Eric Adams Vows to ‘Welcome Business,’ Calling New York ‘Dysfunctional’

Eric Adams

He has been more supportive of charter schools than several of his Democratic mayoral rivals, and more so than Mr. de Blasio; he also has close ties to real estate.

And Mr. Adams has said that public safety must be at the center of the economic recovery efforts — echoing a theme that more than 150 business leaders underscored in a letter to Mr. de Blasio last fall when they demanded that he take more decisive action to address crime and other quality-of-life issues that they said were jeopardizing the city’s economic recovery.

Mr. Adams’s remarks came at the SALT Conference, held at the Javits Center and overseen by Anthony Scaramucci, the onetime Trump White House communications director. The schedule promised appearances from two hedge fund billionaires who were principal backers of a super PAC supporting Mr. Adams’s candidacy: Daniel S. Loeb, a prominent charter school supporter, and Steven A. Cohen, the owner of the Mets.

Mr. Scaramucci, a Wall Street veteran, donated $2,000 to Mr. Adams’s mayoral campaign. Over the weekend, former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who got on poorly with Mr. de Blasio, released a direct-to-camera video noting his support of Mr. Adams, who is facing off against Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, in the general election.

“As a candidate, Eric Adams has shown ambition and political courage,” Mr. Bloomberg said in the video.

In his speech, Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, urged employers to collaborate with the city on a common job application, part of a suite of proposals aimed at boosting the city’s economy and combating unemployment and underemployment. Both the public and private sectors would be encouraged to participate.

“I’m proposing an unprecedented partnership between city employers and the city itself to make those connections and create one common application, one job application, to field all of the jobs you have available in this city,” he said. “New York wants your jobs and we want to build them.”