Brooklyn BP Eric Adams attended controversial birthday party that flouted COVID rules
A party that sparked outrage among the city’s political class due to a failure to adhere to COVID rules featured one guest who’s vying to be the next mayor.
That man, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, confirmed through a spokesman on Monday evening that he attended the now-infamous 50th birthday party of New York Building Congress head Carlo Scissura.
“Eric arrived at the party late, saw there was about 10 or twelve people there, said a quick happy birthday and left,” campaign spokesman Evan Thies said.
The admission comes after Adams last week publicly accepted the apology of a top deputy who attended the party.
Photos from the shindig, which was first reported by the Daily News last week, show maskless revelers schmoozing in close quarters at a time when the city recently closed public schools and the state is contemplating further restrictions because of an increase in coronavirus cases.
Sources told The News that New York State Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte, the leader of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, was also in attendance at the event. She did not immediately respond to messages.
Deputy Borough President Ingrid Lewis-Martin and former Kings County Dem boss Frank Seddio were there as well. Both are pictured in photos taken at the event.
Those images, which Scissura shared on social media, quickly sparked a backlash, prompting Gov. Cuomo, Mayor de Blasio and city Economic Development Corporation President James Patchett all to issue rebukes to those in attendance.
“Mayoral candidates should be setting the highest standard,” Cuomo said Monday. “The standard is the law.”
Just days before the photos became public, Cuomo ordered that New Yorkers limit private gatherings to no more than 10 in an attempt to beat back the surging number of people testing positive for coronavirus.
Patchett said last Thursday on Twitter that everyone who attended should step down from their posts.
“This is an embarrassment,” he wrote. “Every one of these people should resign.”
A de Blasio spokesman called the party “asinine, counterproductive and insulting.”
Adams, a former state senator and NYPD captain, is considered a top-tier candidate in the 2021 mayoral contest. He’s facing Comptroller Scott Stringer, de Blasio’s former legal advisor Maya Wiley, and several other candidates.
After The News first reported on Scissura’s party, Scissura and Lewis-Martin issued apologies.
But Lewis-Martin’s did not come before she attempted to minimize the situation. After first being asked if she was concerned about the potential spread of COVID, she said she already has antibodies.
“I was already sick,” she said. “I would have no concern about spreading or anything.”
In a story published a day later in the New York Times, she issued an apology. Adams told the Times that he accepted her apology — but made no reference to the fact that he also attended the party.
“We are all human and have lapses in judgment; what is important is that we recognize when we make mistakes and commit ourselves to the high level of vigilance that is necessary to prevent the spread of this terrible virus,” he told the broadsheet.
Adams’ campaign declined to answer questions about why he would accept such an apology without making clear that he, in fact, attended the same party.
The Scissura affair is not Adams’ first brush with COVID-related controversy.
On Saturday, he attended an in-person fundraiser for his City Hall run at a Queens club located inside what the state has designated as a COVID “yellow zone.”
The day before, he held another in-person fundraiser at the restaurant Good Enough to Eat on the Upper West Side.
Several attendees seated close to one another were not wearing masks as the event got underway. But by the time Adams gave his remarks, they put them on. Adams himself was wearing a mask and thanked the organizers for taking safety precautions.
“There’s food left. Please eat if you have the equipment. When you put the fork in your mouth, you have permission to take your mask down,” he said to laughs. “Those are the rules.”
