Established in 1982 at LaGuardia Community College/ CUNY with a mission to collect, preserve, and make available primary materials documenting the social and political history of New York City. We hold nearly 5,000 cubic feet of archival records and 3,200 reels of microfilm with almost 100,000 photographs and 2,000,000 documents available on our website.
Steven A. Levine Coordinator for Educational Programs
In 1989 Ed Koch attempted what no other mayor had achieved: election to a fourth term. Koch's commercials were similar to those in 1985: regular New Yorkers saying he wasn't perfect, but was doing a good job. After 12 years as mayor and burdened by a scandal-tainted third term and a perception that he was racially divisive, many New Yorkers were looking for change.
Most voters who rejected Koch turned to Manhattan Borough President David Dinkins, an African-American, who promised conciliation in contrast to the tumultuous Koch. Building on Rev. Jesse Jackson's success in the 1988 Democratic presidential primary, Dinkins won a majority in the 1989 Democratic mayoral primary and narrowly defeated Rudy Giuliani in the general election. Ed Koch had failed in his quest for an unprecedented fourth term, but when later asked if he would run again he humorously replied, "The people have spoken ... And they must be punished."
When Ed Koch ran for a third term as mayor in 1985, he won handily against a divided opposition, but what is striking to me was the lack of polish in his commercials. The endorsements by the "regular people" seem unrehearsed and Mayor Koch does not even appear in them. The commercials seem to emphasize that whatever the critics might say, the people still supported Koch. They raise the question of whether the supporters were given lines to read or were they expressing their support sincerely? With the exception of actor Vincent Gardenia's endorsement, they seem more coarsely produced than those of today. Media wizard David Garth effectively demonstrated Koch's support by the common man and woman. The election results that year confirmed this perception. Take a few minutes to watch the video to see what you think.
New
Yorkers are waiting on lines today to vote in the Democratic and Republican
primaries and they are again using the aging Shoup lever voting machines to cast
their ballots. Given our use of these
old, but trustworthy machines, it seemed a good moment to go back in time to
1981 to watch Ed Koch’s campaign commercials
Thirty
two years ago, Mayor Koch was up for reelection. During his first term, he had won
congressional approval for loan guarantees, brought the city back to solvency,
begun to restore city services and balanced the budget a year ahead of
schedule. His main opponent in the
Democratic primary was the liberal State Assembly member Frank Barbaro, who
attacked Koch for reducing city services and cutting taxes for the wealthy. Koch easily defeated Barbaro and also won the
Republican primary, making him the only mayoral candidate to win the nominations
of both major parties. He then went on
to win the general election in a landslide defeating Barbaro, who ran as an
independent and the candidates of the Liberal, Conservative and Right to Life
parties.
Elections have consequences and I hope you will take the time to
participate in your party’s primary and in the November general election. Mayor Koch would certainly have wanted you
to.
Steven A. Levine Coordinator for Educational Programs
With the New York City mayoral primaries a week away, I thought it would be interesting to look back at the 1977 mayoral election and how Ed Koch’s campaign commercials helped lead him to victory. This was a bleak year for New York City, which was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and could not borrow money on its own credit. Thousands of police officers, firefighters, teachers, CUNY faculty and other municipal workers had been laid off. A blackout had led to mass looting in many neighborhoods, Son of Sam was wreaking his terror upon the city, and crime in general was on the rise.
As the election season began, Congressman Koch was polling at the bottom of a large group of Democratic candidates that included Mayor Abe Beame, former Congresswoman Bella Abzug, N.Y. Secretary of State Mario Cuomo, Congressman Herman Badillo, and Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton. Running as a “liberal with sanity,” Koch endorsed the death penalty, attacked the municipal unions and their leaders, and “poverty pimps.” Koch ended his advertisements, crafted by campaign manager David Garth with the tagline, “After eight years of charisma [John Lindsay] and four years of the clubhouse [Abe Beame], why not try competence.”
With his conservative message, Koch catapulted to second place in the primary. He then defeated Mario Cuomo in the runoff and the general election, when Cuomo ran as the candidate of the Liberal Party. In a city where crime appeared out of control, municipal unions were striking, and the fiscal outlook was bleak, Koch had sensed that a more conservative candidate would appeal to a large portion of the electorate. His election was a watershed and ushered in years of austerity and a more limited view of what government could or should do.
The dominant issues in this year’s Democratic primary are very different as the Bloomberg era comes to a close. Crime is at a historic low, but the stop and frisk policies of the NYPD have come under fierce criticism. The shimmering towers that have risen in Manhattan and on the waterfronts of Queens and Brooklyn are symbols of both increasing prosperity and the rising inequality of New York City. Whether these themes augur a new watershed for New York’s politics remains to be seen until after primary day and beyond when future historians analyze the campaign advertisements of 2013.
