Ed Koch, three-term mayor who became a symbol of NYC, dead at 88
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NEW YORK - Former Mayor Ed Koch, the combative, acid-tongued politician
who rescued the city from near-financial ruin during a three-term City
Hall run in which he embodied New York chutzpah for the rest of the
world, died Friday. He was 88.
Koch died at 2 a.m., spokesman George Arzt said. The funeral will be
Monday at Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan.
After leaving City Hall in January 1990, Koch battled assorted health
problems and heart disease.
The larger-than-life Koch, who breezed through the streets of New York
flashing his signature thumbs-up sign, won a national reputation with
his feisty style. "How'm I doing?" was his trademark question to
constituents, although the answer mattered little to Koch. The mayor
always thought he was doing wonderfully.
Bald and bombastic, paunchy and pretentious, the city's 105th mayor was
quick with a friendly quip and equally fast with a cutting remark for
his political enemies.
"You punch me, I punch back," Koch once memorably observed. "I do not
believe it's good for one's self-respect to be a punching bag."
The mayor dismissed his critics as "wackos," waged verbal war with
developer Donald Trump ("piggy") and mayoral successor Rudolph Giuliani
("nasty man"), lambasted the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and once reduced the
head of the City Council to tears.
"I'm not the type to get ulcers," he wrote in "Mayor," his
autobiography. "I give them."
When President George W. Bush ran for re-election in 2004, Koch, a
Democrat, crossed party lines to support him and spoke at the GOP
convention. He also endorsed Mayor Michael Bloomberg's re-election
efforts at a time when Bloomberg was a Republican. Koch described
himself as "a liberal with sanity."
He was also an outspoken supporter of Israel, willing to criticize
anyone, including President Barack Obama, over decisions Koch thought
could indicate any wavering of support for that nation.
In a WLIW television program "The Jews of New York," Koch spoke of his
attachment to his faith.
"Jews have always thought that having someone elevated with his head
above the grass was not good for the Jews. I never felt that way," he
said. "I believe that you have to stand up."
Under his watch from 1978-89, the city climbed out of near-financial
ruin thanks to Koch's tough fiscal policies and razor-sharp budget cuts,
and subway service improved enormously. But homelessness and AIDS soared
through the 1980s, and critics charged that City Hall's responses were
too little, too late.
Koch said in a 2009 interview with The New York Times that he had few
regrets about his time in office but still felt guilt over a decision he
made as mayor to close Sydenham Hospital in Harlem. The move saved $9
million, but Koch said in 2009 that it was wrong "because black doctors
couldn't get into other hospitals" at the time.
"That was uncaring of me," he said. "They helped elect me, and then in
my zeal to do the right thing, I did something now that I regret."
Among his favorite moments as mayor was the day in 1980 when, seized by
inspiration, he walked down to the Brooklyn Bridge during a rare transit
strike and began yelling encouragement to commuters walking to work.
"I began to yell, `Walk over the bridge! Walk over the bridge! We're not
going to let these bastards bring us to our knees!' And people began to
applaud," he recalled at a 2012 forum. His success in rallying New
Yorkers in the face of the strike was, he said, his biggest personal
achievement as mayor.
His mark on the city has been set in steel: The Queensboro Bridge --
connecting Manhattan to Queens and celebrated in the Simon and Garfunkel
tune "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)" -- was renamed in
Koch's honor in 2011.
Koch was a champion of gay rights, taking on the Roman Catholic Church
and scores of political leaders.
A lifelong bachelor, Koch offered a typically blunt response to
questions about his own sexuality: "My answer to questions on this
subject is simply, `F--- off.' There have to be some private matters
left."
He was fast-talking, opinionated and sometimes rude, becoming the face
and sound of New York to those living outside the city. Koch became a
celebrity, appearing on talk shows and playing himself in a number of
movies, including "The Muppets Take Manhattan" and "The First Wives
Club" and hosting "Saturday Night Live."
In 1989's "Batman," the character of Gotham City's mayor, played by Lee
Wallace, bore a definite resemblance to Koch.
When Koch took over from accountant Abe Beame in 1978, one thing quickly
became apparent -- with this mayor, nothing was certain. Reporters
covered him around the clock because of "the Koch factor," his ability
to say something outrageous any place, any time.
After leaving office, he continued to offer his opinions as a political
pundit, movie reviewer, food critic and judge on "The People's Court."
Koch remained a political force in Albany well into old age. He secured
a promise in 2010 from then-aspiring Gov. Andrew Cuomo and a number of
state legislators to protect the electoral redistricting process from
partisanship -- and then vocally protested when Cuomo and others reneged
on that pledge two years later.
Even in his 80s, Koch still exercised regularly and worked as a lawyer
for the firm Bryan Cave.
At his 80th birthday bash, Bloomberg said Koch was "not only a great
mayor and a great source of advice and support to other mayors, he
happens to be one of the greatest leaders and politicians in the history
of our city."
He was in the hospital twice in 2012, for anemia in September and then
for a respiratory infection in December. He returned twice in January
2013 with fluid buildup in his lungs.
He had undergone surgery in June 2009 to replace his aortic valve and
had gallbladder surgery a month later. He had a pacemaker inserted in
1991 and was hospitalized eight years later with a heart attack. In
early 2001, he was hospitalized with pneumonia.
Koch was born in the Bronx on Dec. 12, 1924, the second of three
children of Polish immigrants Louis and Joyce Koch. During the Great
Depression, the family lived in Newark, N.J.
The future mayor worked his way through school, checking hats, working
behind a delicatessen counter and selling shoes. He attended City
College and served as a combat infantryman in Europe during World War
II, earning his sergeant stripes.
He received a law degree from New York University in 1948 and began
practicing law in Manhattan's Greenwich Village neighborhood, where his
political career began as a member of the Village Independent Democrats,
a group of liberal reformers. He defeated powerful Democratic leader
Carmine DeSapio, whose roots reached back to the corrupt Tammany Hall
political machine, in a race for district leader.
Koch was elected to the City Council and then to Congress, serving from
1969-77 as representative for the "Silk Stocking" district that was then
known for its millionaire Park Avenue constituency.
The liberal Koch was the first Democrat to represent the district in 31
years. But his politics edged to the center of the political spectrum
during his years in Congress and pulled to the right on a number of
issues after becoming mayor.
His answer to the war on drugs? Send convicted drug dealers to
concentration camps in the desert. Decaying buildings? Paint phony
windows, complete with cheery flowerpots, on brick facades. Overcrowded
city jails? Stick inmates on floating prison barges.
Koch defeated incumbent Beame and future Gov. Mario Cuomo in the
Democratic primary to win his first term in City Hall. Like his hero
Fiorello LaGuardia, the fiery fusion party mayor who ran the city from
1933 to 1945, he ran on the Republican and Conservative party lines in
the 1981 mayoral election.
He breezed to re-election in both 1981 and 1985, winning an
unprecedented three-quarters of the votes cast. At the time, he was only
the third mayor in city history to be elected to three terms.
While mayor, he wrote three books including the best-seller "Mayor,"
"Politics" and "His Eminence and Hizzoner," written with Cardinal John
O'Connor. He wrote seven other nonfiction books, four mystery novels and
three children's books after leaving office.
Early in his second term, Koch flip-flopped on his pledge to remain at
City Hall and decided to run for governor against then-Lt. Gov. Mario
Cuomo. But his 1982 gubernatorial bid blew up after Koch mouthed off
about life outside his hometown.
"Have you ever lived in the suburbs?" Koch told an interviewer who asked
about a possible move to Albany. "It's sterile. It's nothing. It's
wasting your life."
It cost him the race, but it convinced many of the 8 million city
residents that Koch belonged in New York. Meanwhile, Cuomo went on to
serve three terms as governor.
Koch's third term was beset by corruption scandals. Queens Borough
President Donald Manes -- a close ally -- committed suicide in March
1986, after having resigned over kickback and patronage allegations.
Bronx Democratic leader Stanley Friedman and three others were also
tarred. Koch's commissioner of cultural affairs, former Miss America
Bess Myerson, stepped down in the wake of a scandal involving her
boyfriend and a judge overseeing a legal case concerning him.
As the pressure grew, Koch suffered a minor stroke in 1987.
The administration was also beset by racial unrest, first after the 1986
death of a black youth at the hands of a white gang in Howard Beach and
three years later after a black teen was shot to death in Brooklyn's
tough Bensonhurst neighborhood by a group of whites.
Six weeks after the second slaying, Koch lost the Democratic primary to
the city's eventual first black mayor, David Dinkins. Koch later said
the simmering racial tensions didn't lead to his defeat.
"I was defeated because of longevity," Koch said. "People get tired of
you. So they decided to throw me out."
The man who bragged that he would always get a better job, but New
Yorkers would never get a better mayor, left his City Hall office for
the last time on Dec. 31, 1989.
Looking back, Koch said in a 1997 interview: "All I could think of was,
`Free at last, free at last, great God almighty, I'm free at last."'
He was finished with public office, but he would never be through with
the city. At age 83, Koch paid $20,000 for a burial plot at Trinity
Church Cemetery, at the time the only graveyard in Manhattan that still
had space.
"I don't want to leave Manhattan, even when I'm gone," Koch told The
Associated Press. "This is my home. The thought of having to go to New
Jersey was so distressing to me."
Not long after buying the plot, he had his tombstone inscribed and
installed. The marker features the last words of slain Wall Street
Journal reporter Daniel Pearl: "My father is Jewish, my mother is
Jewish, I am Jewish."
It also includes a Jewish prayer and the epitaph he wrote after his
stroke:
"He was fiercely proud of his Jewish faith. He fiercely defended the
City of New York, and he fiercely loved its people. Above all, he loved
his country, the United States of America, in whose armed forces he
served in World War II."
Greg Williams | SAIC
Service Desk Account Processor | SAIC Service Desk | phone: 877-WWW-SAIC
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