John Lindsay

This article is about the American politician. For the jazz musician of the same name, see John Lindsay (musician) .

John Lindsay 1966

John Vliet Lindsay (born November 24, 1921 in New York City , †  December 19, 2000 in Hilton Head Island , South Carolina ) was an American politician . He represented New York State in the US House of Representatives from 1959 to 1965 and was Mayor of New York City from 1966 to 1973.

Life

Origin and education

Lindsay was born to George Nelson and Florence Eleanor Vliet Lindsay. His father was the son of an English brick manufacturer who emigrated to the United States in 1881 and was a successful investment banker. Lindsay's mother came from a Dutch family that could trace its origins back to the American Revolution. The family was wealthy and lived first on Riverside Drive and later on Park Avenue . Lindsay's mother in particular brought him and his three brothers and sister closer to the city's opera, theater and museums. Lindsay attended the Buckley School for Boys in New York, and later boarding school in Concord . From 1940 to 1943 he studied history at Yale .

From 1943 he served in the US Navy and was dismissed in 1946 with the rank of lieutenant.

After the war, he returned to Yale, where he completed his law degree in 1948. There he also met Herbert Brownell Jr. , a New York lawyer who was active in the Republican Party . This helped him find his first job as a lawyer in the Webster, Sheffield & Chrystie firm and introduced him to the Republicans.

In 1949 he married Mary Anne Harrison, with whom he had three daughters and a son.

Political career

In the following years, Lindsay made a political career. In 1949 he became chairman of the New York Young Republican Club , and in 1951 he helped found the Youth for Eisenhower movement. Lindsay's political commitment impressed his mentor Brownell so much that he brought him to the Justice Department , where Brownell was Attorney General in the Eisenhower cabinet from 1953 . From 1955 Lindsay was Brownell's most important advisor and his liaison to the White House and Congress .

With Brownell's support, Lindsay ran as a Republican in the 1958 congressional elections in New York's 17th  Congressional District . In the primaries he narrowly defeated his intra-party competitor Elliot H. Goodwin and later in the general election narrowly his Democratic challenger Anthony B. Akers. Lindsay was elected to Congress four times.

As a congressman, he was progressive and often voted for democratic legislative initiatives, particularly on civil rights, immigration, housing and school construction, and development aid. In 1960 he introduced a bill to create a Department of Urban Affairs and in 1962 a bill to implement a plan by New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller for state health care for the elderly.

Due to his progressive views, however, he increasingly isolated himself from his republican party friends and looked for a new political field of activity. In 1965 he applied for the election of Mayor of New York City to succeed the no longer candidate Robert F. Wagner . Although his starting position as a Republican in the traditionally Democratic-dominated city was difficult, he was able to prevail against his Democratic challenger Abraham D. Beame and the conservative applicant William F. Buckley and was sworn in as the 103rd mayor of New York in early 1966.

In addition to a well-conducted election campaign and the progressive political program that he had represented in New York, the support of Republican Governor Rockefeller and the also Republican Senator Jacob K. Javits as well as a campaign fund of $ 1.5 million were decisive for his election success Dollar.

Term of office as mayor

John Lindsay giving a speech

Lindsay (left) speaking to President Johnson in the Oval Office , 1967

Lindsay's tenure began with a bang, a 13-day New York transit strike that cost the city $ 1.5 billion.

Overall, the results of his term in office are very mixed. On the one hand, it was overshadowed by strikes, increasing racial conflicts, financial problems and profound alienation from the white middle class. On the other hand, the young and telegenic mayor, whose charisma has often been compared to that of John F. Kennedy , was able to give New Yorkers a sense of pride. He tried to make New York a Fun City , with theater and concerts and happenings in parks; unlike many politicians of the time, Lindsay took part in civil rights marches and anti-Vietnam war demonstrations. The focus of his tenure was the fight against corruption, administrative reform and better integration of the black minority.

Administrative reform

The New York City government has long been in the grip of union bosses close to the democratic party machine. Lindsay's aim was to break the power of the trade unions, to fight endemic corruption, especially among the police, and to make the administration more citizen-friendly and closer.

Already at the beginning of his term of office, Lindsay tried to tame the city bureaucracy by merging 50 city authorities into 10, with a head directly subordinate to the mayor at the top. While this made administration more efficient and eliminated redundancies on the one hand, this reform created another administrative level on the other. Lindsay also tried to bring the administration closer to the citizen by setting up Neighborhood Government Offices across the city; however, this attempt was quickly reversed as useless and inefficient.

Lindsay clashed with the union representatives of the municipal employees right from the start, so that his term of office was accompanied by slow strikes and strikes at the transport companies, the garbage disposal, the teachers and other municipal institutions. Lindsay hurt himself twice by not following his tough anti-union rhetoric and the collective bargaining agreements during his tenure were often higher than those of his predecessors. The winter storm of 1968, which left streets in east Queens uncleared for days, fueling the anger of the middle class in particular, was the most obvious symbol of Lindsay's inability to get the administration under control.

Police reform

In keeping with Lindsay's plan to reform the administration, reform the police was. Prompted by revelations by New York police officer Frank Serpico in the New York Times , an investigative commission headed by Whitham Knapp came to the conclusion in 1972 that corruption was a widespread problem with the New York police. Lindsay then created specialized units that dealt with organized crime, and tightened the supervision. He also tried to set up an independent oversight body, the Civilian Complaint Review Board , to investigate police abuses, particularly on blacks and Latinos. These plans were fiercely opposed by the police union and finally rejected in a referendum.

Integration of minorities

Lindsay was particularly keen to better integrate the Afro-American and Latino minorities. He tried to achieve this by setting up public, social housing projects in the middle class residential areas and reforming the school system. An attempt by the city council to develop such a housing project in Forest Hills , Queens met opposition from the predominantly white local population, and the project was eventually cut in half.

The pilot project to decentralize the school system and, above all, to give the districts inhabited by Afro-Americans more say, led to the Brownsville School Strike , which resulted in the closure of almost all municipal schools for almost two months.

The successes of Lindsay's integration policy were limited and led to the fact that the white middle class increasingly migrated to the suburbs; on the other hand, New York City was largely spared from severe race riots like in Detroit and other cities.

Financial crisis

The pressure on the city's budget grew steadily due to increasing administrative expenses for city tasks. Lindsay tried to counteract this by introducing an income and commuter tax for New Yorkers. However, he was unable to solve the financial problems; on the contrary, with the increased exodus of the middle class from New York, which was accelerated by Lindsay's integration policy, the financial base became increasingly narrow. Ambitious social programs such as For example, unlimited and free access to City University and high collective agreements also increased city spending. Lindsay's policies thus led to New York's financial crisis in the mid-1970s.

Second term and candidacy for president

Despite a mixed first term in office, Lindsay was confirmed in office in 1969, but mainly because the opposition with the conservative Republican John Marchi and the also very conservative Democrat Mario Procaccino was not a real alternative. Lindsay had since resigned from the Republican Party and was running as a Liberal . However, Lindsay only received 42 percent of the votes cast. The success was only made possible by high wage concessions to the city servants and a campaign in which Lindsay admitted his mistakes and promised improvement.

Despite his difficult political situation, he decided to run for president against incumbent Richard Nixon . In order to increase his chances of being elected, Lindsay became a member of the Democratic Party in 1971. However, his candidacy ended early in the Democratic primary, and New Yorkers felt that Lindsay was putting the city's growing problems behind his ambitions.

After his candidacy, the city's financial situation deteriorated dramatically. Since he also had no support from either the Democrats or the Republicans, he decided not to run again in 1973. He was replaced in office on January 1, 1974 by the Democrat Abraham D. Beame .

Retreat into private life

After resigning from the mayor's office, Lindsay returned to work as a lawyer, first again for Webster, Sheffield and later for Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander & Ferdon. However, both companies went bankrupt, so that Lindsay became unemployed in 1995 and had no health insurance. His friend and successor Rudy Giuliani made Lindsay the syndic of the City Commision for the United Nations , which earned him health insurance, a secure income and a city pension. Lindsay also worked as a political commentator for ABC television . His attempt to return to politics failed as early as 1980 in the Democratic primaries for running for the US Senate .

For the last few years of his life, Lindsay lived in seclusion with his wife in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. There he died on December 19, 2000 as a result of pneumonia and Parkinson's disease.

Web links

Commons : John Lindsay  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• John Lindsay in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• John Lindsay in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• Obituary , New York Times, December 21, 2000 (English)
• America's Mayor: John V. Lindsay and the Reinvention of New York virtual exhibit , located on the Museum of the City of New York website, accessed December 21, 2011

Individual evidence

1. ↑ List of the mayors of New York City since 1898, here online (English) ( Memento of the original from October 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; last viewed on April 23, 2009 
2. ↑ Kim Phillips-Fein: Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics. Metropolitan Books, New York 2017, p. 34
3. ^ Joe Flood: The Fires: How a Computer Formula, Big Ideas, and the best of Intentions Burned down New York City - and Determined the Future of Cities. 1st paperback edition, Riverhead Books, New York 2011, p. 33
4. ↑ Vincent J. Cannato: The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York. Basic Books, New York 2001, p. 3
5. ↑ Vincent J. Cannato: The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York. Basic Books, New York 2001, p. 3
6. ^ Joe Flood: The Fires: How a Computer Formula, Big Ideas, and the best of Intentions Burned down New York City - and Determined the Future of Cities. 1st paperback edition, Riverhead Books, New York 2011, pp. 56-57
7. ^ Robert McFadden: "John V. Lindsay, Mayor and Maverick, Dies at 79." In: New York Times , December 21, 2000, accessed December 24, 2017
8. ↑ Kim Phillips-Fein: Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics. Metropolitan Books, New York 2017, p. 52
9. ^ Robert McFadden: "John V. Lindsay, Mayor and Maverick, Dies at 79." In: New York Times , December 21, 2000, accessed December 24, 2017

predecessor	Office	successor
Robert F. Wagner Jr.	Mayor of New York City 1966–1973	Abraham D. Beame