With the election safely behind incoming New York City Mayor Eric Adams, the Democrats who pushed him to victory in the party’s primary this spring are starting to get a better look at precisely who it is that they are putting in charge of City Hall. Needless to say, not all of them will be pleased. On the campaign trail, Adams gave some hints about some of his less progressive views without ever getting too specific. But now he’s lifting the covers and revealing some of his plans that sound more in keeping with his former Republican roots than the AOC branch of his party. During an interview on CNN this weekend, Adams was asked about several hotly debated topics in the city, starting with the current mayor’s mandate of face masks in public schools. Let’s just say he’s not a fan of the idea and will be looking at the possibility of removing the mandate as soon as he takes office. (NY Post)

Mayor-elect Eric Adams took to the airwaves Sunday and declared he wants to nix mask mandates in the classroom and called himself “conservative” on public safety.

Adams fears masks are stopping students from making friends and said he wants to end the school mask mandate when he takes office come Jan. 1.

“If we can find a safe way to do it, I look forward to getting rid of the mask,” Adams told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning.

Adams is still sticking with the talking point of “following the science” before removing the mandate, so it may not happen on day one. But his objections to the idea of face masks in school have less to do with suppressing the spread of the virus than they do with the emotional and psychological impact they have on children. He pointed out the importance of children being able to see the other kids smile. A smile is “part of the socialization” that children need as they grow up. (An excellent point, by the way.)

The soon-to-be Mayor had more on his mind than just face masks. He also reiterated his campaign promise to bring the city’s spiraling violent crime rate under control. And he doesn’t plan to do it by dispatching “violence interrupters” with clipboards. In a separate interview, he told NPR that criminals who are arrested with illegal guns need to be locked up and stay in jail rather than being immediately released through a revolving door as happens far too often under the current administration.

“I am conservative on public safety when you see 13-year-old children in our schools stabbed in libraries and a woman was shot while walking down the block with a baby in a carriage,” Adams told NPR’s Weekend Edition.

“When I use the term ‘conservative’, I have zero tolerance for abusive and criminal and violent behavior.

If Eric Adams can deliver on these priorities, along with other non-progressive ideas he has proposed, he’ll likely be a successful mayor. But he’s not going to win any friends in his party among the AOC crew and those who continue to push for defunding the police and similar insane ideas. The irony here is that if Adams had remained in the Republican Party after retiring from the police force, he wouldn’t have stood a chance of winning a city-wide election. But by putting a “D” after his name instead of an “R,” Gotham’s liberal voters welcomed him with open arms, even though they were clearly voting for someone who speaks a lot more like a conservative cop than a liberal firebrand. Given the current state of distress the city is under, however, a lot of the voters may be willing to forgive and forget all of that if the police manage to get the gangs back under control and Adams gives parents more of a say in school policy than the teachers’ unions.