Granted, Mayor Eric Adams is the first mayor of New York City to be indicted in office, but that’s hardly the same as saying that some of his predecessors weren’t dirty up to their eyeballs. So says Clyde Haberman (Maggie’s dad), who has the “lived experience” to legitimately make the case, as he ponders why American’s largest (and, dare I say it, greatest) city struggles to elect a mayor of quality.

But the New York Times has called for Eric Adams to resign.

This is the first time a sitting mayor of New York City has been indicted. The charges against Mr. Adams are serious, including allegations that he misappropriated more than $10 million in public funds for his 2021 campaign. The mayor will have his day in court and is entitled to make a vigorous defense, but that does not mean he must force New York City to wait for him to prove his innocence under the law. To serve the city that elected him, Mr. Adams should immediately resign and turn City Hall over to someone untainted by criminal charges and endless investigations.

There are a host of sound reasons for Adams, if he cares a whit for the City, to bow out. First, there’s the outflow of top officials and advisors, from police commissioner to schools chancellor, getting out of dodge with the feds on their trail and leaving the city without anyone steering their respective boats. It’s a big city. A huge city. It cannot be run without someone at their various respective helms.

Second, Adams is going to be tied up for a bit defending himself against the charges. Maybe it’s not a full time job being defendant, but as someone with some experience dealing with the accused, they tend to have their future freedom foremost on their mind. That means his head won’t be on mayoring the city, and mayoring the city is hard enough without it being secondary to staying out of prison.

Third, Adams is substantially weakened by the indictment, whether he deserves to be or not. Some will note that the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York rarely brings cases it isn’t certain it can win. In the best of time, they’re chickenshit. When it comes to someone like a city mayor, you can bet that they have their cases tightly locked. But to assume guilt and conviction crosses a line that neither law nor principle permits. His political clout, however, cares nothing about his guilt or innocence, but only whether he can muster the power to make things happen. Under indictment, he’s shooting blanks.

But all that said, the New York Times editorial makes one grievous error.

The mayor will have his day in court and is entitled to make a vigorous defense, but that does not mean he must force New York City to wait for him to prove his innocence under the law.

There are good, strong, sound reasons for the Times to call for Adams’ resignation, as he cannot serve as an effective mayor under the current circumstances. But the one reason he should not resign is that he is presumed guilty. Is that what the New York Times is doing? You betcha, as Sarah Palin might say. Neither Mayor Eric Adams nor any other defendant has to “prove his innocence under the law.” To say that he does is the presume the contrary.

To be fair to the New York Times, it’s not the only entity taking Adams’ guilt for granted. In a stunning display of rank hypocrisy, the newbie criminal law activists who manage to express empathy for murderers can muster no concern for the prosecution of Mayor Adams.

If anything, they’re quite giddy at the prospect of his conviction, with rationalizations ranging from “white collar crime,” which (along with rape) doesn’t manage to make it onto the radar of offenses for which they don’t demand life plus cancer. And then there’s the fact that Adams was an ex-cop, which by definition makes him a bastard. Finally, Adams’ election as a moderate Democrat meant he blocked the election of a properly progressive Democratic Socialist. This is likely the most unforgivable sin possible.

Should it turn out that Adams is acquitted, he will no doubt ask the same question as Raymond Donovan: Where do I go to get my reputation back? In the meantime, there is a big city to run, and it’s not going to run itself. If Mayor Eric Adams can’t run it, a good mayor would think of the city first and resign so that someone untainted by entanglements, fair or unfair, can grab the helm before the city crashes onto the shore. It’s now up to Eric Adams to decide whether he’s the sort of mayor who puts the city first, even though he has nothing to prove.