<\/p>\n
The Democratic Party is following a standard strategy as President Biden seeks re-election: Do not publicly criticize him under any circumstances, unless he helps Donald J. Trump or one of his acolytes win back the White House for the Republicans.<\/p>\n
The only Democrat who seems to have missed the mark is Mayor Eric Adams of New York City.<\/p>\n
Mr. Adams has taken almost every opportunity in recent weeks to publicly blame Mr. Biden or his administration for the influx of migrants into New York from border states, many of them on buses sent by Republican governors.<\/p>\n
His eagerness to point the finger at the White House has infuriated top Biden aides, who note the overall complexity of the problem. At the same time, the mayor is using his platform to amplify concerns that many Democrats share, but won’t articulate publicly because they don’t want to hurt the president.<\/p>\n
The recent schism comes as Republicans are making Mr. Biden’s immigration policy central to their efforts to unseat him in 2024. After many Democratic candidates last year successfully used abortion rights against his Republican opponents, Mr. Biden’s nascent campaign would prefer his allies stay on message. – Something that Mr. Adams has shown little willingness to do so, although he once told himselfthe biden of brooklyn<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Officials in New York and Washington insist the ideologically aligned president and mayor have no personal animosity between them. But as Mr. Adams has struggled to manage the waves of migrants being sent to New York, he has been more vocal than other mayors in the same situation and more willing to blame Mr. Biden.<\/p>\n Mr. Adams said Wednesday that it was “puzzling” that officials in Washington “do not understand what this is doing in New York City.” He expressed similar sentiments last month, saying, “The president and the White House have failed New York City on this issue.”<\/p>\n Adams and his allies say the White House has ignored many of their pleas, including their request that the federal government give more asylum seekers access to work permits and develop a plan to more widely distribute migrants throughout the country.<\/p>\n “We’ve reached out to the White House on a number of occasions and made it very clear what we need,” Mr. Adams Wednesday. \u201cAllowing people to work, which I think is one of the number 1 things we can do. Allow people to work. And make a decompression strategy at the border. We have 108,000 cities and towns and villages. Why aren’t we rolling this out across the country?”<\/p>\n Since becoming mayor 17 months ago on a platform of taming disorder on the city’s streets, Mr. Adams has repeatedly broken ranks with the Democratic Party. Last year, his language on crime echoed attacks from New York Republicans as they helped flip the House and mount a strong challenge to Gov. Kathy Hochul.<\/p>\n Now, some Democrats fear that Mr. Adams on migrants again undercut Mr. Biden, putting the president at odds with a high-profile ally and appearing to bolster arguments by Republican governors like Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida that he is weak on border security.<\/p>\n “Abbott and DeSantis and whoever is getting what they want — they’re screwing everybody,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, a longtime Adams ally who has tried to serve as an intermediary between the mayor and the White House . “On a scale of 1 to 10, it’s a 12 in frustration, and sometimes in frustration it can be more adversarial than you’d like.”<\/p>\n Mr. Biden’s aides and allies in Washington, a half-dozen of whom spoke about their private discussions on condition of anonymity, are clearly irritated with the mayor. According to his opinion, Mr. Adams is a great opportunist, aiming to win headlines without considering the broader policy implications for the president and his reelection.<\/p>\n Fabien Levy, a spokesman for the mayor, said in a statement that “Mayor Adams has and will always put the interests of New Yorkers first, and that’s why we’ve been asking for support for a year.” He added, “We desperately need federal and state support more than ever to quickly manage this crisis.”<\/p>\n