The former New York City Council Speaker sat down with ESSENCE to discuss her historic bid for lieutenant governor and why meaningful change requires persistence.
By Rayna Reid Rayford
Essence
https://www.essence.com/
On December 31, 2025, Adrienne Adams thought her work in public service was over, at least for the time being. She was ready to spend time with her husband and “just exhale for a bit,” she says. “Not retire. I never said the ‘R’ word.”
But sometimes when you get the call, you have to answer it. That call was from New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who asked the former New York City Council Speaker to become her running mate. If elected this November, Adams would become the Empire State’s first Black woman lieutenant governor.
For a woman who admits she has to “steal” downtime, preferably in her kitchen cooking, the turn of events was unexpected at a moment when she was seeking a respite. But for Adams, this opportunity is bigger than herself. As she told ESSENCE, “When we thought that we were done, we still got work to do.”
This determination has deep roots. Adams recalled how she was a shy child who was bullied during her elementary school years before ultimately finding her voice. “Once I found my voice, I realized how important it was for me not to be silent.”
Years later, that voice would take Adams from a concerned citizen to City Hall. As the education chairperson for her community board in Southeast Queens, she grew increasingly frustrated watching the schools in her neighborhood fight for resources she felt other districts were receiving more readily. “I got very, very angry,” she says adamantly, describing the disparities that motivated her to run for public office.
She became the first Black woman Speaker of the New York City Council, leading its first women-majority Council and one of its most diverse legislative bodies. Yet Adams insists that becoming a public official never separated her from the constituents and communities she represents. “When I open my front door, I see the same thing that my neighbors see,” she notes. “I’m my own constituent.”
For Adams, representation matters because the people who make decisions need to understand the lives of the people who are impacted. She believes there are longstanding structural barriers in place that have limited socioeconomic opportunities, especially for people of color, and that changing these circumstances requires more residents to hold positions of power. “We can do so much better in electing people that understand our strife, and really do carry the voices of the voiceless.”
Her argument becomes even more salient when the discussion turns to Black women, whom Adams acknowledges carry many of the burdens of their families, communities, and political organizing efforts, often without the corresponding decision-making power.
Reflecting on Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign, Adams recounted knocking on doors and believing in women’s collective strength to elect the country’s first Black woman president. “Yet and still, it wasn’t quite enough to get us over the finish line, and it should have been enough.”
She acknowledged the disappointment that followed and the exhaustion felt by women who had invested so much in the outcome. But true to form, Adams worries about the ensuing disengagement and how that could leave communities even more vulnerable. “We have to be consistent,” she states. “No matter how much it hurts, no matter how much pain we have, internally and externally.”
Her message to Black women: keep claiming political power, even when progress feels painfully slow. “We as women have to believe enough in ourselves and in our sisterhood to stand up in that power and believe that yeah, we can do this,” she says.
Running alongside Hochul on what she calls the first “mom-grandmom ticket,” she hopes to bring that perspective to statewide leadership. Her priorities include affordability, building wealth in historically underserved communities, maternal health, and children’s literacy. “The voices of women will be amplified as never before, and that’s a great thing,” Adams states.
These issues are also deeply personal. Adams shared that one of her daughters, along with her son-in-law and three grandchildren, had to move out of New York State because they could no longer afford to live there.
And even though the lieutenant governor’s office may be less visible than the governor’s, Adams isn’t worried about not being in the spotlight. That was never the point.
“I don’t need the limelight. That’s never been my MO anyway,” she says, explaining how when she was Speaker, it was her preference to highlight the work of her colleagues. “I’m confident. I know who I am. I know the strength that I bring, and I know the intentions that I come to the office with.”
For Adams, leadership shouldn’t be measured by how much attention is given, but rather by how much is accomplished. She also fundamentally understands that change isn’t something that happens overnight. She describes how she encountered a Southeast Queens high school in 2009 that didn’t have adequate resources to host home sporting events. Seventeen years later, she highlights the new athletic field she helped fund as one example of what continued investment in a community can look like.
When asked how she stays motivated when meaningful change can take years or decades, and amid the current political climate, she quickly replies, “You have to know when to check your W’s. You know, when to check your wins, no matter how big or how small.” She points to generations of activists like Harriet Tubman and W.E.B. Du Bois, who painstakingly laid the groundwork for progress they had no guarantee they would see in their lifetimes, and to legislation that began as someone else’s vision before finally becoming reality.
“As long as we continue to build that foundation,” Adams says, “be confident that the folks that are coming after us are going to be able to check those W’s just like we have.”
