Writing on the New York City mayoral race, New York Times‘ Sam Roberts quotes Fred Siegel on the race’s similarities to the 1970s race:
As it turned out, Mr. Biaggi wound up third in the field of four major candidates. Mr. Beame, then the comptroller, came in first but did not earn enough votes to avoid a runoff against Herman Badillo, a Bronx congressman hoping to become the city’s first mayor of Puerto Rican descent.
But Mr. Badillo’s ill-advised derision of Mr. Beame as “a malicious little man” during a particularly nasty debate helped seal his fate.
Mr. Beame won the runoff, 61 percent to 39 percent, and was easily elected the city’s first Jewish mayor in November, succeeding John V. Lindsay, who had chosen not to run.
“It wasn’t clear who was going to follow him, so you ended up flooding the field,” said Fred Siegel, a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute. “No one could stake a strong claim.”
Read the entire article here.
