The Power To: Enforce the Mayor's Petty Grudges

Ingrid Lewis-Martin "is the Adams administration."

- By David Freedlander

ERIC ADAMS AND Ingrid Lewis-Martin are so close that she was the first person he thanked from the stage at his Election Night party. When he was sworn in on New Year’s Eve in Times Square, she was at his elbow. Now, as the mayor’s chief adviser and the so-called Lioness of City Hall—an appellation she has embraced—she roams freely, the lone aide without portfolio.

“I don’t think you can say she has her fingerprints all over the Adams administration,” says a rival political operative. “She is the Adams administration. It is Brooklyn clubhouse politics brought to the whole city. And every dispute is a personal fucking bloodbath.”