitely times on the campaign when we were like, will he shut up already?”
A December Quinnipiac poll found 85 percent of New York City voters were either “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” the city would “not be able to accommodate the surge of migrants.” That’s compared to a prior Quinnipiac survey last February, in which 63 percent said they don’t think the city “has the ability to accommodate the migrants seeking sanctuary.”
In the city and nearby suburbs, neither Democrats nor Republicans can politically afford to be anti-immigrant but those closer to the political center stress the need for legal immigration.
City Council Member Joann Ariola, a Republican who’s been fighting a migrant shelter in Floyd Bennett Field in her Queens district, argues politicians ignore the migrant issue to their own detriment.
“People are either going to vote with their feet and [move],” she said in an interview, “or they’re going to start voting for people who are much more vocal on how to get a handle on this problem.”
The crisis also threatens to impact neighborhoods through budget cuts, regardless of whether those areas are housing migrants.
“America’s largest city is cutting police and fire services to its own citizens to cope with the growing cost of migrants,” said Council Member Joe Borelli, who leads the body’s GOP caucus. “This is the biggest rake the Democrats could have stepped on in a decade, and they have pressed hard on it.”
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