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Mayor-elect Eric Adams drew applause from Big Apple bigwigs like Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt at an election night VIP party where he promised to embrace the city’s financial leaders.
“Can we hit reset with our business community? Can I say to you that this is going to become one of the most business-friendly cities?” Adams said to enthusiastic applause from around 100 bold-faced names at the swanky Soho hot spot Zero Bond.
The outgoing Brooklyn borough president and former cop — who trounced his GOP opponent Curtis Sliwa — also promised to spend the city’s nearly $100 billion budget more wisely.
“Year after year after year, we’re taking $97 billion dollars and giving you an inferior product and we’re supposed to act like everything is all right? Damn it it’s not alright,” Adams said to guests who noshed on sushi and sliders.
Schmidt hailed Adams’ election as “a big deal” and a “total shift from Mayor de Blasio,” who once quoted Karl Marx to explain his antipathy toward the private sector.
“In my conception about New York, New York doesn’t work unless it grows because the costs are so high and the pressures are so great if you hold it flat it doesn’t handle it correctly,” the tech titan said.
“So you have to have a pro-growth mayor. He’s clearly a pro-growth mayor which is why the business community came out so strongly for him,” Schmidt told The Post.
Madison Square Garden CEO James Dolan called Adams’ victory “a great start.”
“We really need the city to come back. It’s not back all the way. People aren’t in their offices, the tourists aren’t here yet.
“Thinking the way Eric thinks will get them back,” the Knicks and Rangers owner predicted.
Jefferies Financial Group CEO Rich Handler said Adams’ win was much larger than a coup for his industry.
“We need a mayor like Eric to bring everyone tougher,” Handler said.
“I feel like he is a person who wants to do that and I’m really excited about a little harmony, hard work together and building together and if he can build those bridges I’m all in,” the billionaire businessman said.
Whittaker, who won his best actor Academy Award for his performance in “The Last King of Scotland,” highlighted the incoming mayor’s rags-to-riches story— he rose from abject poverty in Brownsville, Brooklyn to lead the nation’s largest city.
“We have a leader that has some sense of community. He”s somebody who is part of the community. He’s somebody who has experienced some of the greatest hardships the country has to offer,” Whittaker said.
“Now we have someone who understands, who’s empathic. He is going to be able to work with us and lead us as a city,” the actor gushed.
Rapper Ja Rule could barely contain his excitement about Adams.
“Ah man we got a good one. We got an amazing new mayor. He has an amazing plan for he city and I can’t wait to se him implement it. That’s why I’m here to show f–king respect, and admiration for my brother.
“What he’s the second black mayor? That’s right lets get it done,” Ja Rule said as he posed for photos with Adams’ son Jordan Coleman.
The mayor-elect’s confidante, PR executive Ronn Torossian, assembled the VIP guest list that included prominent New Yorkers from the city’s political, celebrity and business arenas. Other attendees were City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, comedian Chris Rock and SoftBank Group International CEO Marcelo Claure.
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