In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

195 17. Mayoral Race In winter 1989, political observers were looking ahead to September.Would Ed Koch run for a fourth term as mayor? He was still popular with ethnic whites in big boroughs like Brooklyn and Queens and in near-homogeneous Staten Island. But many liberal and progressive whites in Manhattan were weary of Koch’s antagonistic relationship with the city’s black and brown citizens. Most blacks were not weary; they had long wanted Koch out but were powerless or too disorganized to do anything. Then a reluctant black candidate emerged, Manhattan borough president David N.Dinkins.In the early 1970s,Dinkins had been about to become deputy mayor, but the appointment was withdrawn after it was learned he had not filed income tax returns for years and owed $15,000.1 After Dinkins cleaned up the mess,mayor Abe Beame appointed Dinkins city clerk in 1975, and he served for a decade. During that stretch, Dinkins ran for borough president in 1977, when fellow Harlemite Percy Sutton vacated the seat to run for mayor. Both men lost, and for the first time in twenty-four years there was no black representative on the powerful city Board of Estimate, where the mayor, borough presidents, comptroller, and city council president made decisions on land use and appointed key people to boards.2 Dinkins ran for borough president again in 1981 and lost, but he succeeded in his next try in 1985. Dinkins was New York City’s highest-ranking black elected official. Governor Cuomo sought Dinkins’s counsel during a pivotal moment in the racially tense Howard Beach case—just before he replaced the Queens district attorney with a special prosecutor. During the even hotter Tawana Brawley conflict in 1988,Dinkins chastised the Maddox, Mason, Sharpton team for belittling the governor and attorney general and for peddling accusations instead of proof.3 In national politics, in 1984 Dinkins supported Jesse Jackson for president when many black politicians were invested in Walter Mondale, the incumbent vice president. Dinkins stuck with Jackson in 1988 when he made a much more effective run for the office. Jackson had another New York problem. In 1984 he called the city “Hymietown,” a slur directed toward the powerful Jewish voting bloc. Would Jackson’s behavior taint Dinkins? In the 1970s, Dinkins joined the 196 Mayoral Race BlackAmericans in Support of Israel Committee,and he was well connected among liberal Jewish activists.4 Dinkins was part of the Harlem “Gang of Four” with Sutton, Paterson, and Rangel, but he was not well known to blacks in the outer boroughs. He would not be an easy sell for mayor. It wasn’t clear that Dinkins even wanted the job. In the winter of 1989, he was not openly campaigning for it. Nevertheless, New York magazine assessed his chances: “There is a complacent quality to Dinkins; he lacks rigor. His unwillingness to confront the mayor—or anyone, for that matter —may seem statesmanlike but might just as easily be construed as an allergy to serious thought. . . . When asked a serious question—about anything —Dinkins will flee to the nearest platitude.”5 Dinkins was among the black leaders who got arrested for protesting South African apartheid in December 1984. The City Sun rejoiced editorially when Dinkins was elected Manhattan borough president in November 1985 (“Dinkins Wins! Manhattan Gets a People’s President,” read the headline of the front-page story, and “Great Beginnings for Black Political Leadership” was the title of the editorial inside). His win was a bright spot during Koch’s reelection landslide. Dinkins was a coalition politician who repeatedly said the city and nation were not a “melting pot” but a “mosaic.” The latter term provided cognitive dissonance that irked members of the press in future years.6 Ruth Messinger, a Manhattan city councilwoman and coalition supporter , raised money in 1988 to campaign for citywide office. She wanted to run for borough president if Dinkins was motivated to make a move up to mayor. The Board of Estimate had been all-male for nearly four years because of former city council president Elizabeth Holtzman’s failed mayoral run in 1985. In 1988, Dinkins repeatedly told Messinger there was “no way he was running for mayor”and also said“I have never had the ambition particularly to be the city’s first black mayor.”In the winter of 1989, however, Dinkins appeared to have changed his mind, but he held his cards close.7 In February, Dinkins...

Share