N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race: Residency Questions and an Endorsement

Weather: Partly sunny and not as hot. High in the mid-80s.

Alternate-side parking: In effect until June 19 (Juneteenth).

The mayor’s race in New York City took an unusual turn on Wednesday — into a candidate’s apartment.

Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president and a leading Democratic candidate in the contest, gave reporters a tour of an apartment in the multiunit townhouse he owns in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood.

The viewing came as rival campaigns questioned his residency and fitness for office following a Politico New York story that highlighted discrepancies over his residency on official documents. Mr. Adams has said he moved into Brooklyn Borough Hall for a time after the pandemic hit, and also owns a co-op in Fort Lee, N.J.

The development injected another dose of uncertainty into the race and offered fresh fodder for Mr. Adams’s opponents as four of the other top candidates — Kathryn Garcia, Scott M. Stringer, Maya D. Wiley and Andrew Yang — prepared for another debate this evening.

Early voting begins on Saturday.

[Read more about the questions Mr. Adams is facing and the dynamics of the race.]

Here’s more on the latest controversy and other candidates:

Mr. Adams gives an apartment tour

Mr. Adams led a tour of a wood- and brick-trimmed apartment and sought to dismiss residency questions, while reporters inspected the refrigerator and feverish speculation swirled on social media about whether it matched images he had shared in earlier years.

Mr. Adams said he was simply private about his home life, retelling a story of being shot at just days after his son, Jordan, now 26, was born. “How foolish would someone have to be to run to be the mayor of the city of New York and live in another municipality,” he said.

But rival campaigns shared some of their fiercest, most personal criticisms of Mr. Adams’s campaign yet, raising concerns of transparency, ethics and integrity.

Neighbors in Brooklyn have offered mixed accounts of whether they knew Mr. Adams.

Maya Wiley lands another endorsement

Following an endorsement from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez last weekend, Ms. Wiley notched another vow of support on Wednesday — this time from Jumaane D. Williams, the New York City public advocate.

It was the latest effort to consolidate left-wing support around Ms. Wiley’s candidacy in the homestretch of the race.

Dianne Morales’s campaign hits further turbulence

More than 40 workers were terminated on Wednesday from the campaign of Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, according to a tweet from a union representing staff members. Her campaign has faced significant inner turmoil in recent weeks.

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And finally: A museum takes on its gaps in Black history

The Times’s Jennifer Schuessler writes:

There is no shortage of ghosts at the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side, which for nearly three decades has explored issues of immigration, home and belonging. But in recent years, the story of one particularly ghostly presence has lingered in the background.

In 2008, shortly after the opening of an apartment telling the story of Joseph Moore, an 19th-century immigrant Irish waiter, a museum educator noticed something interesting in an 1869 city directory. Right above Moore’s name was another Joseph Moore, also a waiter, living a few neighborhoods away.

Same name, same profession. But with an extra designation — “Col’d,” or Colored.

The educator started inviting visitors to think about the two Joseph Moores, and a conversation grew about how to talk about “the other Joseph Moore” — and about the museum’s broader omissions.

Now, as the museum celebrates its reopening with a block party on Saturday, it is leaning into the story of the Black Joseph Moore. It is researching an apartment recreation dedicated to him and his wife, Rachel — its first dedicated to a Black family. And it is introducing a neighborhood walking tour that explores sites connected with nearly 400 years of African American presence in the area.

The reopening comes after a tumultuous year for the museum. Last June, after the murder of George Floyd, some staff members protested what they saw as the museum’s insufficient statement of support for Black Lives Matter. (The museum quickly issued a second, more self-critical statement.)

Now, it is taking on an enormous — and enormously fraught — question: How does a museum — and a nation — that celebrates the immigrant experience incorporate the stories of Black people who were brought here involuntarily, and who for centuries remained shut out of the opportunity and full citizenship open to most newcomers?

“Basically, we’re taking apart everything and putting it back together again,” Annie Polland, the museum’s president, said in an interview last month.

It’s Thursday — learn more.

Metropolitan Diary: Alphabet City

Dear Diary:

I stood at the intersection of Avenue C and Eighth Street on a warm night in 2018, pushing tears away from my eyes so I could see well enough to order a Lyft.

Waiting for the car to arrive, I noticed a small group of people nearby. They were smoking cigarettes and chatting. I walked over and asked for one. They stopped talking and looked at me. A young woman held a cigarette out to me.

I walked back to the corner, the cigarette lit and my nerves beginning to calm even as the tears continued to flow. The same young woman approached me.

“You OK, girl?” she said. “I saw you in here earlier with a guy.”

I was surprised.

“Yeah, thanks,” I said. “I’m OK. I just thought he was my friend. It turns out he isn’t.”

She nodded and stayed next to me, mostly quiet but also offering a few encouraging words. She said she had noticed my dress earlier. It was cinched with a belt that I’d taken from my mother’s collection.

I wasn’t quite finished with the cigarette when my car pulled up. The young woman went over to the driver.

“She needs a minute,” she said.

The driver looked at me, and then he nodded solemnly.

“You tell her to take her time,” he said.

— Hannah Kinisky

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