IT'S NOT A PROGRESSIVE CITY:

Just after midnight in Times Square on Friday night, as the ball drops and the new year begins, Eric Adams will be sworn in as the 110th mayor of New York City. Following David Dinkins, he is the second African American elected to the office. But he is the first mayor of New York who is a retired police officer, the first mayor to have attended New York public schools since Abe Beame in the 1970s, and the first Democrat in recent memory to run for mayor as a centrist, a moderate political position he embraced early on and from which he never veered. While conventional wisdom says the left has all the mojo in the Democratic party--think the Squad, Bernie Sanders, the Progressive Caucus--Eric Adams is proof a centrist can create sizzle and even win in a liberal bastion like New York City. His victory has also put him on the radar screen for moderate Democrats across America looking to get behind a centrist who could have a national profile.

"He created his own lane," says Kandy Stroud, a longtime Democratic party insider and a native New Yorker, who believes Adams's key to success was his decision to eschew the politics of New York's current mayor, Bill de Blasio, an unapologetic progressive. "Adams appealed to a more down-the-middle Democrat. He didn't need Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It just goes to show there is an opportunity for a moderate Democrat to win. Then again, Eric Adams has star quality. He's his own dude. He's cool."

Of everything, though, Adams is defined by his past profession. "Never forget he's a cop," says Edward W. Hayes, a Manhattan-based super attorney whose clients have ranged from George Pataki to Robert de Niro to the estate of Andy Warhol. "He talks like a cop. He acts like a cop. It's the people he grew up with who are getting robbed. He's going to try to protect them."

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