Robert Wagner and the Rise of New York City's Plebiscitary Mayoralty: The Tamer of the Tammany Tiger

The Tamer of the Tammany Tiger

Richard M. Flanagan

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137400871
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Campaigns & Elections
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Robert Wagner was New York City's true New Deal mayor, killed Tammany Hall. The world Wagner shaped delivers municipal services efficiently at the cost of local democracy. The story of Wagner's mayoralty will be of interest to anyone who cares about New York City, local democracy and the debate about the legacy of the City's important leaders.

1

Introduction: Robert F. Wagner, the Forgotten Mayor

Abstract: Both the public and academics have largely forgotten three-term mayor Robert F. Wagner (1954–1965). However, his administration institutionalized New York liberalism and created the modern political system. Robert Wagner was one of the most influential mayors in the city’s history.

Flanagan, Richard M. Robert Wagner and the Rise of New York City’s Plebiscitary Mayoralty: The Tamer of the Tammany Tiger. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137400871.0002.

New York City mayor Robert F. Wagner (1954–1965) governed during a period of momentous change in local politics. In this era—too often viewed as a mere prelude to the racial unrest of the John Lindsay years (1966–1973) and the fiscal crisis of the 1970s—important policy changes took place in the fields of housing, education, race and labor relations, and in the structures of local governance. Incongruously, however, despite all of the changes in politics and public policy in play in the 1950s and 1960s, Wagner himself is remembered as a “broker” politician who passively mediated the pressing demands of the city’s constellation of interest groups as if his decisions meant little in how the policies of the era were crafted.¹ Interpretations of the Wagner administration are inevitability tied closely to his grayish leadership style and owlish public persona. The myopic focus on the man misses the institutional structures that were reconstituted in the three Wagner administrations, the role that the mayor’s own strategic decision-making played in forging the political changes of the era, and the long-term consequences of Mayor Wagner’s choices for future generations of city politicians and citizens.

Wagner central legacy was the establishment of a “plebiscitary mayoralty,” setting in place institutional changes that would channel the behaviors and choices of his successors. The Wagner years were an important path-dependent moment in New York City politics that realigned the relationship between the mayoralty and the party system, interest groups and citizens, and reshaped the governing capacity of the office—for both good and bad—in subsequent decades.² Behind the façade of the unassuming and beleaguered chief executive, a “hidden-hand” mayor sought to mold the tumultuous forces of political change to his own political advantage.³ In addition, Wagner is properly understood as having completed and institutionalized the New Deal project in New York pioneered by Mayor La Guardia (1934–1945). Wagner expanded the programmatic reach of municipal government, codified the construction of the foundations of the municipal labor movement, and permanently recalibrated the balance of power between the office of the mayor, the city bureaucracy, and the political party system in New York City.

The work proceeds as follows. First, it focuses on the meaning and applicability of the concept of plebiscitary governance in the US urban context. Second, the work considers and evaluates the major policy accomplishments of the Wagner years, arguing that they amounted to the programmatic completion of the “Little New Deal” in New York City, the promise of which had only been partially fulfilled by Mayor La Guardia in the 1930s. After covering this programmatic ground, the work moves to consider how governmental and political structures changed in the Wagner years to greatly strengthen the mayoralty. New policies birthed new governing relationships that made the mayor much more important relative to other actors such as party chiefs in city affairs. Each victory for Wagner’s Little New Deal strengthened the power of city hall and the bureaucracy under the mayor’s command. These structural realignments were expressed in the dramatic events leading up to the watershed election of 1961, when, in an epic showdown with Carmine De Sapio, the boss of Tammany Hall, Wagner won the Democratic nomination for mayor without the support of the borough party machines. The mayor beat back the party bosses. This acrimonious break between the city’s two leading political powerhouses, Wagner and De Sapio, marked the moment that the mayor publically renounced borough-based party leadership. In its place, Wagner developed a not entirely satisfying reform-style politics marked by programmatic initiatives and patronage politics managed and allocated through ad hoc mayoral coalitions rather than the borough machines and political clubhouses of the past. Outmoded institutions and practices did persist, however, servicing lower offices, or as vessels for the ambitions of mayoral aspirants seeking an early leg up in the candidate-centered politics of the post-Wagner era. But the turn toward the borough-centered organizations for support often visited upon them more trouble than the alliances were worth.

The final section of this work turns attention to the contemporary characteristics of New York City’s political system that were shaped by the events and decisions of the Wagner years. In this we see the long shadow of Wagner on the seven men who have served since he did in an office that is often called “the second hardest job in the world.”⁴

Notes

  1   Wagner is characterized as a “broker” mayor in Douglas Yates’ book, The Ungovernable City: The Politics of Urban Problems and Policy Making (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977). It is an unflattering characterization, in that brokers lack the political power to act decisively. The more heroic ideal type in Yates’ scheme is the entrepreneurial mayor who marshals resources to leave a positive mark on city politics. As heroic but politically weak is the crusader mayor whose rhetorical, reformist flourishes fall short of mark; less heroic but equally strong is the boss-mayor, whose resources are put to use to serve narrow personal or political interests. In Sayre and Kaufman’s review and ranking of New York City mayors, Wagner is classified as a middling mayor with few dramatic successes or failures. Wallace Sayre and Herbert Kaufman, Governing New York (New York: Russell Sage, 1960). Wagner’s treatment in the most widely read book about New York politics, Robert Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York: Random House, 1975), is not flattering at all. Wagner plays the role of doormat to Robert Moses’ strongman. In the past ten or so years, there have been major biographies and reassessments of the other long-serving mayors since the creation of the modern City of New York in 1898, including Fiorello La Guardia, [H. Paul Jeffers, The Napoleon of New York: Mayor Fiorello La Guardia (New York: Wiley, 2002)]; John Lindsay [Vincent Cannato, The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York (New York: Basic Books, 2002)]; Joseph Viteritti, editor, Summer in the City: John Lindsay, New York, and the American Dream (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2014)]; Ed Koch, [Jonathan Soffer, Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York City (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 2012)]; David Dinkins [Chris McNickle, The Power of the Mayor: David Dinkins, 1990–1993 (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2012)]; Rudy Giuliani, [Fred Siegel and Harry Siegel, The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York and the Genius of American Life (New York: Encounter Books, 2006)] and Michael Bloomberg [Julian Brash, Bloomberg’s New York: Class and Governance in the Luxury City (Athens, GA: Univ. of Georgia Press, 2012)]. La Guardia and Lindsay stand out as mayors who have been analyzed and evaluated on many occasions. Mayor Wagner is the only reelected mayor since consolidation who has not received any scholarly or popular press attention to date.

  2   On the concept of “path dependence” in political science, see: Paul Pierson, “Path Dependence, Increasing Returns, and the Study of Politics,” American Political Science Review, 94:2, (June 2000), 251–267. On the application of the path-dependence concept in political science, see: Kenneth Finegold and Theda Skocpol, State and Party in America’s New Deal (Madison: University of Winconsin Press, 1995).

  3   I borrow the term “hidden-hand” from Fred Greenstein’s revisionist description of Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency in The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader, 2^nd Edition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1984). Many historians dismissed Eisenhower as an ineffective, passive president. Greenstein demonstrated that Eisenhower was an engaged, behind the scenes leader who manipulated his public image as a doddering, bureaucratic general to his advantage. There are parallels to Wagner’s governing style here. Much of Wagner’s hesitancy as a leader was tied to the fact that he had great respect for tradition and the wisdom of his predecessors, in the Burkean sense that cautiousness is a requirement of prudential judgment. Wagner himself reported that his years of service during World War II as a military lawyer influenced his thinking about politics. “It helped me understand some of our public laws. In other words, you read through that court marshal manual, you say, ‘What the heck, who ever thought of this?’ Then you’d find out, it worked pretty well. Some people had given real thought to matters in ordinances and directives used by the military over many years, and a respect for the past, a knowledge that you need to revise it every now and then, but respect the past, and I think that helped me later in life to understand why departments were conceived that way – it wasn’t haphazard. There was some intelligence put into it, some reason.” Reminiscences of Robert F. Wagner, Oral History, 1979, Columbia University Library, 146.

  4   The most difficult job refers to the US presidency. The invention of this meme is often attributed to Mayor John Lindsay. After a difficult first term, Lindsay’s campaign strategy in 1969 was to concede that he made mistakes, offering up as an apology that he had “the second hardest job in America.” But in fact, journalists and mayors had floated this notion of the second-hardest job before. Barry Popik found examples from the 1940s. Perhaps the most colorful expression of the idea was made by journalist S.J. Wolfe about the burden of one-term mayor William O’Dwyer: “Being Mayor of New York is said to be ‘the second toughest job in the world,’ the only tougher one being that of the man in the White House. New York City is a corporation which spends a billion dollars a year, employs 193,983 men and women, and provides free education for more boys and girls than the entire population of Boston or St. Louis. All this calls for a great deal in the man who sits at the Mayor’s desk in City Hall. It also takes a great deal out of him, even in quiet times.” S.J. Wolfe, “O’Dwyer Tells Why Its Tough,” New York Times, March 21, 1948, SM14. Quoted in Barry Popik, “Entry from December 31, 2007: Second Toughest Job in America (NYC Mayor)” http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/ second_toughest_job_in _america_nyc_mayor. The seven mayors since Wagner are John Lindsay (1965–1973), Abraham Beame (1974–1977), Edward Koch (1978–1989), David Dinkins (1990–1993), Rudolph Giuliani (1994–2001), Michael Bloomberg (2002–2013) and Bill de Blasio (2014–).

2

The Concept of the “Plebiscitary Mayoralty”

Abstract: By bypassing the party organizations and strengthening the administrative power of the mayoralty in order to finish the New Deal project in New York, Mayor Robert Wagner established direct, programmatic connections with citizens and courted the government workers who supplied the services of the local welfare state. The literature about plebiscitary politics in the US context is reviewed with a focus on the presidency.

Flanagan, Richard M. Robert Wagner and the Rise of New York City’s Plebiscitary Mayoralty: The Tamer of the Tammany Tiger. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137400871.0003.

The term “plebiscitary mayoralty,” as it is used here, describes a direct, unmediated relationship between the mayor and citizens. The mayor speaks directly to voters through the mass media. He finds out what citizens want through public opinion polls and information gleaned from the city bureaucracy such as complaints and patterns of usage of city services. The word “plebiscite” means the direct vote of an entire citizenry on important public questions. Its Latin root comes from pleb (the common people) and sciscere/scitum (vote for a decree).

The construction of the plebiscitary mayoralty is Mayor Robert Wagner’s most enduring contribution to New York City politics. This might at first appear to be an odd claim, since rule by plebiscite is most commonly understood as being established through an assertion of charismatic authority. On this personal level, the bond of affection between leader and electorate, Wagner was one of the least charismatic of New York City’s mayors, many of whom had vibrant personalities. Fiorello La Guardia endeared himself to New Yorkers when he read newspaper comics to children over the radio during a newspaper strike; Mayor Jimmy Walker (1927–1932) was a pop song writing libertine who charmed many with his promotion of boxing, theater and even speakeasies during prohibition; Ed Koch cheered commuters as they walked over the Brooklyn Bridge during a strike by mass transit workers in 1978, and greeted all with the charmingly self-centered (to some) “How’m I doin’?”¹ John Lindsay’s personal magnetism inspired a generation of citizen-activists to participate in the city’s civic life. Such performances endeared these mayors to their constituents, and became a political resource in as much as the presentation of self influenced public opinion positively. Indeed, the folklore of the office is that it attracts tough, colorful politicians.

But Wagner’s path-breaking role in the formation of the new form had much more to do with a change in structural relationships in the city rather than personal leadership style. In contrast to these personality-driven expressions discuss...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction: Robert F. Wagner, the Forgotten Mayor
• 2  The Concept of the Plebiscitary Mayoralty
• 3  Mayor Robert F. Wagner and the Unfinished Business of the New Deal
• 4  The Break: The Fight for Charter Reform and the 1961 Mayoral Election
• 5  The New Wagner Mayoralty and the Shaping of Modern New York
• 6  In the Shadow of Wagner: Plebiscitary Politics in New York City
• Select Bibliography
• Index