Appearances don’t get worse than FBI raids on the home of your police commissioner, your top deputy mayor and the deputy mayor for public safety.
Not to mention that your schools chancellor lives with one of those deputies and is the brother of the other.
For starters, Mayor Adams needs to tell Police Commissioner Edward Caban to resign.
Yes, it’s conceivable that this is some Biden-Harris vendetta against the mayor, but the feds at least have enough evidence of something crooked to get the warrants for these raids.
Caban as NYPD chief works with the feds every day; now he’s had his home raided by the very same feds.
Even if he’s done nothing wrong, how can he possibly do his job properly while this stink remains?
Even if he’s cleared, bad blood will fester on.
The only losers in this scenario are the NYPD and the people of New York City.
Indeed, Adams likely needs to jettison every aide who now threatens to sink his mayoralty, including Deputy Mayors Sheena Wright and Phil Banks.
With his approval ratings already in the tank heading into his re-election year, and far-lefties lining up to primary him (not to mention ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo circling), personal loyalty has to take a back seat to his loyalty to average New Yorkers.
There is no evidence that the Justice Department is about to indict the mayor, but those around him cannot be so confident.
Yet Adams will, fairly or unfairly, be forever tainted if he doesn’t take strong steps to distance himself.
This mayor is a great cheerleader for New York and largely stands up courageously to defend common-sense principles when times of crisis hit, with crime and antisemitism being two top examples.
But he faces persistent (and often convincing) criticism that he’s a poor executive who too often values loyalty over competence.
That weakness for familiarity comes at the expense of effective and clinical governance.
It’s time he shows New Yorkers he can pull his foot out of the . . . dung and boldly take the right step forward out of this quagmire.