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Volume XXI • Number 23 • June 5 - 11, 2014 •
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50 years ago: Political earthquake hits Bronx By ANDREW WOLF As The Bronx gears up for a significant and vigorous election season, the first here in years, it occurred to me that once this borough was the center of the local political universe. Fiorello LaGuardia, hoping to restore the health of his sick wife and infant daughter, bought a “summer” house on University Avenue. All for naught, the two of them died anyway. A half-century later, after leaving office, LaGuardia became a resident of Riverdale. During the Roosevelt administration, the most powerful Democrat in the country was another Riverdalian, Edward J. Flynn, the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee as well as the Bronx County Democratic Leader. In 1960, what seemed to be hundreds of thousands of people crammed the Grand Concourse, near the palatial Loews Paradise Theater to see Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy. The Bronx was a key stop for any serious democratic hopeful. The borough was not unfamiliar territory for the then Massachusetts senator. He had spent a portion of his youth living in a house up in Riverdale, and attended the Riverdale Country School. So in 1964, when a critical primary election challenged the primacy of the Bronx County Democratic boss, Charles A. Buckley, it was big news. Buckley, in addition to his political duties, had been a member of Congress for thirty years. He was then the chair of the House Public
Works Committee, a position so potent, that is occupant would seem to be untouchable. But Buckley was particularly dismissive of voters, a constituency he could take for granted under absolute machine rule. But winds of change were blowing. A “reform” movement of Democrats, an outgrowth of the Stevenson for President campaigns of 1952 and 1956, caught like wildfire in Manhattan and had spread to The Bronx. An attempt by the machine Democrats to replace competent, but lackluster Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr. with State Comptroller Arthur Levitt failed disastrously in 1961. With the taste of victory in their mouths, reformers turned their attention to the party bosses, such as Carmine DeSapio of Manhattan (the leader of Tammany Hall) and Buckley of The Bronx. The nascent “reform” movement was backed by Mayor Wagner, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, the beloved widow of the late president snd former Governor and Senator Herbert H. Lehman, a much-respected elder statesman. In 1962, a little-known lawyer and parent leader named David Levy came within a couple of thousand votes of defeating Buckley in the Democratic Primary. A rerun seemed inevitable. The assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, a great national trauma, seemed to have the unforeseen result of energizing voters and activists. As a 15-year old student at the Bronx High School of Science in
1964, I had caught the political bug and was attracted to the Democratic “reformers.” With success within reach, reform leaders looked beyond Mr. Levy and recruited Riverdalian Jonathan Brewster Bingham as their candidate, an improbable choice. Bingham was a 50-year-old member of the U.S. United Nations delegation, appointed by President Kennedy. It occurred to me that not only is this year, the 50th anniversary of Binham’s great political triumph, but also marks 100 years afyer his birth. Mr. Bingham represented us on the U.N. Trusteeship Council, and thus had attained the diplomatic rank of Ambassador. He wasn’t just Mr. Bingham, he was “Ambassador Bingham.” Prior to that, he had directed the Point Four Program under President Truman, and had served as Secretary to Governor Averill Harrimam during his one term in Albany. In his one and only one foray into electoral politics up to then, a campaign for State Senator in 1958, ended in a defeat. He lost the seat to a Republican, Joseph Periconi, who, amazingly, went on to become the Bronx Borough President in 1961, the only Republican ever to serve in that office. But still, Bingham was an improbable candidate. In an era when ethnicity became an important political attribute, Bingham was a WASP, a white Anglo Saxon Protestant in a community where that meant absolutely nothing. Continued on Page 2
Congressman Eliot Engel, Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, and New York City Council Member Andrew Cohen with students from the Salanter Akiba Riverdale Academy.
Jonathan Bingham, in a photo taken for his 1964 campaign, defeated Bronx Democratic leader Charles A. Buckley for his congressional seat in a hotly contested primary election that took place exactly 50 years ago. This year would also have marked the 100th anniversary of Bingham’s birth.
The Klein-Koppell race takes on State-wide significance Chatter going around the political blogosphere has taken what would seem to be a clearly local contest and projected it into a statewide news story. Former Councilman Oliver Koppell’s challenge of State Senator Jeff Klein has taken on a new dimension, with the insinuation of the far left Working Families Party into the political mix. And for every action in politics, there appears to be an equal and opposite reaction. Koppell won the endorsement of the Working Families Party Saturday, as his wife, Lorraine Coyle boasted in an email sent out Sunday morning: “The WORKING FAMILIES PARTY Convention endorsed OLIVER! Klein got NOT ONE vote.” The long-term nature of the bad blood between Ms. Coyle and Mr. Klein becomes clear as she goes no to note:
“It is important that we all remember that Klein told us in 2012 he would do nothing to keep Skelos in power. Nothing. And yet that is exactly what he did so no matter what he says now, he can not be trusted to honor his word. In 2000, when I ran for State Senate he said he would support me until the regular Democrats put up a candidate against me and then he switched to that person and then after I handily won the primary Klein helped Guy Velella the Republican. So he does seem to be consistent with helping Republicans. Let us all remember the quality of the man.” But even after the disputes during Ms. Coyle’s ill-fated campaign in 2000, it didn’t dissuade then-Councilman Oliver Koppell from endorsing Klein for the same State Senate seat in 2004, an Continued on Page 8