Why Eric Adams Likes to Raise Flags

By reaching out to as many ethnic groups as he can in the city of immigrants that he presides over, Adams can connect with voters well before 2025, when he is all but certain to run for a second term.

“Mayor Adams, I think, is using flags as a part of political theater, which many politicians do, and he’s doing it quite effectively,” said Ted Kaye, the secretary of the North American Vexillological Association, which counts 1,000 members, mostly in the United States and Canada, and charges dues of $40 a year. “I’m not one to comment on the political aspects of this, but from the flag standpoint, we think it’s great when people raise and wave flags” — because, he added, “flags by their nature are colorful and meaningful and they catch our eyes and they catch our hearts.”

Flag raisings caught Adams’s attention when he was the Brooklyn borough president and proved to be an audience-pleasing tactic that he carried to City Hall. “He microtargets,” said Richard David, a district leader from Queens who attended the mayor’s Guyana flag raising. “Little things like this for some folks might seem superficial, might feel performative, but you’re a part of this and being seen for the first time, it does mean a lot. And the mayor knows that.”

But Adams’s appearances at flag ceremonies reflect basic arithmetic as much as advanced political calculus. He won the Democratic primary in 2021 — which all but guaranteed him victory in the general election, given that registered Democrats far outnumber Republicans in New York City — by only 7,200 votes. “When you do an analysis of how close our election was,” Adams said at a flag raising for Saint Lucia, the birthplace of 10,500 New Yorkers, “you begin to really benefit and understand how 10,000 people unified together can send a powerful message.”

The mayor’s message from one flag-raising ceremony to another can be strikingly similar. “You believe in families. You believe in business. You believe in public safety,” he told Filipino Americans at a ceremony for the Philippine flag. He used the same line (except that he said “family” instead of “families”) at a flag-raising of the Croatian colors. At a ceremony for the flag of Kazakhstan, he said, “You believe in public safety.”