The Booby Trap Eric Adams Set For Zohran Mamdani

NEW YORK — Former New York City Mayor Eric Adams, channeling his inner Kevin McCallister, rigged City Hall in the waning days of his term with a maze of governmental booby traps primed to stymie his successor, Zohran Mamdani.

Most of those efforts failed through a combination of bad timing, limits on Adams’ power and general ham-fistedness. But the former mayor managed to lay one tripwire so consequential that it has triggered weeks of legal and political scrambling — and raised questions about whether it can be disarmed at all.

Hours before Adams left office on Dec. 31, the lame-duck mayor established a legally protected commission packed predominately with loyalists and tasked with exploring a ballot question about open primaries, a proposed change in the city’s electoral machinery that, if implemented, would make it more difficult for Mamdani, a democratic socialist, to win a second term.

In the weeks since, the question of how to undo — or at the very least blunt — the impact of Adams’ zombie commission has attracted the attention of the city’s likely next corporation counsel, spawned a bill in Albany that would allow Mamdani to disband the outfit and spurred government ethics experts to explore how Adams’ creation might be reconciled to the history books as just another quirk of his tragic turn as city executive.

“This sets up a mayoral institution that is potentially in conflict with the sitting mayor, and that strikes me as very unwise and petty,” said Richard Briffault, a government expert at Columbia Law School and former chair of the city Conflicts of Interest Board. “This is purely hostile.”

Unlike previous mayors who refrained from criticizing or overtly undermining their successors, Adams has largely cast aside decorum.

The former mayor launched an unsuccessful bid to deny Mamdani a rent freeze for income-restricted apartments. Last-minute alterations to press credential rules appeared to contain a poison pill for Mamdani’s very online social media network. He installed a pro-police appointee atop a board charged with investigating NYPD misconduct. He penned a set of executive orders knowing they would exacerbate Mamdani’s already fraught relationship with parts of the city’s Jewish community. And barring intervention from the courts, Adams ensured Mamdani would not be able to build senior affordable housing on a long-contested site by designating it parkland.

On top of it all, Adams — tarnished by corruption allegations, rejected by voters and defiant about his own contributions to that downfall — has directly criticized his successor in a manner his two immediate predecessors carefully avoided.

“All of this is a dramatic departure from what we have seen in recent mayoral transitions,” said Grace Rauh, executive director of Citizens Union, a government accountability organization. “We have been most concerned about the official actions he took in the final weeks, most especially the creation of a commission that makes a mockery of the entire city charter revision process and was a cynical move by an outgoing mayor who lost the confidence of New Yorkers.”

Charter revision commissions review the laws governing New York City and, after soliciting feedback from the public, propose changes to the City Charter in the form of ballot questions. Past commissions have created the modern Council, modified term limits and established the city’s land use process.

The temporary bodies enjoy unique protections in New York’s byzantine bylaws. Once created by the mayor, these outfits cannot be disbanded until they either successfully pose ballot questions to voters or reach the end of their two-year lifespan. During the course of their existence, they also prevent the City Council from penning ballot questions of their own.

That’s why Adams’ latest creation is such a problem for his successor.

The commission could advance ballot questions opposed by Mamdani, upending its traditional purpose as a way for a mayor to make changes to the City Charter. It would likely create novel legal questions about whether the new mayor could form a rival commission. It would most certainly block Council Speaker Julie Menin from pursuing any measures of her own. And if the commission fails to act in this year’s general election, the saga could drag on for half of the mayor’s term.

When Adams breathed life into this latest incarnation, he tasked it with exploring nonpartisan elections in New York City. That typically entails an open primary followed by a general election between the top two finishers, irrespective of party affiliation. Since a set up like this typically produces more moderate candidates, the prevailing thinking is it would greatly impede Mamdani’s reelection prospects.

Needless to say, Mamdani and his team are not fans.

“The Charter Revision Commission is yet another ploy from the Adams administration to circumvent the voice of New Yorkers who elected Zohran Mamdani as mayor,” spokesperson Dora Pekec said in a statement. “And we’ll continue to review all available options.”

Rumors about Adams’ intentions began percolating in the weeks before the New York Post broke the news at the end of December. By that time, Mamdani’s nominee for corporation counsel, Steven Banks, had already spent weeks looking for ways to neutralize what Mamdani’s team considers an abomination, according to three people with knowledge of the situation.

Options, however, are sparse.

Legal minds well traveled through the state’s Municipal Home Rule Law have suggested Mamdani could starve the Adams commission of funds. That would require the outfit’s 15 members to conduct research, book events and promulgate advertisements on their own, rendering it effectively inert.

The commission is also bound by law to study the entire City Charter before settling on ballot questions, providing a Talmudic toehold for the city’s Law Department to challenge commissioners should they focus too intently on nonpartisan elections.

“If Steve Banks is told to make their lives a living hell, there are artful ways of doing that,” said Louis Cholden-Brown, an expert on New York law who served on the 2019 Charter Revision Commission staff.

Others would rather kill the commission altogether.

State Sen. John Liu introduced a bill on Jan. 16 that would allow Mamdani — and any mayor around the state — to nix commissions created during a previous mayor’s lame-duck period. Specifically, the legislation would allow a mayor to review commissions formed within 60 days of a general election.

“It is rather unseemly for an outgoing mayor to assemble this kind of commission that could potentially hamstring the policies of his successor,” Liu said of the Election-Related Requirements for Initiating Charter Commissions, or ERIC Act. “This is not about any particular individual — the bill closes what I consider a loophole.”

Reinvent Albany, a government ethics organization, is still reviewing Liu’s legislation. But it believes the Adams commission should not be able to operate this year and shares concerns with other good government groups that the outfit is a distraction.

“It very much feels like a post-Trump move in that the norms of government cooperation have been thrown out the window,” said Rachael Fauss, a senior policy adviser at the organization. “The political intent was clear.”

Adams — who pointed out that all of his actions were allowed by city law and enacted before he left office — contends he’s done nothing out of the ordinary.

“Claims that the mayor acted to ‘trip up’ a successor are not supported by the facts,” his spokesperson Todd Shapiro said in a statement that referenced a pair of edicts concerning antisemitism and boycotting Israel. “All actions, including executive orders, were taken openly, with legal review, and in response to real policy needs facing the city.”

“If a future administration, including Zohran Mamdani, chooses to undo prior executive actions, that is their prerogative,” Shapiro added.

In the end, the new mayor may not have to do much at all.

There is no guarantee the committee’s leaders will still be keen to do Adams’ bidding. And each one is required to file an oath of office with the city by a certain deadline. As of Tuesday, it remained unclear whether a majority of members had done so.