Another Liberal City Is Losing Faith in Its Liberal Leadership

A majority of New Yorkers say their city is headed in the wrong direction under Democratic mayor Eric Adams, according to a Siena College poll released Tuesday.

Fifty-six percent of respondents said the city is headed in the wrong direction, while an overwhelming majority—70 percent—said they feel less safe than when the pandemic began. Adams’s approval rating, meanwhile, is underwater: Just 29 percent of New Yorkers said his performance has been “excellent” or “good,” while 64 percent said it has been “fair” or “poor.”

Spectrum News NY1, which commissioned the poll, published the results on the same day that residents in another leftwing city are pushing back against their far-left leaders. Radical San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin (D.), whose soft-on-crime policies led to the release of a serial criminal who went on to kill two people, on Tuesday faces a recall effort organized by members of his own party, who say he is too extreme even for famously liberal San Francisco. Recent polling indicates that a majority of San Franciscans want Boudin out.

While Adams said this week that shootings in New York are trending downward, overall crime jumped 28 percent last month, Spectrum News reported Friday. Grand larcenies, burglaries, robberies, and gun arrests all rose.

While Adams has said addressing homelessness is a priority, 49 percent of New Yorkers said he’s doing a poor job on the issue. Forty-five percent said he’s also doing a poor job on fighting crime.

New Yorkers are similarly unhappy with Democratic state leaders, including Governor Kathy Hochul. A plurality of respondents, 46 percent, said the state is heading in the wrong direction, and a majority, 54 percent, called Hochul’s performance only “fair” or “poor.”

The poll respondents are far from the only New Yorkers to show their dissatisfaction with left-wing leadership. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, New Yorkers have fled the Empire State in droves, with many heading to Republican-led states such as Texas and Florida.

Many former Gothamites told the New York Post they left the state because of leftwing policies such as lockdowns, mask mandates, and high taxes. The state’s tax base shrank in 2020 by $19.5 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported last week.

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