Lindsay was the first Republican to win the elections for mayor of New York City since Fiorello La Guardia. Pages for offline publishers more information He went from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party in 1971 and launched a brief and unsuccessful candidacy for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination, as well as for the 1980 Democratic nomination for senator from New York. In 1965, Lindsay was elected mayor of New York City as a Republican with the support of the New York Liberal Party in a three-way race. He defeated Democratic mayoral candidate Abraham D.
Beame, then Municipal Comptroller, as well as the founder of National Review, William F. Buckley, Jr. The unofficial campaign motto, taken from a column by Murray Kempton, was “He's fresh and everyone else is tired.”. On his first day as mayor, January 1, 1966, the United States Transportation Workers Union, led by Mike Quill, closed the city with the total interruption of subway and bus service.
As New Yorkers were enduring the public transportation strike, Lindsay commented, “I still think it's a fun city,” and walked six kilometers from her hotel room to City Hall in a gesture to show it. Dick Schaap, then a columnist for the New York Herald Tribune, popularized the term in an article entitled Fun City. In the article, Schaap sardonically noted that it wasn't. The summer of 1971 marked the beginning of another devastating strike, as more than 8,000 workers belonging to the AFSCME District Council 37 were out of work for two days.
The strikers included the operators of the city's drawbridges and wastewater treatment plants. Drawbridges over the Harlem River were blocked in the elevated position, preventing car travel to Manhattan, and hundreds of thousands of gallons of untreated wastewater flowed into local waterways. Journalist Robert McFadden made an alternative assessment, who said that by 1973, his last year in office, Mr. Lindsay had become a more experienced and pragmatic mayor.
McFadden also credited him with reducing racial tensions, leading to preventing the riots that devastated Detroit, Los Angeles, Newark and other cities. Attempting to return to politics in 1980, Lindsay made a risky bet for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. UU. Senator from New York, and finished third.
He was also active in charities in New York City, served on the board of directors of the Association for a Better New York and was president of the Lincoln Center Theater. After her death, the New York Times credited Lindsay with an important role in the rejuvenation of the theater. He appeared on a poster with Governor Rockefeller at the inauguration of the former World Trade Center, in the city history section of the Museum of the City of New York, on Fifth Avenue and 103rd Street. This triangle is named after the Mayor of New York City, John V.
It's no accident that Democrats have controlled New York City for so many years. In exchange for a certain number of sponsorship posts, Republicans have long had a tacit agreement with Democrats not to seriously challenge their leadership. In the recent presidential elections held in Queens, for example, the Republicans did not even present a candidate. The city's last Republican mayor was LaGuardia, who, like Lindsay, did not run with a direct Republican nomination, but as a gunned down candidate.
La Guardia won the elections by an overwhelming majority, but their victories were personal. It failed to achieve any lasting change in the political structure of the city, which then was and is now 70 percent Democratic. Lindsay's eight years of service as mayor left her seven years short of qualifying for a municipal pension. Lindsay's original break with the Republican Party began immediately after she failed to win the 1969 Republican mayoral primary and her subsequent association with the New York Liberal Party in those elections.
In 1949, Lindsay began his political career as director of the Young Republicans Club of New York and, in 1952, founded the organization Youth For Eisenhower. In 1970, The New York Times published New York City Police Department patrolman Frank Serpico's complaints about widespread police corruption. While he managed to get New York City to dramatically increase federal and state spending, he also announced the city's first income tax, among other unpopular financial measures. Lindsay began leaning into politics as one of the founders of the Youth for Eisenhower club in 1951 and as president of The New York Young Republican Club in 1952.
Despite losing the Republican nomination, Lindsay remained on the ballot as a candidate for the New York Liberal Party. On May 8, 1970, near the intersection of Wall Street and Broad Street and at the New York City Hall, a riot broke out when some 200 construction workers mobilized by the AFL-CIO union federation of New York State attacked about 1,000 high school and university students and others protesting against the shootings in Kent State, the Cambodian campaign and the Vietnam War. AFTER the elections, Mayor Lindsay had a city to govern; but he also had some 20,000 workers on his hands, now a narrow and immensely dedicated organization. The mayor has no Republican he can trust to represent his interests in either the Assembly or the City Council, which are overwhelmingly Democratic.
Lindsay will have succeeded where LaGuardia failed, by breaking the Democrats' prolonged and undisputed control over New York. Sarah Ann was the wife of Nicholas Wyckoff, a direct descendant of Pieter Claesen Wyckoff, one of the most prominent citizens of 17th century New York. .
