NEW YORK — President Joe Biden went out of his way at a Tuesday night reception to praise a certain New York official for hosting him for the past three days during the United Nations General Assembly.
It wasn’t New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
“I first want to thank Gov. [Kathy] Hochul,” Biden said at the top of his speech at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Kathy, thank you very much for everything this great city has done to make this General Assembly a success.”
The comments served as the latest evidence of heightened friction between Adams and Biden, Democrats who once appeared to be close allies. The two are not planning to have any face time during the president’s trip to Manhattan amid public spats over the White House’s response to the city’s migrant crisis.
Adams has had a packed schedule this week meeting with dignitaries from around the globe and mayors from around the country. Biden never made the calendar.
The Democratic mayor said Wednesday his office was still working closely with the White House, but he also refused to sugarcoat challenges that the influx of asylum-seekers has brought to the city. That bluntness, he suggested, has contributed to the deteriorating relationship with the president.
“There's an authentic communication style that I have, and sometimes that offends people,” Adams said on Fox 5 in New York when asked about Hochul’s interaction with the commander in chief. “But I'm not going to be dishonest to New Yorkers and finding a word in a thesaurus that makes it sound politically correct.”
Hochul and Adams have both been critical of the federal government’s response to the more than 100,000 migrants who have come to the city over the past year, with more than 60,000 still in the city’s care.
But the governor has been more measured in her appraisal compared to the outspoken mayor. As a result, she has maintained a more cordial relationship with the nation’s most powerful Democrat.
Hochul told reporters Wednesday that after she arrived at the reception, she was told Biden wanted to see her.
“I always welcome the president when he comes when its available. … There was interest in the White House in having me spend time speaking with the president, and that’s exactly what happened,” she said.
The two discussed many of the requests Hochul has made over the past year, including more federally owned sites where the city and state could erect migrant shelters.
She did not, however, raise the issue of the state issuing its own local version of work authorization to speed up getting migrants placed in jobs.
“I felt that he is listening to us,” she said of her tete-a-tete, which she described as productive.
Hochul remains on a list of surrogates for the president’s reelection while Adams was dropped from the roster after saying the president “failed” New York City earlier this year.
Adams, while invited, declined to attend the soiree.
It wasn’t always this way.
Shortly after winning the Democratic primary for mayor, Adams dubbed himself the “Biden of Brooklyn.” After taking office, he hosted the president during a visit to the city to discuss public safety. And at this time last year, Biden and Adams rubbed elbows at both a fundraiser and a UN reception.
As of late Wednesday morning, however, there was no indication the two would meet before Biden heads back to Washington in the evening.
The city estimates it will spend $12 billion on asylum-seekers through 2025, a price tag that has driven Adams to repeatedly plead for more funding from Washington and quicker work authorization for the migrants, along with a more cohesive strategy at the border to spread the flow of migrants out to more places in the country.
“I have to defend the city that I defended as a police officer and now as the mayor of the city," he said during a separate television interview Wednesday on PIX 11. "New York City must not be going through this. It's not sustainable."
His administration has opened more than 200 emergency shelters and is currently preparing to house thousands of asylum-seekers in tents at Floyd Bennett Field, a former federal airbase that was the subject of negotiations between Hochul and Biden.
A group of Republican and moderate Democrat lawmakers have sued to stop the opening of that facility — part of a broader backlash against shelters in certain pockets of the city.
Late Tuesday, as Biden settled in for the night in Manhattan, residents in Staten Island blocked a bus carrying migrants, shouting that the passengers inside were not welcome.
The protest was the latest sign of tension in the city. Adams condemned the display.
“We'll manage this crisis, but we're not going to do it with violence, and we're not going to do it with hateful terminologies spewed at individuals,” Adams said of the protest.
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