If you buy into the polls, Eric Adams may very well be the next mayor of New York City. That’s something few people anticipated this time last year, when almost no one could name any of the dozens of Democratic candidates besides Andrew Yang, and mayoral hopefuls were mostly relegated to tiny boxes on Zoom. It continued to seem unlikely through a summer of racial-justice protests when a progressive activist like Maya Wiley looked like a better shot. But as my colleague Chris Smith wrote earlier this month, “Timing is always crucial in city elections,” and with the decline of COVID and the rise of shootings, Adams’s message—that he’s both a police reformer and a public-safety advocate—appears to have been resonating.

That’s in spite of not just a campaign season like no other, but the question of whether Adams actually lives within the five boroughs; a speech in which he told newcomers to the city to “go back” to Iowa and Ohio; and the perception that, as a former cop, he might be too friendly to a police force in need of serious change and accountability, not helped by the resurfacing of a 2011 video in which he shows parents how to search their children’s rooms for “contraband” and tells them to regularly do so. (Also, that four-year stint as a Republican.) If the polls are any guide, however, Adams could be headed to Gracie Mansion come January 2022 after tomorrow’s primary—which will be decided, for the first time ever, by ranked-choice voting.

Last week, Vanity Fair chatted with Adams about everything from his Bed-Stuy apartment to the NYPD to smoking a joint and performing surgery to Beyoncé. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Vanity Fair: You’re leading in all the polls. How are you feeling as Election Day nears? Do you think you have this in the bag?

Eric Adams: I don’t really look at the polls. If I was number one or number 19, I will do the same thing I’ve been doing, working hard and I use the term called grind. I do my job and the universe will do its job.

But you must be happy that you’re doing well.

Not happy, not sad. The man with the wax wings flew just enough, not too close to the sun, not too close to the water. Steady.

I need to bring up the elephant in the room: People still don’t think you actually live in that Bed-Stuy apartment. There are like forensic-level investigations on Twitter comparing the fridge you showed on the tour to past shots of your fridge; the contents have a lot of non-vegan items for a vegan; the bed is just in the middle of the room. Are you sure you don’t live in New Jersey? I grew up there, there’s no shame in it.

Those people on Twitter, I just keep it moving and ignore them. It took a lot out of me to open my home, and I did it because I did not want to have this engulf my campaign. My advisers told me, “Eric, that’s disrespectful to you. Don’t do it.” And I said, “No, I’d rather be transparent.” After that, they asked for my E‑ZPass records, I gave it to them. That’s a wrap for me. They don’t get any more responses. They can tweet all they want; that’s a whole universe that lives among itself. [But] there’s a real-world that is not on Twitter. And so I could care less what they write, what they say. I did what I needed to do to show people I’m a Brooklynite.

If you win, will you move into Gracie Mansion?

That’s still up for decision. I would like to, but you know, just as the mayor, I [would] enjoy coming back to Brooklyn. And so I’m sure there’ll be days I would spend in Brooklyn as well. I enjoy the neighborhood and I like to let people know that your mayor lives on your block.

Last night a story came out about another apartment that you reportedly didn‘t disclose owning. Are you concerned about any kind of legal investigations while you’re in office?

Not at all. In 2007, I believe, I signed [over shares in the coop to a friend], I showed the contract that I signed it over. The new owner stated that “Eric signed the property over to me.”

The tension over policing is a central issue—combating rising crime versus curbing police abuses. You’ve talked a lot about the former, and some of your plans like bringing back stop-and-frisk conflict with the latter. How do you balance the two? What do you say to people who believe you’re too soft on cops?

First, the term I want to “bring back stop-and-frisk” is not accurate. [Adams told CBS New York last year, of stop-and-frisk, “Used it, used it often, great tool. We should never have removed stop-and-frisk.”] I testified in federal court because the police department was abusing stop-and-frisk. And that’s why Judge [Shira] Scheindlin mentioned me in her ruling. We can’t go back to those days and I’m not going to allow the city to go back to those days. My opponents are attempting to use that as a talking point because they were not around when I was fighting to stop the abusive stop-and-frisk. This is what’s [been] my life’s work. We have to deal with gun violence, [but] we don’t have to use an abusive tool to do so.

So you think there is a way to use stop-and-frisk that isn’t abusive?

Well, there’s a word that’s missing in there. It’s called stop, question, and frisk. So 2 o’clock in the morning, you look out your door, you see a person standing in front of your house. He places a gun in his waistband. You go to call the police, I hope. That police officer responds. He needs to be able to question that person, “What are you doing with that gun?” If we’re telling police officers you can’t question people, we are jeopardizing the safety of the city. Police officers must follow the rules to be able to question if there’s reasonable suspicion that someone is carrying that firearm. That’s not what we were doing. We were stopping and frisking people based on their ethnicities and based on the communities they were in. That will never happen under my administration.

The last debate got a little heated with Andrew Yang. You said you never asked the police union that endorsed him to endorse you; he insisted you had and weren’t being truthful. Did that accusation make you angry? Do you think he’s worried after slipping in the polls?

Clearly it was not heated. I was in my Zen moment before the debate, I sat in my chair and meditated to keep that equilibrium that I like. At no time was I riled up. I stated months ago that I would not be seeking any police-union endorsement. At no time did I ask for their endorsement.

You shot a video in 2011 telling parents how to search their children’s rooms for “contraband.” Have you watched it recently? Do you think it holds up?

Yes, it does. And keep in mind, this came from parents. Back when I was in the state Senate, a group of parents came to me because they were finding that their children were using drugs. They didn’t know what to look for. I think it’s so unfortunate that parents find out about what their children are doing when it’s too late. I thought that video was right on time. It was in the height of the crack era, a lot of guns on our streets. And a lot of children were being caught up with opioid abuse, crack abuse, straws, all of those indicators that parents had no idea about. People look now and say, he’s trying to turn homes into policing states. No. If a person is selling drugs in your home and that home is raided, everyone goes: grandma, grandpa, children go to ACS. We need to empower parents with the skills so that they can stay up to date on how to protect their families.

Marijuana is now legal in New York. You said last week you’re “concerned about the marijuana laws altogether.” What specifically are you concerned about?

I supported and pushed the cannabis bill. My concern is that we can’t send the wrong message to people that it’s okay to smoke a joint and then go do an operation, or it’s okay to smoke a joint and then go to school in the morning, or to operate heavy equipment. That is my concern. We need to let people know of the medical benefits, but also the medical concerns. Let’s let the medical professionals give people the right information so they can be smart in using marijuana. And so if we just say, “marijuana is legal, everyone light up and puff up,” that sends the wrong message. And that is what I’m saying. We have to be adults about this. And sometimes I think we want to be so cool to our children that we forget we’re not trying to be cool, we’re trying to be adults. I like when my son says, “Dad, you are too hard” because one day his son is going to [tell him], “you are too hard.”

Who do you want to see headline de Blasio’s big post-COVID concert in Central Park?

I think that we all want Beyoncé, but he may pick someone else. I think that she would be the best to open with “I am a survivor” because that's the theme of New York. We are survivors.

What’s the best concert you’ve ever been to?

Curtis Mayfield at the Wingate Concert Series. At that concert there was a rainstorm and the lights fell on Curtis Mayfield and they actually paralyzed him at that concert. He died a few years ago, but it was an amazing concert before that happened. Just so unfortunate.

You went vegan in 2016 after being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, and your Brooklyn Borough office has encouraged people to adopt a plant-based lifestyle. Would you try to introduce any anti-meat rules as mayor à la Bloomberg with soda?

The goal is to bring people along, not to dictate to them. What I’m going to do is similar to what we did with the vegetarian schools in Brooklyn, and with removing processed meat, which is a type one carcinogen. We’re going to empower students. We’re going to put vertical farms in our schools. We’re going to use hydroponics. We’re going to have our curriculum become a nutritionally based curriculum. Children are going to tell their school, “We want a healthier meal.“ And we’re going to look at our hospitals. Every place we feed people, we’re going to move away from feeding the health care crisis. And I think it’s going to lead the entire country. I mean, I lost my sight. I had nerve damage. It was going to lead to amputation. I had high blood pressure, high cholesterol. How do you eat healthy and three weeks later, you have your vision back? Your nerve damage is gone. Your ulcer goes away and your diabetes is in remission. It’s not in our DNA, it’s in our dinner. And I’m going to make sure that these children will know how to eat for a healthy lifestyle.

The relationship between the current mayor and Governor Cuomo is not great. Cuomo seems to actually enjoy being known as a bully. How do you plan to work with him?

I always equate it to when you have a partner you don’t get along with when it’s time to run upstairs after someone shooting a gun. We’re not going to argue while we’re running up the stairs; we’re going to deal with the crisis. I was disappointed in the governor and the mayor when our city was going through a crisis. People were taking their loved ones to the hospital never to see them again, every cough you were afraid that you had COVID. We needed real leadership with both of our chief executives. They should have sat down and done joint press conferences. They should have sent a signal that we got this, we’re going to be fine. That is how I’m going to lead. If we’re going to have a dispute, it will be done behind closed doors. Our city is going to see a unified leadership.

What are you most looking forward to doing now that we’re getting back to normal life?

Riding my bike and engaging with people, and being on a crowded subway train. So I can talk to people and ask them their thoughts, their ideas. Some of my best ideas came from straphangers and commuters, and we just don’t have crowded trains anymore. And I miss that feeling of stopping people and talking to them.

What’s your favorite restaurant in the city?

A place called Imani on Dekalb Avenue and Adelphi. It’s a nice Caribbean place. Food is great. And it’s just a good energy.

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