At a time when crime is spiking around the country, cop-turned-mayor Eric Adams finds himself holding a megaphone to meet the moment nationally.

“The over-proliferation of guns in our cities is creating what’s causing bloodshed across our nation,” he said Monday in Washington, D.C.

What You Need To Know

  • Adams spent Monday in D.C. and Tuesday in Miami

  • The mayor has become a national authority on public safety, visiting the White House even before he was elected

  • Adams has embraced the national spotlight as the Democratic Party struggled with messaging

But Adams is building a profile beyond public safety, more than once calling himself “the face of the new Democratic Party.”

He has the blue-collar background and moderate politics of President Joe Biden.

“I’m the Biden of Brooklyn and I love the fact that the president is coming here,” he had said in early February before hosting the president.

The city’s 110th mayor is also hard to pigeon-hole, his working-class appeal seemingly at odds with his New Age affinity for mediation.

He’s undoubtedly eccentric, his nightlife, diet, residency and overall lifestyle are subjects of curiosity.

Democratic strategist Camille Rivera said, “I think that the Democratic Party is searching for someone that creates an excitability and leans independent voters in, and I think they are trying to find that in Eric Adams.”

Adams has been out of town for the past two days.

On Monday, Adams was in Washington for a National League of Cities summit.

Later in the day, he held a news conference with his D.C. counterpart, Mayor Muriel Bowser, on the high-profile murders of people experiencing homelessness.

“We don’t want to lose another resident, in this city, in New York or anywhere else,” Adams said then.

On Tuesday, a podcast episode aired in which Hillary Clinton — who as a presidential nominee was the face of the Democratic Party — congenially interviewed Adams.

“It is not what happens in tweets, it’s what happens on our streets,” Adams says in the episode.

“Amen! Oh! Preach, preach, mayor!” Clinton responded.

Then, Adams, a cryptocurrency fan, was in Miami for an esoteric tech conference called Inveniam Data 3.0 for Web 3.0.

Wary of how the local news media has portrayed him, Adams like other politicians is reaching out to the public more directly. He joined a social media platform popular with a crowd far younger than 61.

“Bing bong, New York City. Your mayor’s on TikTok,” he said in his first post.

And his tweets now include videos edited to review his week as he wants it seen.

Rivera, the political strategist, warns that with style and short-term flash must come substance and long-term solutions.

“And what you’re going to end up with is, ‘What is he actually accomplishing?’” she said. “But right now he’s in a honeymoon, people feel good about him, he’s got like a 60% approval rating.”