In the 110th mayoralty\u2019s waning weeks before Mamdani is inaugurated Jan. 1, Eric Adams is looking to extend his reach into the 111th. He appears to be\u00a0considering how to\u00a0embed\u00a0people and policies to stymie his successor \u2014 as lame-duck politicians have done since the beginning of American history \u2014 and mucking up that successor\u2019s ability to quickly deliver on some of the campaign pledges that won last week\u2019s election<\/a>.<\/p>\n Adams spokeswoman Liz Garcia, asked for comment about potential\u00a0Mamdani-proofing, said Friday by text: \u201cThe mayor and mayor-elect spoke yesterday\u00a0and the mayor shared his team\u2019s complete cooperation with the transition process.\u201d<\/p>\n Adams has made no secret of his disagreement with Mamdani\u2019s democratic socialist platform<\/a>, a left-leaning plank of expanded social services, lower residential rent, more restrained policing and higher taxes on the rich.<\/p>\n Insidious forces<\/p>\n “Too often, insidious forces use local government to advance divisive agendas with little regard for how it hurts everyday New Yorkers. Major change is welcome and necessary. But beware of those who claim the answer to destroy the very system we built\u00a0together over generations. That is not change. That is chaos,” Adams said<\/a> Sept. 28 in a video announcing he was quitting the mayoral race.<\/p>\n American history is rich with examples of lame-duck politicians\u00a0\u2014 mayors, governors, presidents\u00a0\u2014 making eleventh-hour moves to try to bind successors. But\u00a0Adams appears to be pushing the bounds of what past New York City mayors have done on the way out, according to experts.<\/p>\n While the city’s lame-duck mayors have all taken such\u00a0late-term actions \u2014 particularly when the next guy\u00a0is an ideological foe \u2014 Adams is venturing beyond precedent, according to Ross Sandler<\/a>, founding director of New York Law School’s Center for New York City Law and an official in the administration of Mayor Edward I. Koch, who served\u00a0from 1978 to 1989.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s far more dramatic in my experience than any of the ones that I saw,\u201d said Sandler, a law professor who has studied mayors going back more than\u00a0six decades, including midnight appointments by outgoing Mayor Abraham Beame in the 1970s.<\/p>\n Other New York City mayors have sought to constrain their successors, but Eric Adams appears to be pushing the maneuver to new heights. Clockwise from top left are Mayor David Dinkins with Mayor-elect Rudy Giuliani;\u00a0Dinkins with the man he replaced as mayor, Ed Koch;\u00a0Mayor Michael Bloomberg with his successor, Bill de Blasio,\u00a0and outgoing Mayor Abe Beame, right, congratulating Mayor-elect Koch. Credit: AFP via Getty Images; AP; Newsday<\/p>\n Laura Tamman<\/a>, a Pace University clinical assistant professor of political science who studies political persuasion, questioned whether Adams can be trusted to do the right thing as his mayoralty draws to a close, particularly given the allegations of corruption, self-dealing and favor-doing for moneyed interests that have swirled around his tenure.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s shown that he acts in his own personal financial interest \u2014 he\u2019s demonstrated that to the public \u2014 so that\u2019s why I think what he\u2019s doing is concerning,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Cool to freezing rent<\/p>\n Recently Adams\u2019 staff approached real estate broker Eleonora Srugo, star of the Netflix reality show \u201cSelling the City,\u201d<\/a> to ask whether\u00a0she\u2019d be interested in an appointment such as\u00a0joining the Rent Guidelines Board. Srugo\u00a0told Newsday she wasn\u2019t sure whether she\u2019d accept, but if she did, \u201cI have a unique experience that would actually allow me to be fair,\u201d as someone who\u2019s lived in an apartment and a luxury broker herself.<\/p>\n She used a barnyard expletive to describe Mamdani\u2019s pledge to freeze the rent, and she shrugged off naysayers who question Adams\u2019 last-minute moves.<\/p>\n \u201cIf it\u2019s within his purview, then the mayor should do what he wants,\u201d Srugo\u00a0said, adding: \u201cI\u2019m sure Mamdani at the end of his term \u2014 which I hope is just a singular one \u2014 will do the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Adams is reportedly considering appointing at least four or five<\/a> or even six<\/a>\u00a0members to the nine-member board, who serve staggered terms lasting multiple years, except for the chair, who serves at the pleasure of the mayor. Other board members can be removed only for cause.\u00a0Adams has long argued that rent freezes are unfair to landlords, especially small ones,\u00a0whose costs keep rising even as rent payments remain frozen.<\/p>\n “While freezing the rent may sound like a catchy slogan,” he said<\/a> in a statement in June, “it is bad policy, short-sighted, and only puts tenants in harm\u2019s way.”<\/p>\n Adams has long received\u00a0campaign donations from real-estate interests, going back to his days as Brooklyn borough president<\/a> and continuing earlier this year<\/a> before he dropped his reelection bid.<\/p>\n In theory, Adams’ late-term appointments could delay any rent freeze until October 2028, according to Jay Martin, executive vice president of the New York Apartment Association<\/a>, which represents rent-stabilized\u00a0landlords.<\/p>\n Ready for a fight<\/p>\n Mamdani \u2014\u00a0whose freeze could mean as much as $6.84 billion less rent paid<\/a>\u00a0over four years \u2014\u00a0is not pleased at what Adams is considering.<\/p>\n \u201cThe mayor is seemingly unsatisfied with a record of raising rents by more than 12% on more\u00a0than 2 million New Yorkers, and is going so far as to consider appointing someone to the Rent Guidelines Board who is known for being a star, I think, on a show called ‘Selling New York,’\u00a0and in many ways that\u2019s the description of what he wants to do over these next few months,” Mamdani said Wednesday, the day after he won.<\/p>\n Ritti Singh, a spokeswoman for the New York State Tenant Bloc<\/a>,\u00a0said that even if Adams does fill the board with landlord-friendly appointees, the pro-freeze\u00a0fight will\u00a0continue.<\/p>\n “We\u2019re committing to generating the external pressure needed to get a rent freeze, whether that\u2019s by changing board members’ minds,” she said,\u00a0“or if that means creating the pressure for Rent Guidelines Board members who plan to raise rents to resign.\u201d<\/p>\n Adams has opposed a rent freeze since his successful campaign in 2021 for mayor. And during the four years of his mayoralty, the board, which the mayor appoints, has hiked rent four times, totaling 12.6%, according to an analysis<\/a> by the Community Service Society of New York, one of the city’s oldest social service agencies.<\/p>\n When Mamdani takes over, he\u2019ll be in charge of a government with more than 300,000 municipal employees and over 100 agencies<\/a>. That includes\u00a0the NYPD, the nation\u2019s largest local police force, which is budgeted<\/a> for 34,975 cops in the current fiscal year, a figure Mamdani wants to leave at the status quo.<\/p>\n A plan for more cops<\/p>\n But on Oct. 31, four days before the election, Adams announced a plan<\/a>, similar to Mamdani\u00a0foe Andrew\u00a0M. Cuomo\u2019s campaign pledge, to begin to boost the headcount to 5,000 cops by 2029 \u2014 the last year of Mamdani\u2019s term \u2014 and start next year with 300 more cops. The plan would grow the NYPD to its highest headcount<\/a> in 25\u00a0years.<\/p>\n Ultimately, Mamdani and the City Council will decide how many cops should be on the force. But while Adams\u2019 plan can be reversed,\u00a0Mamdani would likely face criticism such as that voiced by Cuomo, whom he\u00a0beat last week, who said<\/a>\u00a0failing to add the 5,000 cops would be akin to defunding the police.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, as Mamdani was in Queens for an event<\/a> announcing his mayoral transition team\u2019s co-chairs, Adams announced his offer <\/a>\u2014 the second time in\u00a0his administration \u2014 to rehire those fired across all city agencies over their failure to take the COVID-19 shot. The announcement covers about 1,500 terminated employees, and the deadline for applying is Dec. 5, less than a month before Mamdani takes office. Adams said he’s offering to rehire those fired because the city “has fully recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic.”\u00a0<\/p>\n The plan is subject to a proposed rule change and public hearing and the greenlight by the state Civil Service Commission.<\/p>\n And whatever Mamdani might want to do, those who are rehired into permanent civil service positions could not be terminated except for cause, said Sandler of New York Law School.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, when Mamdani was asked on a podcast<\/a> whether he\u2019d rehire a police officer who was fired for refusing the COVID-19 shot, Mamdani said: “I think I would fall on the side of no… because of the concerns around the necessity of upholding that public health mandate.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMy concern comes from the likelihood that we could be in a new pandemic, and the necessity of following the public health guidance that we put forward in that pandemic,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n An age-old practice<\/p>\n Adams’ attempts to entrench policy preferences\u00a0are just the latest examples of an age-old practice, albeit one done at varying degrees.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Before there was Mayor Eric Adams doing it after failing to win reelection in 2025, there was President John Adams doing it after failing to win reelection in 1800, beaten by Thomas Jefferson.<\/p>\n Undeterred by his loss and with just three months left in office, Adams and his allies in Congress hastened to reshape the judiciary, boost the number of seats on the bench, and create new judgeships, to which he appointed allies, to be more sympathetic with the broadening of federal powers over the states, according to a Federal Judicial Center history<\/a> of what came to be known as the midnight judges\u00a0scandal.<\/p>\n Then-Secretary of State and Chief Justice John Marshall \u201craced against time to deliver the judges\u2019 commissions, failing to distribute some on Adams\u2019 final day in office because there were too many documents to carry,\u201d the history says.<\/p>\n Jefferson\u2019s party later repealed some of what Adams\u2019 allies had rammed through.\u00a0<\/p>\n For his part, Eric Adams has\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0his personal goal for the remainder of his mayoralty is to \u201chave so much fun.\u201d Finally, he said, he can now take a real vacation. Nowadays his schedule barely has any public events anymore.<\/p>\n \u201cNo. 1\u00a0thing I\u2019m gonna do is I\u2019m gonna have fun,\u201d Adams said the day after Mamdani beat Cuomo, whom Adams had endorsed<\/a>. \u201cI plan to have so much fun of just enjoying life.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n