Once a National Star, Eric Adams Is Sidelined at the Democratic Convention

Three years after Mayor Eric Adams declared that as a tough-on-crime moderate, he represented “the future of the Democratic Party,” he was largely missing from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week.

He did not get a speaking role onstage like other Democrats from New York. He did not join the state’s elected officials and the director Spike Lee for a jubilant roll call on Tuesday night. And after he arrived in Chicago the following afternoon, on the convention’s third day, he could not escape questions about the federal investigation into his campaign fund-raising and his criticism of the White House over the migrant crisis.

Mr. Adams, who is known for talking up his swagger, appeared humbled earlier this week as he told reporters in New York that he would do whatever Vice President Kamala Harris asked to help her win.

“This is not the Eric show,” he said. “This is her show.”

Other big-city mayors, including Karen Bass of Los Angeles and Brandon Johnson of Chicago, did speak at the convention. And Bill de Blasio, Mr. Adams’s predecessor, addressed the convention in 2016 in Philadelphia, albeit at an early hour in a half-empty hall.

As Democrats speculated about the reason Mr. Adams was not invited to speak, some said it was a clear sign of how much his national profile had fallen.

Jasmine Gripper, a director of the left-leaning Working Families Party, said that Mr. Adams had enacted unpopular policies like budget cuts to libraries and free preschool and was “out of step” with most Democratic voters. She also said that he was not disciplined enough to stay on message.