Sid Rosenberg, an outspoken radio host in New York City and an ardent supporter of President-elect Donald J. Trump, was at a loss.
Surely, he told Mr. Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, the president-elect understands that some of New York City’s problems can be tied to Mayor Eric Adams.
“He can’t be happy with what’s going on in New York City: the crime, the filth, the dirt, the illegals,” Mr. Rosenberg said earlier this month while interviewing Ms. Trump on his morning talk show. “Yet almost every day in the news, we hear in New York about this blossoming relationship between your father-in-law and the mayor.”
“And Trump supporters in New York don’t understand,” Mr. Rosenberg said.
The spectacle of the Democratic mayor of New York City and one of the most divisive Republican presidents in modern American history making overtures to each other has been the talk of New York City’s political class. But it’s not just Democrats who are upset.
Amid the Republican Party’s unification around Mr. Trump, an early crack has emerged in his hometown. Some New York Republicans who disdain Mr. Adams’s governance of New York City are now watching with concern as the leader of their party makes nice with a Democratic leader who once proudly called himself the “Biden of Brooklyn.”
The latest example came Monday, when Mr. Trump said he would consider pardoning Mr. Adams, who was indicted on federal corruption charges in September, saying that the mayor, like himself, was the victim of prosecutorial overreach. “He was treated pretty unfairly,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Adams, for his part, has spoken frequently of working, not warring, with the incoming administration. Last Thursday, the mayor met with the incoming “border czar,” Thomas Homan, and said that they see eye-to-eye on deporting immigrants who have committed crimes.
Republicans say they can understand why Mr. Adams is motivated to cozy up to Mr. Trump. But in the other direction? Not so much.
Representative Nicole Malliotakis, the city’s only Republican congresswoman, recounted years of battles with Mr. Adams that did not end amicably: over his support for a major congestion pricing plan, the placement of city-funded migrant shelters and even who gets to use New York City streets.
“The Republicans have had to fight him tooth and nail on everything from shelters to sanctuary policy to bike lanes and speed cameras,” she said. “His values are not those of the Republican Party.”
Ms. Malliotakis said she had seen other ideological foes slowly move toward her party, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, two former Democrats whom Mr. Trump nominated for cabinet-level positions.
“But they also share a lot of values and issues that we care about,” she said. “We don’t have much in common right now with Mayor Eric Adams.”
Robert Hornak, a Republican political consultant who ran the Queens Republican Party and managed the campaign of Mr. Adams’s 2021 Republican opponent, Curtis Sliwa, warned fellow Republicans in an opinion essay last week that the mayor “has taken positions antithetical to most Republicans.”
Mr. Hornak criticized Mr. Adams’s management of the police, argued the city feels less safe than it did in the early 1990s and scoffed at Mr. Adams’s contention that he was unfairly targeted by the Justice Department for criticizing President Biden’s immigration policies. “If Adams committed the campaign finance violations he is accused of, something others have gone to jail for, he clearly broke the law,” Mr. Hornak, a Trump voter, wrote in the Queens Ledger.
Joann Ariola, a Republican member of the City Council from Queens, said that she appreciated Mr. Adams’s more aggressive tone of late on immigration, but added that Republicans are not “a one-issue party.” She urged the mayor to consider rehiring city workers fired because they did not receive a Covid vaccination, for example.
“Actions do speak louder than words,” she added.
But in what is perhaps a testament to Mr. Trump’s hold on the Republican Party, other Republican New Yorkers sounded more receptive to welcoming Mr. Adams into the fold — especially if Mr. Trump favors it. Mike Rendino, the chairman of the Bronx Republican Party, said he would be happy to sit down with Mr. Adams to see if they could find a shared agenda “that could get me and the Bronx Republican executive committee behind it.”
“It’s our city, but at the end of the day, it’s the president’s party and his true home,” Mr. Rendino said. “He hasn’t weighed in one way or the other yet, but his vision of a partnership would be all we need to throw our support behind any of the potential candidates.”
Edward F. Cox, the chairman of the New York Republican Party, sounded frustrated as he batted away questions about whether his party would welcome Mr. Adams if he wanted to become a Republican. He called them media “catnip.” (The mayor insists he has no intention of leaving the Democratic Party.)
Still, Mr. Cox welcomed the mayor’s collaborative approach.
So did Bruce Blakeman, the Republican executive of Nassau County; Joseph Borelli, the leader of Republican conference in the New York City Council; and Inna Vernikov, a Republican councilwoman from Brooklyn.
“If the mayor of New York City wants to cooperate and work with the president on making sure that criminals who are here illegally get deported, obviously that’s a good thing and should be encouraged,” Mr. Cox said.
A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Adams has rarely been a standard-issue Democrat. A retired police captain and former Republican, he ran for office on a law-and-order platform. He has championed the Police Department while cutting funds for parks and education. His rhetoric on immigration has sometimes offended some Democrats, particularly his contention that the arrival of more than 200,000 migrants to a city of more than 8 million “will destroy New York City.”
Following Mr. Trump’s election, Mr. Adams met ringside with Mr. Trump at a UFC fight. In a recent television interview, he declined to immediately reject the notion that he might join the Republican Party — but later clarified he would run for re-election next year as a Democrat. Advisers to Mr. Adams have also enlisted Republicans’ help to get him a ticket to Mr. Trump’s inauguration.
In September, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York indicted Mr. Adams on five federal corruption charges, including charges of bribery and conspiracy to solicit foreign donations. He has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to go on trial in April.
Mr. Trump will soon have the power to pardon Mr. Adams or lean on the Justice Department to go easy on him. Mr. Adams has denied that the prospect of a pardon is motivating any of his actions.
But since Mr. Trump was elected, Mr. Adams’s friendliness toward the incoming president has done little to assuage concern among Democrats that he is angling for a pardon. Nor has it proven uniformly persuasive to New York Republicans.
Mr. Rosenberg, a former ally of Mr. Adams, told Ms. Trump in the interview that New York Republicans understood “the kindred spirit, the D.O.J. going after both of them, blah blah blah.”
“But they’re a little worried that your father-in-law is giving the mayor too much time when, in fact, he’s partly at fault for destroying this city,” he continued.
Ms. Trump suggested Mr. Adams was a political naïf who made some early mistakes. And she said that he has since learned the ropes.
“Now he wants to do the right thing, and it’s never too late to do the right thing,” she said, “and Donald Trump wants to be there to support him.”
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