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Eric Adams Vows Pro-Business Leadership Will Return to NYC

Eric Adams Vows Pro-Business Leadership Will Return to NYC

New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Eric Adams told a prominent investor conference on Monday that the city would no longer be “anti-business,” pledging a break from the anti-corporate rhetoric espoused by Mayor Bill de Blasio.

“This is going to be a place where we welcome business and not turn into the dysfunctional city that we have been for so many years,” Adams said on Monday, without mentioning de Blasio by name. “Government must do its job to create an environment for growth.”

If elected in November, the Brooklyn Borough president’s spending priorities would include programs supporting children and fighting crime, Adams said during a speech to roughly 1,000 financial professionals at the Skybridge Alternatives Conference, or SALT, which was held at Manhattan’s Javits Convention Center.

The conference was sponsored by Skybridge Capital, the investment firm founded by Anthony Scaramucci. Steve Cohen of Point72 Asset Management, a donor to the Adams campaign, was set to speak Monday afternoon, in a talk titled “The Hedge Fund Comeback.”

Eric Adams Vows Pro-Business Leadership Will Return to NYC

Scaramucci introduced Adams as “the right person, in the right time, in the right place for New York City.”

Adams also appealed to the city’s financial industry to do more to help the city’s economy recover after being pummeled by the pandemic. New York’s unemployment rate remains at 7.6%, the second highest in the country and well above the 5.4% U.S. average as of July. 

“We expect something in return folks,” he said, urging businesses to hire more workers and help the city retrain people in need of new skills. 

As part of a larger economic recovery plan, Adams also proposed the creation of one common job application to fill all jobs in the city, the expansion of subsidized childcare and the creation of a new plainclothes anti-gun unit to reduce gun crimes.

“I want to be blunt with this,” he said at the investor conference. “We want to offer you, and ask you to offer jobs to New Yorkers. Right now, there are hundreds of thousands of people out of work in New York and there are hundreds of thousands of jobs that you have that we can fill.”

De Blasio refuted any claims that he doesn’t have a good relationship with the city’s business leaders. 

“I’m very confident that New York City has supported businesses and working people,” he said during his daily press briefing on Monday. “Striking that balance, particularly during the Covid era, bending over backward to help businesses come back strong.”

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