537604
research-article2014
UARXXX10.1177/1078087414537604Urban Affairs ReviewKeiser
Article
Urban Regime Change:
A Silver Lining for
Scandals
Urban Affairs Review
1­–29
© The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/1078087414537604
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Richard Keiser1
Abstract
Regime theorists have developed typologies that characterize a range of
potential regimes. But there has been little investigation of regime change,
the transformational process by which one regime type is replaced with
a different regime. This research hypothesizes that political corruption
scandals create propitious conditions for regime change. Using three U.S.
urban case studies, we show that scandals destabilized dominant regimes and
led to their replacement by new regimes characterized by both alternative
electoral coalitions and alternative patterns of political and economic
distribution.
Keywords
regime theory, New York City, Gary, Indiana, political scandal, minority
incorporation, corruption
Regime theory is a dominant paradigm in urban studies within the social sciences (Imbroscio 2003; Mossberger and Stoker 2001). Entire issues of leading journals have been devoted to deepening our ability to apply the regime
concept (Journal of Urban Affairs 2002). As well, scholarship has provided
considerable empirical bases for addressing the applicability of regime theory
to cities beyond the United States (Harding 1995). Similarly, a considerable
1Carleton
College, Northfield, MN, USA
Corresponding Author:
Richard Keiser, Department of Political Science, Carleton College, Northfield, MN 55057,
USA.
Email: [email protected]
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amount of scholarship has been devoted to typologies of regimes that specify
a wide variety of regime types. Elkin (1987) has identified pluralist, federalist, and entrepreneurial regimes, and Stone (1993) has created a typology of
four regime types, including maintenance, developmental, middle-class progressive, and lower-class opportunity expansion. Imbroscio (1998) has conceptualized community-based, petty bourgeois, and local-statist regimes. Yet,
very little systematic attention has been given to explaining the processes of
transformation from one regime type to the other. This is particularly surprising because regime theorists often seem unabashed in their normative disaffection with extant regimes and their yearning for alternative regimes that
empower different governing coalitions and yield alternate patterns of distribution of benefits (Imbroscio 1997).
Regime change has long been a focus of other areas within political science. For instance, explaining shifts between authoritarian and democratic
regimes is a major concern of comparative politics scholars. A decline in the
perceived legitimacy of a regime can prompt previously satisfied key actors
to defect from the incumbent regime and join a newly attractive alternative
coalition. Comparativists interested in regime change have pointed to such
factors as unpopular wars, succession crises, and economic crises in explaining the delegitimation of a previously stable regime (Bermeo 1990).
What facilitates regime transformation? Transformations are difficult
because such change requires resources to be mobilized. Many agents want
to modify structures like regimes of governance and distribution but not all
agents are equal in their capacity to change or maintain structures. The urban
poor, we could presume, want considerable change in governance and distribution patterns, but they have few resources with which to bring about this
change. Following Lindblom (1997), urban scholars like J. Logan and
Molotch (1987) and Stone (1989) have emphasized the extraordinary power
of business, banking, and real estate elites in creating and maintaining
regimes. Clarence Stone in Regime Politics offers an in-depth portrayal of the
historical evolution of a regime. Stone’s work on Atlanta focuses much more on
the persistence of regimes, explaining that a developmental regime’s ability to get
things done (power to, rather than power over) produces trust and a willingness to
stick with what has worked among potential defectors. On the issue of regime
change, he draws attention to what we would call a recalculation of alliance benefits. It may be useful to keep in mind examples of unpopular wars or crises of succession or economic depression while considering his highly theoretical view:
Popular support for regime restructuring would thus require the following: (a)
A substantial body of people would have to believe that a new order of things
is superior and workable; (b) they would also have to believe that a sufficient
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alliance could be composed to constitute the new order—and the more farreaching the change the new order represents, the more substantial the alliance
needed to bring it off; and (c) they would have to be willing to risk immediate
interests in established arrangements for the sake of long-term gains from a
by-no-means-assured new order. That is a very large cognitive and motivational
order, and one likely to be met only under extraordinary circumstances. (Stone
1989, pp. 229–30)
The study of regime transformation therefore ought to focus on the following question: Why do agents with resources decide to shift their support away
from the status quo and why and how do agents whose resources are marginalized at one point become far more significant at a later time, and vice versa?
Although regime theorists themselves have not given much attention to
the antecedents of transformation from one regime to another, analysts of
urban politics in the United States have long been keenly interested in such
transitions. Many scholars have sought to identify the variables that might
explain ethnic and racial regime change. Examples include the transition
from the once-dominant Yankees to the once-subordinate Irish or from
regimes that excluded minorities to African-American led coalitions (Eisinger
1980; Erie 1988; Keiser 1993; Wolfinger 1974).
Path-breaking work by Rufus Browning, Dale Rogers Marshall, and
David Tabb (1984, 1990) offered the argument that the conditions necessary
for replacing a regime that excludes or co-opts minorities to one that incorporates blacks and Latinos are present when a sizable bloc of minorities, combined with a sympathetic population of white liberals, constitutes about half
of the electorate. But even when these necessary conditions were present in
cities like New York and Chicago, they were not sufficient (Mollenkopf
1990; Preston 1982). Scholars also recognized that in some cases, the coalition for minority incorporation may be latent, but the existence of an
entrenched conservative (i.e., antiminority empowerment) regime precludes
the formation of an alternative coalition focused on minority empowerment.
Until the conservative regime falls, any steps beyond co-optation by the dominant regime will be blocked. For Browning, Marshall, and Tabb, the Civil
Rights movement produced the requisite antecedent destabilization upon
which regime transformation occurred. This exogenous factor catalyzed the
organization of minority groups and prodded liberal whites to join with them
in a coalition that displaced an entrenched conservative regime.
Urban scholarship has revealed other singular exogenous events that have
had profound destabilizing effects on regimes, such as the Great Depression,
which displaced Republican officeholders in Chicago and many other cities
around the nation and ushered in regimes dominated by white ethnics (Gottfried
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1962; Weiss 1983). Like the Depression, Shefter and others have shown that
an endogenous fiscal crisis can destabilize a regime (Pecorella 1987; Shefter
1985) while an unusual version of a succession crisis created the opportunity
seized by Harold Washington in Chicago (Keiser 1997). Finally, Elkin (1987)
argued that an important cause of regime transformation in Dallas was institutional reform, specifically the adoption of single-member city council districts
rather than at large, “which significantly reduced the comparative advantage of
the money that business leaders could raise and the organization that they could
bring to bear” (p. 41). In this article, we argue that there is another endogenous
regime-destabilizing factor to which highly stable, democratic regimes are susceptible, and which we assert occurs with greater frequency than these aforementioned variables: the political corruption scandal.
Corruption is far more frequently understood as functional for the maintenance of political support for all kinds of regimes (Merton 1957; Scott
1969). Yet, in even the most electorally safe regimes, when corruption
becomes scandalous, the mass authority of the regime may be weakened,
and the legitimacy of the regime in the eyes of groups within the governing
coalition may be diminished (Kemp 1984). In Schattschneider’s (1960) terminology, political corruption scandals can create opportunities to broaden
the scope of conflict by mobilizing excluded groups as well as by creating
support for excluded groups from established groups. Corruption scandals
destabilize regimes, therefore, creating opportunities for regime change by
prompting actors to a recalculation of alliance benefits; corruption scandals
do not automatically produce regime change. Whether leaders emerge to
take advantage of these opportunities; whether the recalculation of benefits
leads groups each and every time to put aside past differences, unite, and
increase their electoral mobilization; and whether the recalculation of alliance benefits leads actors to defect from the extant regime, are all undetermined matters.
Sometimes, scandals produce transition rather than transformation (Keiser
2000). A scandal may simply restore to office a set of elites that was previously in office rather than introducing new actors, for example, the Watergate
scandal that led to the election of Democrat Jimmy Carter. Other scandals
may introduce a new leadership group that promises change but actually
delivers continuity of past practices with a different set of faces. Our discussion of regime change will be easily distinguished from these instances. This
analysis is confined to cases in which scandals open the door to historically
subordinated groups. Such dramatic shifts in the governing coalition (in the
who of who gets what?) constitute the core of our definition of regime change.
The pattern of distribution of benefits must be altered as well (the what of
who gets what?) if the case represents regime change.
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The next three sections of this article will present detailed case studies of
the process of urban regime change. These cases will illustrate the process by
which scandals have destabilized entrenched dominant regimes and created
conditions that were ripe for the coalescence of new regime coalitions. The
negative repercussions of scandals produced a loosening of previously stable
and beneficial alliances and a willingness to pursue both electoral alliances
and governing regimes that delivered political and economic benefits to previously excluded interests.
Tammany Domination Prior to Scandal
In 1929, Republican Congressman Fiorello La Guardia ran for mayor and
was overwhelmingly defeated by Democrat Jimmy Walker who won about
70% of the vote. From 1930 to 1932, political scandals rocked New York City
politics. These scandals led to the resignation of Mayor Jimmy Walker and
the embarrassment of many officials from the Tammany Hall Democratic
organization. Indictments and resignations removed numerous influential
figures in the Democratic Party organizations of four of the city’s five boroughs. These scandals enabled La Guardia to capture the office of mayor in
1933, a feat that had been demonstrated to be unthinkable four years earlier.
What happened to enable La Guardia to win in a city in which Democrats
outnumbered Republicans by more than 3 to 1? Why was La Guardia in 1933
able to capture a plurality in the city when only four years earlier he was
unable to win a single assembly district, losing by almost 500,000 votes out
of about 1.5 million? What were the conditions that enabled Italians and
Jews, under the Little Flower’s leadership, to overcome Tammany Hall’s subordination and achieve the breakthroughs that advanced the empowerment of
these two ethnic groups and the reduction of Irish-American hegemony in
New York City?
As a congressman from East Harlem, La Guardia was a constant critic of the
lopsided economy of the 1920s and the Coolidge–Hoover administrations that
preached laissez-faire to the poor but helped business with favorable tax rates
and tariff policies. He decried the prosperity of the 1920s, warning that stock
market gains were not a solution for long-term unemployment. His 1929 pasting
in the mayoral election indicated that the voters had no interest in heeding a man
who preached that the sky was going to fall. But, after the great crash, unemployment, and food lines, “No one could stand by the side of the destruction
visited by the economic crack-up and call out, ‘I told you so,’ with as much
justice” as La Guardia (Kessner 1989, pp. 170–171). But the Depression and the
election of Franklin D. Roosevelt were a rebuke of Hoover and the Republicans,
not Democrats like Walker. An explanation for this regime transformation must
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explain why Walker, Tammany, and Democrats throughout the city were discredited while New York state Democratic Governor Lehman and President
Roosevelt were reaching the apogee of popularity.
Overwhelming Democratic victories were the clear pattern in the city’s
recent history and in the absence of the scandals, there would have been no
reason to expect otherwise. Under the direction of Governor Al Smith, the
Tammany Democratic organization ruled the city throughout the 1920s.
Charles Garrett (1961) commented that, “It was a great age for Tammany.
The Democrats ruled the city and, as before, Tammany ruled the Democrats . . .
the Tiger’s hegemony in Democratic politics was never really in jeopardy”
(p. 55). In the 1921 and 1925 mayoral elections, the party’s candidate received
the support of the Democratic organizations in all five boroughs and captured
64% and 66% of the vote in the respective elections. Intraparty friction
between the Brooklyn and Manhattan factions of the party had increased now
that Brooklyn’s population had surpassed Manhattan’s. But incumbent Mayor
John Hylan (loyal to Brooklyn’s boss) endorsed Jimmy Walker after the former state senator defeated Hylan in the party’s 1925 mayoral primary, promising that this rift would be papered over with plentiful graft (Connable and
Silberfarb 1967).
In 1929, La Guardia received the sacrificial lamb nomination for mayor
from the GOP. He criticized the Walker administration and Tammany for
alleged linkages to organized crime. Specifically, La Guardia charged that
the city had stonewalled its investigation of the murder of Arnold
Rothstein, a major financier of the underworld, out of fear that linkages
between Rothstein and city officials including Magistrate Albert H. Vitale
would be revealed (Mann 1965). La Guardia called on Governor Franklin
D. Roosevelt to investigate the machine, but the governor considered the
evidence unpersuasive. Less than two weeks before voters went to the
polls, the stock market collapsed; yet the playboy mayor, “who could
shoot crap and assemble a municipal budget with equal facility,” won by
almost 500,000 votes, gaining 70% of the vote (Connable and Silberfarb
1967, p. 275).
La Guardia was unable to persuade many traditionally conservative
and Republican constituencies to quit the Tammany regime and support
him. New Yorkers were accustomed to corruption, and voters had not yet
been persuaded that the practices of the Walker regime were aberrant.
Patrician business leadership organizations like the City Club and the
Citizens Union as well as establishment mouthpieces like the New York
Times and the New York World refused to support the GOP candidate
(Garrett 1961).
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Scandals Trip the Tiger
Shortly after the election, Magistrate Vitale was being honored at a Democratic
Party dinner. Among the guests were a number of underworld figures including
Ciro Terranova. Masked gunmen crashed the party and took money, jewelry,
and the handgun of a detective. Two hours later, Vitale personally returned
these items. This feat raised embarrassing questions about the magistrate’s connections and led the Bar Association to petition the state Supreme Court for the
magistrate’s dismissal. After trying Vitale, the court concluded that he had
indeed received a loan that was never repaid from Rothstein (a payoff, some
claimed) and that Vitale was too closely tied to the underworld. The investigation also revealed that after four years on the bench, Vitale had saved $165,000,
although his salary in this period totaled only $48,000 (Mann 1965).
Subsequent investigations by the office of the U.S. Attorney revealed that
Kings County Judge and Brooklyn Democratic Club President Bernard Vause
had promoted a fraudulent bank that bilked thousands of small investors; he
was indicted on mail fraud. Vitale’s successor, Magistrate George Ewald, was
also indicted on separate counts of mail fraud; more importantly, he and his
wife were indicted for buying Ewald’s position with a $10,000 donation to
Martin J. Healy, a member of the party leadership.1 Ewald, his wife, and
Healy were never convicted. However, this string of indictments led the press
and segments of the public to pressure Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt to
appoint an investigative team with no compromising ties to Tammany. In
August of 1930, Samuel Seabury, a patrician who had served on the Court of
Appeals and lost a race for the governor’s office in 1916, was appointed to
head what promised to be much more thorough investigations. Public hearings held in late November revealed an extortion ring that included the vice
squad police, bondsmen, lawyers, and an assistant district attorney that was
operating in the Women’s Court, a special Magistrate’s Court. The police
would entrap prostitutes by having them accept marked money from johns
working with the police. The woman would be arrested and charged with
prostitution. If she had no money, she went to jail; but if she did have money,
she was diverted to a bondsman and lawyer who were part of the scheme.
After making a payoff to the bondsman that was divided among the conspirators, the policeman’s testimony would become faulty, the prosecutor’s case
would weaken, and the judge would dismiss the case. It was also revealed
that this ring of conspirators entrapped women who actually were not prostitutes. As a result of these and related revelations, three magistrates resigned
and two others were removed (Mann 1965). Although the public knew that
corruption existed in city politics, these scandals stoked up public indignation
to unprecedented levels, according to Garrett (1961):
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The general situation in the Magistrates’ Courts disclosed by the Seabury and
preceding investigations hardly constituted a new development in New York
and was not something of which most people were totally unaware. But the
specific disclosures spotlighted the conditions and educated the public as only
concrete cases can do. The central fact that the investigations brought out, and
which people had tended to forget, was that the lower judiciary was part of the
machine system. A man was appointed to the bench, people were once again
reminded, not because he was learned in the law or possessed other qualifications
a judge is supposed to have, but because he was a party worker . . . Once in
office, the judges, it was evident, did not forget that they were parts of a system.
(p. 70)
As the investigations continued into 1932, further evidence of the linkages
between Democratic Party leaders and the underworld were revealed. Four
district leaders who held the offices of sheriff of New York County, city clerk,
chief clerk of the City Court of New York, and register of Kings County were
charged with protecting illegal gamblers and using their political clubhouses
as gambling establishments. According to Garrett (1961),
Political protection of this sort was the real reason for the startling fact, brought
out by the investigators, that out of 514 persons arrested in gambling raids in
1926 and 1927, only 5 were held for the Court of Special Sessions. (p. 73)
The governor removed from office Sheriff Thomas M. Farley after he testified under oath that bank deposits of $360,000, which dwarfed his salary,
magically appeared in “a wonderful tin box” that he kept in his home.
Spectacularly scandalous revelations about the granting of permits, leases,
and franchises by the city also emerged. Mayor Walker helped a company
owned by some political friends win the contract to provide city bus service
and received a $10,000 letter of credit from the company that appeared to be
a bribe. Walker also received $26,000 in profit from stock investments for
which he had contributed no money. He made these investments with a
banker who was deeply involved with the city’s taxicab companies. Walker
claimed that if the investments had lost money, he would have been responsible for making good the losses (Garrett 1961). Mayor Walker resigned not
long after the conclusion of his testimony.
Walker’s resignation was only the most notable accomplishment in a
series of investigations that took testimony from about 4,000 witnesses and
filled nearly 95,000 pages of transcript. In all, 26 persons resigned or were
dismissed from the judicial bench, the police department, and the district
attorney’s office; 6 were tried and convicted; and the vice squad was disbanded
(Mann 1965). The combination of the insouciance of the Tammany officials
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who testified at the Seabury hearings and the mounting revelations of venality consolidated a bipartisan reform movement behind the leadership of
Seabury and La Guardia. These reformers, and regular Republicans, along
with Jews and Italians whose advancement within Tammany had long been
stifled, all found common cause in their desire to end Tammany’s
hegemony.
Upon Walker’s resignation, President of the Board of Aldermen Joseph
McKee became acting mayor. McKee was a member of Edward J. Flynn’s
Bronx Democratic machine. The Bronx machine was the only one of the five
boroughs to emerge unscathed—and therefore certified as “clean”—by
Seabury’s investigations. McKee performed admirably, impressing reformers
from both parties with his grasp of city finances, his vision for modernizing
the city, and his toughness in dealing with the Board of Aldermen. But, being
from the Bronx, he represented a threat to Tammany’s hegemony over
Democratic politics in the city (Flynn 1947). The Tammany leadership therefore chose Surrogate Judge John P. O’Brien to be their candidate in the hastily scheduled election of an interim mayor. O’Brien was a lay Catholic leader
whose public service on the bench had been above reproach. With the replacement election scheduled so quickly onto the same ballot as the 1932 presidential election and another regular mayoral election set for 1933, anti-Tammany
forces made minimal efforts to defeat O’Brien. With an almost 600,000-vote
margin, O’Brien won an easy victory, the Democrats swept the city, and
Franklin Roosevelt won the presidency.
The 1933 Mayoral Election
Although O’Brien convincingly won the election, reform elements from both
parties were heartened by the fact that more than 250,000 voters had followed
a local newspaper’s suggestion and cast a write-in vote for McKee, who did
no campaigning (Mann 1965). McKee therefore was a natural second choice
of anti-Tammany reformers from both parties after Samuel Seabury declared
unequivocally that he would not run for mayor. McKee stunned his erstwhile
supporters in the growing Fusion movement when he announced that he was
resigning from politics to take a lucrative position as president of a bank. At
least eight others refused the top spot on the Fusion party ticket (Garrett
1961). La Guardia actively sought the nomination, but a number of factors
weighed against him: his 1929 drubbing by Walker; the fact that as a
Republican, he would have trouble attracting Democrats tired of Tammany
(compared with an independent Democrat like McKee); conservative
Republicans saw him as too liberal and too pro-labor; and that Republicans
remained, as they had been in 1929, uncomfortable with the idea that an
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Italian (“the little wop”) would lead the party of Patricians (Mann 1965, pp.
66–88). However, La Guardia finally did receive the nomination of both the
Republican and City Fusion parties (the umbrella label of the numerous
reform organizations), due in large part to Seabury’s unrelenting support.
In the 1933 primaries, Tammany’s weakness became clear. O’Brien faced
the kind of serious competition in a party primary that Tammany’s candidates
rarely saw; in addition, an insurgent had defeated the organization’s slated
candidate for comptroller. Further down the ticket, “all the Democratic organizations except Flynn’s [Bronx] suffered reverses of one sort or another”
(“New York’s Revolt” 1933, p. 8). Tammany’s vulnerability led Flynn to bolt
from O’Brien and approach McKee about entering the race as the candidate
of the newly created Recovery party. Flynn, who was one of Roosevelt’s
most trusted lieutenants in the state, claimed that the president had contacted
him and promised to endorse McKee. McKee entered the race, but President
Roosevelt never officially endorsed him; McKee and La Guardia each
claimed to be the preferred candidate of the man in the White House.
La Guardia’s platform was part New Deal social welfare and part anticorruption reformer. He called for better health care facilities for the poor, more
playgrounds, use of federal dollars for slum clearance and public housing,
improvements in unemployment relief, and municipal ownership of the subways; with equal vigor, he promised reform of the Magistrate’s Court,
removal of politics from the school system, and a civil service, merit-oriented
city workforce.
The election included many of the aspects of urban, ethnic politics that
have long fascinated scholars. La Guardia delivered his speeches in English,
Italian, or Yiddish, depending on the crowd. Tammany goons and Italian
“Ghibboni” matched talents at protecting ballot boxes from enemy sabotage.
McKee charged that La Guardia was a communist, and La Guardia dug up
allegedly anti-Semitic writings by McKee that were 18 years old.
La Guardia won the election with 42% of the vote (868,522), McKee
received 30% (609,053), and O’Brien captured 28% (586,672) of the vote. La
Guardia’s Fusion ticket won most of the citywide offices and three of the five
borough presidencies, giving La Guardia control over the Board of Estimate.
La Guardia won two more mayoral elections and then stepped aside prior to
the 1945 election. He was the first reform mayor to win reelection in the
twentieth century, the exception proving Plunkitt’s dictum about the shortlived nature of morning glory flowers and reform politicians. As Table 1 indicates, O’Brien’s 28% of the vote was less than half of what Tammany
Democrats had been receiving in mayoral elections prior to the scandals.
Jimmy Walker had captured 59% of the vote just four years earlier against La
Guardia. A Tammany Democrat would not again receive more than 50% of
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Table 1. Post-Scandal Decline of Democratic Mayoral Domination, New York.
Year
Democratic Candidate
1921
1925
1929
1932
1933
1937
J. Hylan
J. Walker
J. Walker
J. O’Brien
J. O’Brien
J. Mahoney
Democratic Percentage of Vote
64
66
59
53a
28
40
a. Special election simultaneous with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s heading the Democratic ticket
and reformer McKee not on the ballot, yet receiving 12% as a write-in candidate.
the mayoral vote until 1945. As discussed below, William O’Dwyer captured
the mayoralty in that year, and his victory would be due to support from
Italian voters.
Comprising slightly more than 15% of the city, Italian-Americans demonstrated their pride by voting overwhelmingly for La Guardia. Mann’s (1965)
examination of predominantly Italian voting districts showed that La Guardia
received upward of 80% of the Italian vote in all five boroughs. This was
particularly noteworthy because only a year earlier Italians demonstrated
their allegiance to the Democratic Party by giving presidential candidate
Franklin D. Roosevelt about 90% of their vote (Mann 1965). Among Jewish
voters, La Guardia received about 42% of the vote with McKee and O’Brien
receiving about 26% and 25%, respectively (the remainder went to a fourth
Socialist Party candidate; Mann 1965).
La Guardia’s election promoted the political empowerment of ItalianAmericans and Jews in New York City dramatically; here, we will briefly
sketch only Italian political incorporation. Prior to this election, New York
City’s Irish Democrats had a stranglehold on politics. The Democrats collected the votes of the almost 45% of the population comprised by Jews and
Italians but (except for minor concessions to the Jews) yielded no political
power. The Sons of Italy Magazine editorialized,
The tendency has therefore been for those of other racial origins who had
preceded us in this country to retain the privileges they had taken for themselves,
enlarge them, if possible, and exclude others as long as possible from a just
portion of representation in the public offices. (Mann 1965, p. 136)
Tammany recognized the numbers of Italians who were entering the ranks
of the city’s electorate and
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tried to win an Italian vote by their customary tactics of giving the appearance
of aiding the poor. At a time when many Italians were in this economic class,
Tammany distributed food baskets and placed men in city jobs or even in
private jobs in the many companies with which Tammany had influence.
(Pisani 1957, p. 139)
According to Peel ([1935] 1968), the Italians had been content to serve the
causes of the “Irish-Jewish Democrats and the Jewish-Irish-‘native American’
Republicans without protest” (p. 252).
The Republican Party was no more interested in elevating Italians to
positions of visibility than were the Democrats. Rather than mounting
futile challenges to Tammany, Republican county chairman Samuel
Koenig had reached an accommodation with Tammany that the two parties
would “fight only one day a year,” while “splitting up city jobs so that each
party could protect its favored appointees regardless of who won the elections” (Kessner 1989, p. 32).
La Guardia’s Fusion-Republican party was the only party to nominate an
Italian to a visible and powerful office, the borough presidency of Staten
Island, which was captured by Italian Joseph Palma. La Guardia’s cabinet
appointments further redistributed power from the Irish to Jews and Italians.
Under Mayor Walker, Italians received, respectively, about 1% of the cabinet-level appointments; under La Guardia, the figure rose to 5% (Lowi 1964).
The Irish fell from an average of 25% to 40% of the cabinet positions under
La Guardia’s predecessors to 5% with the Jews being the main beneficiaries.
On the Board of Estimate, the seat of decision-making power in the city, the
proportion of Italians rose from 0% under Walker to 25% in La Guardia’s
first term (Bayor 1988).
If the Democratic Party was to recapture the mayor’s office, it would
need to generate greater appeal among Jews and Italians, the two expanding
ethnic groups whose votes proved so crucial to La Guardia’s victory. The
Democratic organizations of the boroughs pursued just such a policy and
sharply increased the numbers of Jews and Italians that were slated for
party offices. In 1941, La Guardia won the mayor’s office for his third and
last time, but his opponent, William O’Dwyer, captured 53% of the vote in
Italian districts. O’Dwyer had stressed that Tammany’s recent record of
promoting Italians was better than La Guardia’s, and there was some merit
to his claim. Four years later, O’Dwyer would win the mayor’s office with
the help of Vincent Impellitteri, the first Italian slated by Tammany to a
citywide office (president, Board of Assembly).2 In the 1949 election,
Jewish voters leaned toward Liberal party candidate (and Republican party
candidate) Newbold Morris, who was the heir to the progressive factions
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that supported La Guardia. O’Dwyer relied even more heavily on Italian
voters and won again in all five boroughs. In a special election held in 1950,
precipitated by O’Dwyer’s appointment as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico,
three mayoral candidates were Italian—Democrat Ferdinand Pecora,
Republican Edward Corsi, and the ultimately victorious Impellitteri who
had broken from the party. Only one year before, Carmine De Sapio had
emerged as the “boss” of Tammany Hall. In 1953, an Italian ran for the first
time for city controller and was elected (Adler 1971). By 1950, Italians
were recognized as the most politically powerful group in the city.
Regime change is evident in this case because of the institutionalization of a new electoral coalition and distribution of power, regardless of
party. Italians were not dependent on La Guardia; they were a crucial
group in the coalitions of O’Dwyer, Impellitteri, and their successors as
well.
Other Explanatory Variables Besides Scandals
Could the rather sudden demise of Tammany/Democrat domination of
New York City politics be explained by other factors? Is it not plausible
that the Depression exercised an anti-incumbent effect against the
Democrats in New York City and contributed to the election of La Guardia?
Such an impact should have been evident in the mayoral election of 1932,
yet the Democrats again won; moreover, the Democratic vote for both
governor and president in New York City did not fall below 65% in the
years following the Depression. Finally, the fact that the one Democratic
organization that emerged unscathed from the corruption scandals, the
Bronx organization, was the only one that did not suffer repudiation at the
polls strongly suggests that the public was disenchanted with corruption
rather than merely seeking to oust from office those who were incumbents
during the Depression.
Perhaps the fact that the offices of New York governor and president
were occupied by reformist New York Democrats who were committed to
depriving Tammany of its lifeblood, patronage, led to the demise of the
Tiger. Yet, Tammany had withstood such circumstances earlier and had
even flourished in the years of GOP domination of the White House preceding Roosevelt’s election. It is hard to reach a conclusion other than that
scandals discredited Walker and the Tammany regime and led Republicans,
Jews, Italians, and others who sought good government and a reduction of
Irish power to reevaluate their past rejection of the standard-bearer of
reform, Fiorello La Guardia.
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From White Ethnic to African-American: Regime
Transformation in Gary
Richard Hatcher was one of the first African-Americans to be elected mayor
of a major U.S. city. His election in 1967 signaled the demise of a longentrenched ethnic machine and its replacement with a coalition of previously
subordinated African-Americans and marginalized white liberals. This
regime change was precipitated by scandals that sent machine boss and former mayor George Chacharis to federal prison.
Democrats had been ascendant in Gary, Indiana, since the 1930s, narrowly
winning most city elections. By the 1950s, George Chacharis had transformed an ethnic-based social organization of Southern European steel workers into a political machine that controlled over 2,000 city jobs and more than
650 bureaucratic appointments, and distributed the largesse of federal dollars
that came to Calumet Township. Like the classic machine boss, Chacharis
was a generous and charitable benefactor who “almost never turned down
anyone who came to him personally for financial assistance” (Nelson and
Meranto 1977, p. 180). The1955 mayoral election of Peter Mandich signaled
the party’s achievement of hegemony. Mandich received 59% of the vote in
contrast to his partisan predecessors who had never won more than 52%; in
that same year, Democrats ousted two of three incumbent city councilmembers and won other top-level citywide offices with more than 60% of the vote
(“Dowling Beats GOP” 1955). Nelson (1971) described Chacharis as “the
shadow mayor” who ultimately was the decision maker in the Mandich years
(p. 140). In 1959, Chacharis was elected mayor with more than 72% of the
vote and Democrats won every city council seat (Lane 1978); analysis of the
vote in Indiana’s First congressional district shows a similar consolidation of
Democratic power from the 1940s to the early 1960s with electoral totals
moving from the low 50% range to the low 60% range (Steinberg 1995).
Chacharis’ beneficence to loyal Democratic voters had been fueled by an
elaborate scheme of kickbacks and payoffs that was uncovered by the Justice
Department. Mayor Chacharis, Calumet County Sheriff Mandich, and 10
other prominent public- and private-sector individuals were accused of tax
fraud and money laundering designed to hide kickbacks paid to the mayor for
“preferential treatment in the obtaining of city contracts,” according to the
New York Times (Janson 1962, p. 74). After the prosecution called 75 witnesses, Chacharis changed his plea from innocent to guilty, resigned in
January of 1963, and was sent to federal prison for three years (“Gary Mayor”
1963; Navasky 1970).
The indictments did not stop there, however. Machine loyalist and interim
mayor, John Visclosky, was indicted in his second month in office for purchasing
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city supplies without proper bids (“Gary Mayor” 1963). The scandals brought
a relentless tide of negative news coverage in the national press and sullied
the reputation of the city. White working class voters withdrew their support
from the corrupt machine, according to Nelson and Meranto (1977):
The revelation of rampant corruption in city hall gave Gary a black eye
nationwide. White citizens felt a profound sense of betrayal since the public
officials under indictment were men that they had allowed to exercise
unrestricted authority over the management of municipal affairs for ten
years . . . (p. 82)
The loss of white electoral support forced the machine, in its efforts to
regroup, to rely even more heavily on African-American voters whose loyalty was secured by patronage benefits. According to Lane (1978), Chacharis
personally approved nomination or appointment of blacks to highly visible
city positions. Mohl and Betten (1986) also characterized Gary’s black voters
and the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) as “controlled” and “essentially accommodationists who never
used political office to break down racial barriers” (p. 87). Even after the
scandals, the city’s major black newspaper, The Gary American, could only
sing the praises of Chacharis (Lane 1978) and all that his organization had
done for the African-American community.
The party organization picked a clean judge, A. Martin Katz, to rally
behind in 1963 but faced an unprecedented challenge in the Democratic primary from two reformers. Katz won almost 20,000 of the 55,000 votes cast;
he won only 22% of the white vote but 51% of the black vote (Nelson and
Meranto 1977). The inability of the remnants of the machine to win without
heavy reliance on the black vote was recognized by all; the party replaced a
corrupted black city councilman with Richard Hatcher, who shortly after
arriving in the city in 1959 had been one of the founders of a middle-class
black organization dedicated to fighting “the prevalence of vice and graft in
the city” (Keiser 1997, p. 78).
Four years later, Hatcher was convinced that the organization could not be
reformed from the inside. He ran as an antimachine reformer and defeated
Katz in the 1967 Democratic mayoral primary. A second white candidate,
Bernard Konrady, also running on a clean government platform, divided the
white vote. Hatcher received 39% of the vote in the three-way race (Nelson
and Meranto 1977). The remnants of the machine did not give up and instead
shifted support to the little-known Republican candidate who promised
access to the patronage-rich mayoral office (Oden 1977). Scandals had crippled
the Democratic organization and created circumstances that called for a
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reevaluation of alliances. Hatcher was elected with 96% of the black vote and
12% of the white vote, winning the election by less than 2,000 votes (Keiser
1997). His candidacy brought together an alliance of whites seeking good
government and fairness and blacks (both conservative and reformist) that
had not previously materialized in any election or civil rights effort in Gary.
The Hatcher administration did not merely change the proportion of
African-Americans in City Hall, itself quite a significant achievement for the
many qualified blacks who were routinely passed over by the southeastern
European machine of Chacharis. He opened the doors to leadership positions
previously reserved for whites. After one term, a black or Latino headed 14
of Gary’s 27 departments. The school board and many other city commissions shifted from white to black as well and black business owners were
receiving a much larger share of city contracts (Keiser 1997). Hatcher
appointed the first black fire chief, a man who had served in the department
for 40 years and had been stuck at assistant chief for the past 15 years (“Gary
Names” 1952). For the first time as well, the city controller and the administrative assistant (equivalent of vice mayor) were also black men; the latter
position is quite significant as that office distributes city patronage. Hatcher
also appointed blacks to the positions of general services director and city
attorney, the only two posts that had gone to blacks in the Katz administration
(“Hatcher Names” 1967). He also prodded his new police chief to initiate a
major crackdown on organized gambling and prostitution that led to record
numbers of arrests (“The City” 1969). By turning Gary into a laboratory for
Great Society urban programs funded by Washington and grants from private
foundations, Mayor Hatcher reoriented the benefits of tens of millions of dollars of city spending toward skills training, public-sector job creation, and
housing for more than 10,000 Gary residents, almost exclusively in segregated black neighborhoods (Teaford 1992). White voters who refused to be
persuaded by Hatcher’s explanation that decades of previous spending had
been equally skewed in favor of white ethnics roundly criticized the mayor
(Kifner 1971). The degree of regime change, both in terms of personnel and
patterns of spending, was not satisfactory to all in the black community.
Many of the black activists who campaigned tirelessly, for months at a time,
to elect Hatcher were frustrated with his formation of a multiracial administration that included quite a few liberal Jews. There were many voters who
expected a wholesale replacement of white workers by blacks in City Hall.
Quite similarly, many significant members of the black commercial community were lukewarm to Hatcher’s reelection bids, because the mayor refused
to replace the Chacharis machine with a similar operation that favored them.
In addition, those black businesses that had received favorable treatment
from machine-style contracts in the years prior to Hatcher’s election did
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worse in the new regime of reformed procedures for city contracting (Nelson
1971). Post-scandal regime change did much that was positive, politically
and economically, for the black citizenry of Gary, although for some, the
change was not dramatic enough.
Hatcher governed the city for 19 years, repeatedly winning reelection.
Hatcher’s economic hopes were stifled by the business community, which
shifted retail and banking activities to suburban Merrillville. The city was
perpetually near bankruptcy. The federal government and foundations provided much of the fiscal stimulus in Gary. Hatcher’s election produced a
political transformation, but his new coalition was unable to forge any ties to
the core actors of the previous growth machine who largely quit the city.
Are there alternative explanations for regime change in Gary? Was
Hatcher’s election perhaps the result of some incremental black power movement in Gary rather than scandal? Three civil rights organizations had
emerged in Gary prior to the scandals. The Fair Share Organization (FSO)
was formed in 1958 to picket and boycott stores that refused to hire blacks,
and it succeeded in eliminating overt discrimination in hiring. However,
organizational infighting and court-ordered monetary damages to businesses
destroyed it by 1962 (Nelson and Meranto 1977). The Combined Citizens
Committee on Open Occupancy (CCCOOO or Triple C Triple O) was a biracial organization focused solely on demanding open housing in Gary.
Bringing together liberal whites and blacks was no doubt an important step
for Hatcher’s later electoral success. But CCCOOO peaked and then declined
after a protest march in 1963 (Nelson and Meranto 1977). The last organization, Muigwithania, began with social gatherings of about two dozen young
black professionals in Gary. They raised money for community projects and
supported candidates for city council, including Hatcher in 1963. Hatcher,
however, was essentially a machine candidate in 1963, handpicked to replace
a black councilmember implicated in the scandals. Muigwithania was an
important organization for Hatcher, but it did not signify some broader wave
of transformation of the political economy of Gary. The members of these
organizations did take advantage of the opportunities created by the corruption scandals and the demise of the Democratic machine by helping to organize and give voice to Gary’s black citizenry, but the organizations did little
to precipitate or encourage this demise.
The Fall of Edward Koch and the Rise of a
Multiracial Coalition in New York City
In 1985, Edward Koch was elected to his third term as mayor of New York
with 76% of the vote; in 1981, he had won 75% of the vote. His longevity and
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popularity had made him a best-selling author and the undisputed national
spokesperson for New York City. A record setting fourth term seemed inevitable. Soon, however, a series of scandals began to erode both his popularity
and his organizational strength (Gross 1986).
Days after Koch took the oath of office for the third time, his close political ally and Queens Borough president, Donald Manes, attempted suicide. As
details emerged, it became apparent that the attempt was prompted by a widening investigation of the city Parking Violations Bureau (PVB). Collection
company President Bernard Sandow had, as it turned out, been bribing PVB
officials for years to secure city contracts. As the official probe widened, it
became clear that Manes himself had accepted at least $285,000 in bribes
(Newfield and Barrett 1988).
Manes succeeded in a second suicide attempt on March 12, 1986. He was
later named as an “unindicted co-racketeer” by a team of prosecutors led by
U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani (Newfield and Barrett 1988, p. 104). Stanley
Friedman, the Democratic Party chief of the Bronx and another Koch friend,
was indicted in connection with the broadening scandal, and a series of wellpublicized prosecutions followed. In all, about a dozen top Koch appointees
resigned in disgrace because of “indictment, conviction or scandal” (Green
1989, p. 422, emphasis in original). McNickle (1993) wrote,
Koch felt betrayed by his cronies, but the city felt betrayed by the mayor . . . He
had been a personal friend with Donald Manes and Stanley Friedman for nearly
twenty years. Koch had praised them publicly, endorsed them and their
candidates, and helped them to raise money for their campaigns. He had
appointed their political workers to responsible government jobs, jobs that
those men then used to pilfer the city. (pp. 288–89)
Although Koch was not directly implicated, and although even his most
vocal detractors did not believe that he had been personally involved in the
bribery scandals, the PVB corruption indicated to many that Koch was unable
or unwilling to check the excesses of his subordinates.
The mayor’s woes were compounded by further details of corruption and
mismanagement that continued to become public during the first half of
1989. New York Governor Mario Cuomo appointed an investigative body
known as the Feerick Commission (after its chair, Fordham Law School
Dean John Feerick). The probe uncovered a case of sustained patronage and
deception surrounding the Mayor’s Talent Bank, an institution set up in 1983
to provide “more city-employment opportunities for blacks, Hispanics and
women” (A. Logan 1989c, p. 89). As New Yorker reporter Andy Logan
(1989c) wrote,
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According to the [Feerick Commission] witnesses, a large number of the
beneficiaries of the Talent Bank had been white males, whose major talent
appeared to consist of sponsorship by powerful local politicians, particularly
Democratic clubhouse bosses—that is, county leaders—although Koch had
long boasted that his appointments . . . were strictly on the merits and without
clubhouse influence. (p. 89)
The new revelations, compounded by the discovery that the official in
charge of the talent bank had frantically tried to cover up the improprieties in
recent months, further disenchanted New Yorkers about the mayor (A. Logan
1989b).
Soon the cumulative effects of the scandals manifested themselves as a
decline in Koch’s public and organizational support. The most obvious sign
of Koch’s weakness was the fact that the 1989 race attracted a large field of
candidates calling for reform, including former U.S. Attorney Giuliani, a
Republican. Polling data confirmed the mayor’s plunging popularity. By late
1988, Koch’s approval ratings had fallen to around 35% (Klein 1988). By
March, 1989, Koch was lagging 31 percentage points behind Giuliani, while
at a similar point in 1985, he had stood 40 points ahead of his nearest competitor (Green 1989). Koch was also being seriously challenged in the
Democratic primary by Manhattan Borough President David Dinkins, who
held a substantial lead over Koch by early June (A. Logan 1989a). In midJune, Koch stood 13 percentage points behind both Dinkins and Giuliani (A.
Logan 1989d).
There were several reasons for Koch’s falling popularity, but the corruption scandals were the factor that destabilized the dominant regime. There is
no doubt that Jackson’s (Jesse) 1988 campaign, which culminated in a narrow plurality over Michael Dukakis and Al Gore within New York City, was
a crucial harbinger for the Dinkins campaign. It was proof that the long-elusive coalition of blacks, Puerto Ricans, and progressive whites (organized
labor and predominantly Jewish liberals) could overcome their jockeying and
actually come together (Thompson 2006).
Jackson’s primary victory was also a major political defeat for Ed Koch
who had personally attacked Jackson repeatedly and urged Jews in particular
to vote against him. Although his repudiation of Jesse Jackson’s candidacy in
the 1988 New York presidential primary raised the issue of Koch’s racial
divisiveness, a poll taken in late January 1989 found that corruption and scandals were the largest single reason New Yorkers named for opposing Koch,
with divisiveness placing fifth (A. Logan 1989d). In the same poll, “when
asked specifically if there was more corruption in the Koch administration
than under prior mayors, 50% of all voters said there was more corruption
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and 77% said Koch should be doing more to cut down on corruption” (A.
Logan 1989d, p. 82). In August 1989, Koch did more to antagonize blacks
and white liberals in the aftermath of the killing of a 16-year-old black youth
Yusuf Hawkins, by a gang of white teens in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Tensions
rose after black clergy led a march into Bensonhurst to assert black rights.
Koch’s response to the racism and intimidation exhibited by Bensonhurst
citizens was to scold black leaders for provocation and to urge them not to
march there. Dinkins, in contrast, called for calm and healing in the black
community but asserted their right to march anywhere (Bohlen 1989a,
1989b).
The repercussions of the scandals also splintered Koch’s organizational base. In previous reelection campaigns, “most of the local
Democratic county chairmen lined up in front of city hall and seemed to
be falling all over themselves for the privilege of supporting” Koch (A.
Logan 1989a, p. 82). In this race, the political climate changed dramatically. J. Phillip Thompson III (1990), noting that “The [corruption] indictments hastened the decline of political machines in Queens and the
Bronx” (p. 145), argued that the machines’ weakening made many black
leaders feel freer to challenge Koch:
The fact that Manhattan black politicians controlled their county organization
and were positioned to run for mayor (all three black mayoral candidates have
been from Manhattan) did not mean that black politicians in other boroughs
could easily support them. When the political machines weakened, black
politicians united and were positioned to win the mayoralty. (p. 148)
The Manhattan and Bronx organizations endorsed David Dinkins for
mayor. Brooklyn’s Democratic leaders endorsed City Comptroller Harrison
J. Goldin. The Queens organization, upon which Koch had long counted for
support, was also the organization most tainted by the scandals and now
endorsed Richard Ravitch, a reformer with a long history of squeaky-clean
government service. Only New York’s smallest borough, Staten Island, provided full organizational support to the Koch effort (Klein 1989). The mayor’s commanding electoral and organizational base of just five years before
had crumbled.
As Table 2 indicates, the primary vote totals, when compared with the
1985 vote, illustrate the extent to which Koch’s support declined following
the scandals. His reputation had been sullied in all parts of the city and the
political organizations upon which he depended, particularly in the Bronx
and Queens, were weakened.
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Table 2. Koch Electoral Decline 1985 and 1989 Democratic Primary Vote for
Mayor in New York City.
Borough
Bronx
Brooklyn
Manhattan
Queens
Staten Island
Koch 1985
Koch 1989
63%
64%
54%
71%
79%
37%
42%
36%
50%
63%
Source. “The Vote for Mayor” (1989, p. B4).
Another indication that Dinkins won as a reform candidate is the fact that he beat
Koch among white liberals by 51% to 39%. This broad support made it difficult for
Giuliani, the winner of the Republican primary, to muster a reform coalition against
Dinkins. Dinkins advisor Mark Green explained, Giuliani “had a great rationale
against Koch—stop City Hall corruption—which won’t work against the guy who
smashed City Hall” (Barnes 1989, p. 9). Giuliani floundered trying to rework his
strategy, giving Dinkins the crucial advantages he needed to win in November.
David Dinkins as Leader of an Insurgent Biracial
Regime
In his inaugural address, Mayor David Dinkins said, “I recognize that we
cannot do everything we should, that our finances may get worse before they
get better, that for now our dreams are bigger than our budget” (Purdum
1990, p. 1). Dinkins offered this pessimistic forecast, because his administration faced a significant budgetary shortfall of $2 billion when he took office.
Taxes were increased, staff was cut rather than expanded and extensive service cuts were made. The last time New York City faced such severe financial
problems, African-American political power was rolled back significantly
(Mollenkopf 1990); in this instance, Dinkins’ efforts were constrained.
Dinkins’ opportunity to advance progressive goals and minority empowerment was limited to one term. His coalition of blacks, Latinos, white liberals,
and loyal Democrats turned out at the polls in slightly lower numbers four
years later while his opponents, the white ethnic Catholics and lower to middle-class outer borough Jews who comprised both the Koch and Giuliani
coalitions, were aroused to a higher turnout level after four years of policies
that appeared to be shifting power to blacks and Latinos (Mollenkopf 1994).
What significant differences existed between the Koch regime and the
Dinkins administration that would qualify the latter as a new regime? What
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steps toward minority empowerment were taken during the Dinkins interregnum? Certainly, the complexion of the Dinkins administration was dramatically different than its predecessor, particularly in the crucial policy and
decision-making offices that signify a reallocation of political power (Keiser
1993). A New Yorker journalist wrote,
In a chart identifying Koch appointees who were departing or would
probably be leaving, all twenty-four were men; of these, one was black and
two were Hispanic. In a similar chart showing eighteen new members of the
Dinkins administration, six were women, six were black, and three were
Hispanic. (A. Logan 1990, p. 93)
Dinkins appointed black and Latino deputy mayors, a black corporation
counsel, a black director of personnel, a black police commissioner, a Latino
fire commissioner, and overall 14 minorities heading city agencies.
Responding to recent Supreme Court decisions, Dinkins created a new 20%
set-aside program for minority and female-owned businesses. The mayor
deserves a share of the credit as well for helping to shape a new city council
in which minorities were 41% of the members. On the old Board of Estimate,
the previous repository of budgetary authority, minorities held 16% of the
power. The mayor refused to let day care funding and Head Start be victimized by the budget crisis, and he increased the city’s efforts in drug addiction
treatment and preservation of families at risk of losing children to foster care.
He also increased the city’s anti-AIDS efforts (Barrett and Doyle 1992).
Dinkins also changed the complexion of the school board and its politics. He
appointed individuals who were stronger advocates for the role of parents in
school decisions. The previous school board was comprised of one black, one
Latino, and five whites; the new board had two blacks, two Latinos, and three
whites, including two members with children in the public school system
(previously there were none) (Berger 1990). The Dinkins administration also
succeeded in establishing a civilian-police review board, an important battle
that the last progressive biracial regime in New York City, the Lindsay administration, lost (Gottlieb 1992).
In terms of electoral coalition, personnel and policies, the Dinkins administration represented a new regime. The Koch administration scandals, far
from signaling a simple shift in the leadership of an existing coalition, brought
a new and different coalition to power in New York City. Although both Koch
and Dinkins were Democrats, the Dinkins regime did not represent continuity
with its predecessor. Scandals unexpectedly destabilized and displaced a
dominant conservative regime and created an opportunity for a progressive
coalition to govern. For a variety of reasons, Dinkins and his administration
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were not able to maintain his coalition. With the bitter stench of scandal no
longer in the air, the Dinkins coalition became slightly unglued, and New
York City elected a different conservative mayor, Rudy Giuliani (Biles 2001).
As Plunkitt lectured, reformers are sometimes nothing more than “mornin’
glories”; not every scandal will produce regime change (Riordon 1905).
Whether or not Giuliani’s election represents a restoration of the Koch regime
is a question beyond the purview of this research. If the verdict of future scholars
on this question favors a restoration interpretation, then Dinkins’ one term would
not fit the strict definition of regime change proposed herein. Nevertheless, the
replacement of the entrenched Koch regime by Dinkins’ multiracial coalition, a
displacing coalition that had failed to materialize due to divisive internal feuding
and crippling co-optation by the dominant regime, still demonstrates the importance of scandals as a variable producing the opportunity for the rarely cataloged
phenomenon of urban regime change.
Conclusion
The three case studies presented in this article demonstrate that political corruption scandals can be significant catalysts for urban regime change.
Students of regime theory should note that scandals can be just as effective of
a shock to an entrenched regime as more commonly studied variables, such
as the Great Depression or succession crises, and the latter are increasingly
rare in liberal democracies. Students of minority empowerment should recognize that scandals create propitious conditions for a previously disorganized
coalition of minorities to defeat a powerful conservative regime.
Little attention has thus far been given in academic literature to the potential
for corruption and subsequent scandal to give rise to a new coalition of previously unempowered voters. Some observers, notably Martin Shefter, have
argued that, far from causing shifts in governing coalitions, scandals and reform
movements often solidify the hold of machines on cities. Under conditions of
fiscal crisis, argues Shefter, changes in the governing structures of a city are
often merely cosmetic. Politicians who win on reform platforms are likely to be
loners without natural political constituencies. For this reason,
Politicians elected under these circumstances may find it difficult to govern
and to secure reelection unless they can institutionalize their rule . . . [T]hough
they commonly rely on populist or anti-elitist rhetoric, such politicians often
come to terms with the local political establishment. (Shefter 1985, p. xxiii)
Existing machines, thus, demobilize reform movements and turn them to
the advantage of those previously in power.
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Others argue that scandals and corruption can lead to a disillusioned and
dangerous public. Michael Johnston (1982) cautioned against rallying voters
around anticorruption platforms:
The anger that erupts in the wake of a scandal may lead to the hasty adoption
of poorly conceived measures whose failure will only deepen public distrust.
Thoughtful advocates of reform may conclude, in fact, that the only thing
worse than a public that does not get excited about corruption is one that
suddenly does. (p. 151, emphasis in original)
Johnston is doubtful that reform movements that arise from scandal can
lead to the rise of effective reform government.
Although there may be truth to both Shefter’s and Johnston’s arguments,
there is a third empirical result of political crises brought about by scandal
demonstrated in this research: Scandals presented opportunities for the
coalescence and mobilization of an opposition that had not occurred otherwise. Members of the old regime, whether leaders like Hatcher and Dinkins
or groups like Italian voters or business community spokesmen, recalculated
the benefits of loyalty and chose to defect; as well, long-standing opponents
of the regime chose to unify rather than continuing to be divided and conquered. New regimes that had previously failed to manifest themselves came
to fruition as leaders seized openings created by the shocks to the established
order that scandals caused. Scandals significantly eroded these regimes’
organizational structures and political supports, and, thus, offered opportunities for a new political economy of benefits. Both Who Governs? and Who
Gets What? changed dramatically in the three case studies of regime change
presented.
The Koch–Dinkins–Giuliani electoral sequence points out the contingent
process of regime change. Voting blocs defected from Koch to Dinkins as a
result of a degree of scandal that shook even jaded New Yorkers. Groups like
African-Americans, Puerto Ricans, and liberal whites that, as Mollenkopf
(1994) has shown, previously had refused to unite behind one candidate put
aside differences to strategically seize an opportunity to run against a weakened incumbent. Dinkins won with an alternative coalition and governed a
different regime than Koch. But he was unable to institutionalize this regime.
With the prosecutor Giuliani as his opponent (again) four years later, he was
unable to run as the opponent of a restoration of corruption. Given how
infrequently scholars have conducted empirical analyses of regime change,
it should not surprise that some cases do not achieve complete fruition.
Voters and interest group leaders are often willing to return to the previous
regime, once it has shed its most disgraced figures, because that regime had
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a track record of getting things done satisfactorily, what Stone (1989) called
social production.
Yet, the salient point is not that regime change fails to occur in every
instance of scandal. Rather, the scholarly contribution here is the demonstration that scandals are one of the few variables that produce the conditions for
regime change when such action has otherwise been stymied. Scandals are
not necessary for regime change but like fiscal crises, succession crises, and
exogenous social movements like the Civil Rights movement, they are one of
the very few variables that can produce a recalculation of coalition allegiances and electoral support. In the absence of the variable of scandal,
regime continuity is typically maintained because of a lack of an alternative
coalition that can pry away actors from the extant regime. In the presence of
scandals, defections of voting blocs that had previously supported the regime
out of (party) loyalties or inertia (e.g., the accommodationists in Gary’s black
electorate who finally broke from the paternalistic Chacharis regime, and
Jews and Italians who had supported Socialists and Democrats in 1929 but
saw a clear path to victory in 1933 with a vote for La Guardia) as well as supporters of the regime who defected due to the salience of beliefs about good
government (e.g., Konrady’s white supporters in Gary; Republican patricians
who had refused to support the doubly negative liberal and Italian La Guardia
in his first mayoral bid) recalculated their allegiances and voted for a new
coalition that instituted a new regime.
Acknowledgment
The author wishes to thank Bertram Johnson, Clarence Stone, David Imbroscio, and
the editors for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
1. Magistrate’s Courts were the low-level courts that New Yorkers were most
familiar with. There was one court per district for general criminal business and
five special courts for delinquent women, domestic disputes, traffic violations,
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Urban Affairs Review 
fraud, and homicide. Buying judicial nominations was quite common in New
York City.
2. Tammany did not initially choose Impellitteri for this breakthrough position; instead, they had another Italian in mind. But O’Dwyer wanted an Italian
who would be loyal to him and therefore chose the relatively less experienced
Impellitteri. Both Tammany and its Irish mayoral candidate understood that they
could not win the election without giving a prominent place to an Italian.
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Author Biography
Richard Keiser is professor of political science and American studies at Carleton
College in Northfield, Minnesota. His scholarly publications have analyzed urban
political economy, minority political incorporation, and urban regime change. He is
currently writing a book that contrasts the treatment of American suburbs by social
science scholars and producers of fiction.
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