5

From Sugar to Shit
in a New York Minute

Pursuing my own agenda, I threw myself into political work as well as my law practice. In 1967 Ray Jones stepped down as district leader, timing his retirement so as to be able to choose his successor. Ray let it be known that he chose me. I ran … and lost. I had no business losing, they just stole it, and I was such an electoral neophyte that I allowed it to happen. I was so inexperienced and unsophisticated in the ways of New York City politics that I neglected to place poll watchers in every polling place. The voting booths at the time were fitted with a large sliding handle that controlled both the curtain to the booth and the entering of the vote itself, and in one or two crucial election districts someone got in there and slid that handle over and over, cranking out votes for my opponent in sizable numbers. As a result, I lost an election I was predetermined to have won. I learned my lesson and in the next district leader election was a lot smarter and won.

In 1973 many in Harlem and in the African American community citywide worked extremely hard for the election of Abraham “Abe” Beame as mayor. Abe came out of the Democratic clubhouse. He was trained as an accountant and had been New York City’s budget director from 1952 to 1961. He had lost a mayoral election in 1965 to Republican John V. Lindsay, and in 1969 he was elected city comptroller. After Lindsay was reelected, changed his party affiliation, and ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972, the mayor’s seat was available and Abe seized the opportunity. The race against Republican state senator John Marchi looked like it was going to be tight, and in order to win the support of Harlem, Beame promised Percy Sutton, who by this time had been elected Manhattan borough president, that he would not run for reelection, leaving the presumed nomination in 1977 to Percy and essentially paving the way for New York to elect its first black mayor. Beame won handily.

Abe was a sweetheart, a guy who cared about the city and had an accountant’s attention to detail. He was also a diminutive man; like New York’s legendary Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, he stood five-foot-two. Abe hated to make speeches, and on the stump and in the transition period there were many speeches to be delivered. This gave him the opportunity to make a personal contribution to New York’s political landscape. Abe’s press aide traveled with what was known to the entourage as a “Beame Box,” a small platform along the lines of an extended milk crate for the candidate and now mayor-elect to stand on when he spoke at a podium. (I’m no giant at five-foot-six, and I once had the occasion to speak in public with the actress Ruby Dee, herself a petite woman. We arrived and found the microphone placed at an inconvenient height. “Don’t worry,” I told her, “they’ll have a Beame Box.” I do not know whether New York’s current mayor, Michael Bloomberg, avails himself of this political advantage.)

Abe Beame was New York’s first Jewish mayor, a significant milestone in a city of such ethnic and religious variety. New York’s mayors were traditionally WASPs or Irish or Italian, and the Jewish community was thrilled with his victory. I come from a generation that found great parallels in the Jewish and African American experiences in America. We were peoples who had to overcome prejudice to obtain opportunity, and it is no exaggeration to define both groups’ progress as a struggle. Jews were active and highly appreciated participants in the civil rights movement and were welcomed as brothers in black churches, in progressive lawsuits, and on picket lines. Neither Mayor Beame nor I was a proselytizer, but Abe recognized the chance to provide opportunity to all. Traditionally, there had been only two deputy mayors in each administration. Mayor-Elect Beame expanded that number to four, and he was determined to name one a person of color.

Thirty-five years later we elected an African American president, but in 1973 a black mayor of New York City was unthinkable, and the installation of a black man as deputy mayor signified a mighty step forward. We had never had an official of that scope, and for a community that was large and compactly located and only just beginning to believe that its members could take the reins, the fact that we had a voice—that we were being defined as worthy of attention—was extremely important. My nomination for this post was a very, very big deal, almost as if I had become mayor myself.

Of course, this was politics, so there was controversy. The job as originally conceived was to be deputy mayor for community affairs, with responsibility for smaller agencies and programs such as the Office of the Aging or the Office of the Handicapped. This was not acceptable—many people read the position as “deputy mayor for black people.” The Amsterdam News, an influential weekly newspaper published in Harlem, warned on its editorial page against the creation of a “‘Spook Mouse’ . . . the appointment or selection of a Black to sit outside the door, so to speak, in a Mickey Mouse job, while real municipal power is exercised elsewhere.” Percy Sutton was also particularly critical, and as the idea grew even more public it was met with such resistance that Mayor Beame was forced to reconsider.

A new post was created—deputy mayor for planning of the city of New York—and I was nominated. With Judah Gribetz as deputy mayor for government relations, James Cavanagh as deputy mayor of operations, and Melvin Lechner as budget director, the new mayor’s inner circle covered the racial and cultural waterfront.

The position of deputy mayor is of vital importance to the running of New York City. Deputy mayors do not create policy—that is done by the mayor himself—but they are consulted, they advise the mayor, and they are responsible for implementing the administration’s ideas. In fact, deputy mayors are delegated significant decision-making authority, and their power to affect real life in the city and to effect real change is estimable. The mayor is responsible for guidance, direction, and vision; the deputy mayors put that guidance, direction, and vision into practice. In the history of New York City, no black man or woman had been entrusted with this responsibility. The highest elective office any black had ever held prior to that was borough president. The fact that I would be the first black deputy mayor was extremely significant. The new Beame administration called a press conference to make the announcement, and it was well attended. Many reporters and camera crews were on hand to memorialize this momentous civic occasion.

I was thrilled. My areas of responsibility would include oversight of the city’s hospitals, the Off-Track Betting Corporation, and the planning and development offices. Mayor-Elect Beame’s team assured me that I would be reporting directly to the mayor, which was vital to my ability to get things done. My first assignment, even before my confirmation, was to draft a plan to combat the city’s energy crisis. Clearly, important tasks were going to be handed to me, and I was looking forward with great enthusiasm to the opportunity to help move the city forward.

The Beame transition office was in the same building, the Municipal Building on Centre Street, that housed Abe’s office as comptroller. At the close of each day, after all the city workers had gone home, my good friend Judah Gribetz and I would walk across the street to the empty offices of City Hall and see how we might redesign the space to fit us all. We tried to cut small offices into even smaller ones. There were many city-owned office spaces down the block on Broadway where I could have worked and been effective, but even if the carpet was an inch thick and the walls were papered with mayoral invitations, the people in Harlem would never understand. The first black deputy mayor had to be within shouting distance of the mayor himself. Access was key—I didn’t want to design programs and have them waylaid before the mayor could review them personally—and I found it extremely important, for both managerial and symbolic reasons, to have an office in City Hall on the same floor as the mayor’s.

There are disclosure forms one must sign in order to work in city government. Among the questions on these forms was, “Have you filed all your income tax returns for the past three years?” Upon my return from the State Assembly, I became a partner in the law firm Paterson, Michael, Dinkins and Jones. The firm’s accountants prepared our taxes, and they routinely filed a “Request for Extension of Time to File” on the partners’ returns. These requests were always granted, and once the deadline passed, the sense of urgency passed as well and we all went about our business, comfortable in the knowledge that we had informed the government of our good intentions: we would pay our taxes in the fullness of time. As a result, these extensions were rolled over, and I had not paid in three years. This was not a crime; there had been no intent to evade or avoid payment of our taxes. We had simply delayed it. Still, the answer to the question “Have you filed all your tax returns for the past three years?” was “No, I have not.” I always thought of paying my taxes as something that could be done tomorrow. I wish it had been done.

I signed the form, recognized the problem, and immediately set about correcting it. I stayed up all night with accountants and lawyers while we computed the taxes, interest, and penalties for city, state, and federal returns for the years in question. Got all of it together.

I owed approximately $15,000 and had to borrow from my father and several other people to pay it. All overnight. I showed up at the IRS office the next morning with the signed returns and check in hand. I thought I had worked a miracle.

I hadn’t.

Here’s the way politics works. The failure to pay taxes may or may not be a disqualifying issue, depending on the person involved and the circumstances in which the issue arises. Failure to pay withholding taxes on a housekeeper’s salary doomed Lani Guinier’s appointment to head President Bill Clinton’s Civil Rights Division as well as Zoe Baird’s nomination as Clinton’s attorney general; Republicans, mightily displeased by the Clintons in general and the results of the 1992 election in particular, were out to make trouble for the new president, and they succeeded. Sixteen years later, however, with the economy in dire straits, the same error did not derail Timothy Geithner’s acceptance as President Barack Obama’s secretary of the Treasury. His failure to pay a housekeeper’s taxes was referred to by the White House as an “honest mistake,” and Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus announced, “We have to roll up our sleeves and get this economy moving again for the American people, and Tim Geithner has the right combination of experience and skill for these difficult economic times.”

Now, as it happened, the day before I was to be sworn in as deputy mayor, Beame’s former campaign manager and nominee for director of special programs, Seymour Terry, had been found to have sent a letter on official stationery to six hundred clients of his one-man insurance firm promising “greater benefits” because of his “new circumstances.” This was an outrageous breach, and the conflict-of-interest charges, once brought to light, caused him immediately to withdraw his nomination. Now here I came with my problems.

It appeared that although I had filed all the necessary returns to federal, state, and city offices and made full payment, the various agencies involved would take months to sign off on my submissions. Mayor Beame, already embarrassed by Terry, was facing more of the same from me. I was mortified. Still, I wanted to keep my job; I was about to have the opportunity to do a lot of good, and I could not simply walk away.

I asked for and was granted a meeting with the mayor; I wanted this information to come directly from me. Also in the room were Abe’s close adviser Howard Rubenstein, Commissioner of Investigations Nicholas Scoppetta, Judah Gribetz, and the incoming first deputy mayor, Jim Cavanagh. They laid out the case against me: they knew me to be an honorable man, and they trusted me personally, but I had to understand how this would look to the press and the people. Facing a second ethical question mark in an administration not even yet inaugurated, they could not allow me to assume my post.

To argue my case I brought my law partner and good friend Basil Paterson. Basil is a spellbinder, a storyteller, and an old-school verbal acrobat. He is also an able negotiator with an ability to satisfy his adversaries by putting himself “in the other person’s suit.” Asking what, from the mayor’s point of view, would save me, that day Basil was Clarence Darrow, Thurgood Marshall, and Johnny Cochran all rolled into one.

“David Dinkins has not committed a crime,” he said. “There will be no legal action against him. What he has done here is something a lot of people do: he got so busy he forgot to pay his taxes. They’re paid up now. With interest and penalties, he’s paid much more than he ever owed. He is not a man of means trying to protect his wealth. When he started in our program, he wore the same sports coat every day!

“Here’s a man, you know him, he’s been devoted to you, he will work hard for you. He has stumbled here, but if you stay with him you will earn political points you’re never gonna imagine.” Basil was not just an orator and an attorney; at the time he was vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee. “Mr. Mayor,” he said, “Hubert Humphrey remained for many years a viable political candidate for one reason: wherever he ran, he had the black vote.” (Black folks had indeed been very partial to Senator Humphrey because of his record in civil rights and his other humanitarian efforts.) “There’s great sympathy for Dave, not just in the black community but throughout. He’s an outstanding person, he’s a highly respected person, and for you as mayor to lend a helping hand will put you in the first rank. You will be remembered!”

Mayor Beame looked as though he understood. He was about to begin an incumbency that he no doubt hoped would provide him with a favorable niche in New York City history. What better way to begin than to demonstrate personal trust and forgiveness?

Nick Scoppetta looked like he might be leaning. The idea arose of leaving my position unfilled until the tax matter was resolved.

Jim Cavanagh was a numbers guy: he read polls, he did not have an understanding of the community goodwill for which Basil was reaching, and Basil’s argument meant nothing to him. He saw an administration with a second question of ethics, projected the headlines, and left it at that. He said very firmly, “We can’t do it!”

 Cavanagh was about to become first deputy mayor because he had been Beame’s first deputy in the comptroller’s office and was the man to whom Abe had consistently turned, for many years, for advice and counsel. Unfortunately, he was adamant. And ultimately, he prevailed. The Beame administration, as represented in that room, could not or would not take the public relations hit that my appointment as deputy mayor would undoubtedly bring. Politically, it was deemed just too damaging.

Now someone in the room said, “Don’t worry, Dave. We’ll just issue a statement saying that you’ve withdrawn.” I am certain they were trying to spare my feelings. When my appointment had been announced, we had held a big press conference, with tons of cameras and lots of reporters in attendance. “Oh, no,” I said. “We’ll have a press conference again. I want to go out the same way I came in.” I wasn’t going to put my tail between my legs and sneak into the night. I had made a mistake, a significant mistake, but this wasn’t tax evasion and I hadn’t shot anybody. I was determined to stand up and face the cameras, and I did. I also knew that if no one was there to defend me, I would go undefended. I needed to meet the press.

I was very emotional when I withdrew my name from designation as deputy mayor. Facing a battery of cameras and reporters, I read a prepared statement and then answered questions. The New York Times reported that my eyes filled with tears, and they were right. I felt the loss of something great—the capacity to do good work for the city. I apologized for the embarrassment I had caused Abe and his new administration. “To my wife and children, my partners and my many friends and supporters,” I said, “please know that while I take this action with a heavy heart, it is to me the only honorable course.”

Mayor Beame said that I was “a very talented person” and “would have made a great deputy mayor.” To his credit, he appointed another African American, Paul Gibson Jr., to the position I was to have filled. The Times editorial page praised my “outstanding accomplishments” as president of the Board of Elections and my “impressive qualifications,” but like all the news reports, the Times editors also mentioned Seymour Terry, despite the fact that his case and mine had nothing to do with one another, and said I should go. Apparently Jim Cavanagh’s political barometer was correct. State tax commissioner Mario Procaccino, who had lost to John Lindsay in the previous mayoral election, grabbed a headline by saying that his department was “looking into” my tax situation, though of course I had not willfully evaded payment and my explanations were completely correct. It went nowhere. Reporters asked the IRS whether I had committed a crime and asked me whether I might be disbarred, and although my actions certainly had not risen to that level, the mere mention of the issue showed the amount of misunderstanding and hostility I was facing. My friends were stunned; none of them thought of me as a risk-taker or financial miscreant. To a person they were supportive, even though this incident was a significant embarrassment to me and to the cause of black empowerment.

Not everyone, however, had my back. Roy Wilkins of the Urban League was quoted as saying I had “let down the Negro race.” My wife will never forgive him for that. Jack Greenberg, who worked on Brown v. Board of Education and succeeded Thurgood Marshall as director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund—and who should have known better—was similarly unkind.

Personally, I was devastated. I had risen through the ranks to take the most significant job with which a black man in New York City government had ever been entrusted, and then I had plummeted as though I were in a garbage chute. All the pundits were throwing dirt in my face and writing my epitaph. This is the end of Dinkins. I went from the penthouse to the outhouse, from sugar to shit, in a New York minute.

...

I had hit a political dead end. What was I going to do? I couldn’t go back to political work; with no career path to follow, I could never rise to a position of authority. I could practice law, but with this cloud over me, what clients could I attract? I was faced with the truly unpleasant and unsettling fact that I had nowhere to go.

Fortunately, throughout my political career, even going way back, I had made more friends than enemies. There didn’t appear to be a groundswell murmur, “Oh, I’m glad it happened to him.” This is not always the case in politics.

I was sitting in my office one day after the New Year, in 1974, when Paul O’Dwyer called. A silver-haired Irish lawyer, he was a lifetime progressive with a passion to protect the oppressed. I used to call him Uncle Paul. He had been active in the National Lawyers League, had run several times for citywide office, and in something of an upset had just been elected New York City Council president. Paul was a supremely decent man. Apparently he had been conferring with Percy Sutton.

“Dave,” he said, “Percy and I have been discussing your situation. There’s a vacancy at the city clerk’s office, and we think it would be good for you to take it. It’s well within your abilities, and it will rehabilitate your career.”

“Paul,” I asked, “what’s the city clerk? What does the city clerk do?” I had no idea.

“Look it up. Then call the mayor.”

I came to find that the Office of the City Clerk is one of the oldest in New York City government, with its beginnings traceable to the inception of the Town of New Amsterdam. The original role of the clerk was to record the proceedings of the town’s legislative body and attest to and affix the town seal on official documents.

As the office itself describes it, historically the city clerk has played a dual role as the clerk of the City Council and the clerk of the Municipal Corporation known as the City of New York. As the clerk of the City Council, the main function is to attest to all laws enacted by the council. The clerk also attests to all legislation desired by and affecting the city that requires concurrent action by the State Legislature. The clerk of the City Council is also responsible for keeping the transcripts of the council’s proceedings.

The city clerk attests to the leases and deeds of city property, grants, agreements, bonds, tax notes, and other forms of obligations of the city. The city clerk also has charge of all papers and documents of the city that include executive and administrative orders of the mayor, certificates of judicial appointments by the mayor, oaths of office of city employees, city Marshall bonds, and referendum petitions. Other duties include the qualification of the commissioners of deeds and the certification to the Board of Elections of all judicial vacancies. Aside from these functions, the city clerk’s office maintains two separate and important bureaus under its jurisdiction: the Lobbying Bureau and the Marriage Bureau.

The city clerk was nominated by the mayor and appointed by a vote of the full City Council. It was a political plum. I picked up the phone and called Abe Beame. “Mr. Mayor, I understand there is a vacancy in the city clerk’s office. I just want you to know that I am interested in that position.”

“Okay, David.”

Mayor Beame and I had no further conversation on the matter, but he must have communicated my interest to City Council majority leader Tom Cuite. The only problem I had at my hearing before the council was the perception that I was overqualified. The general thrust was: “You’re a lawyer, you were deputy mayor-designate; do you not have too many qualifications”—and by that perhaps they meant too much ambition—“to perform this job?” I assured them that I would be pleased to serve to the best of my abilities and pointed out that having more than the necessary attributes to perform the job successfully should not disqualify me from doing so. Several council members were not ready to vote for me, perhaps thinking I wanted this position to further my political career. In fact, I wanted the job, as Paul O’Dwyer and Percy Sutton were suggesting, as an opportunity to “cleanse myself,” as it were. I am perplexed as to why any council members would not have wanted me to do so. In an effort to overcome their reservations, I agreed not to practice law during the time I held the position. I told them, “I’m just going to do my job.” There were thirty-five council members, and because New York was an overwhelmingly Democratic city, most were Democrats. I was appointed with close to thirty votes; the two Republicans voted against me, and two members of the Liberal Party, one of whom was Henry Stern, abstained. Bobby Wagner, a Democrat and son of former New York City mayor Robert Wagner, also abstained. Their stated reason was that I was overqualified. That was bullshit, but that’s politics.

I enjoyed my ten years as city clerk. I was party to all the inner workings of city government; the paperwork had to come across my desk sooner or later. The city clerk’s office consists of five offices, one in each borough, with deputies who perform the city’s ceremonies and keep its records. I met a significant number of New Yorkers from all walks of life who had to do business with the city. The city clerk also personally attends the City Council meetings, which soon gave me a deep familiarity with the intricate ways in which our government actually worked.

It was a political job with a great amount of freedom. I had the opportunity to attend functions every night of the week if I so chose. As an experienced Carver Democratic Club hand, I knew the value of personal contact. I made every event; I was everywhere. And I enjoyed that too. I developed a reputation. Basil Paterson used to say, no matter who was doing what, “it’s not official until the city clerk shows up!”

The part of the job I most enjoyed was presiding over the city’s Marriage Bureau. The city clerk can preside over marriage ceremonies, and I took the opportunity as often as I could. I had a convocation ready to go at any moment, adaptable to whomever was celebrating their happy day:

Marriage is a supreme sharing of experience and adventure in the most intimate of human relationships. Marriage is not a ritual or an end. It is a long, intricate, intimate dance together, and nothing matters more than your own sense of balance and your choice of partner. Marriage is the joyous uniting of two people whose comradeship and mutual understanding have flowered into love.

Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination. Love is patient; love is kind and envies no one. Love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude; never selfish, nor quick to take offense. Love keeps no score of wrongs; does not gloat over a person’s mistakes but delights in the truth. There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance.

Today, [bride and groom] proclaim their love to the world, and we who are gathered here rejoice with them and for them in the new life they now undertake together. We who are witnessing your marriage trust that, despite the stresses inevitable in any life, your love and respect for each other, your trust and understanding of each other, will increase your contentment and heighten your joy in living.

We are here to participate in and witness the sacred ceremony of marriage, which has been, since the time of the first born, a means of establishing and continuing a home. For it is by this act that the community endures.

Until 2009, the Marriage Bureau’s office was on the second floor of the Municipal Building, a massive structure at 1 Centre Street in Lower Manhattan that was designed by the renowned architectural firm McKim, Mead and White. Completed in 1914, the floors were old-fashioned ceramic tiles that had been worn slick by decades of brides and grooms, some in their finery, some in work clothes, some walking in to apply for marriage licenses, and some getting married. One day my longtime adviser Barbara Fife came to me and said, “You know, you get off the elevator or walk up the stairs, and there’s rice all over. I mean, people throw rice at each other, and it’s like walking on a skating rink. Especially for someone like me in high heels. You go to maneuver down those few steps to the office, you could fall on your nose!”

Now, Barbara is a fine woman with a great heart, and she wasn’t complaining—she was pointing out a safety hazard and potential civic liability. “I know,” I told her. “They wanted to make a rule that people could not throw rice here at their weddings. I said no. People who get married at City Hall mostly don’t have money to spend on a wedding. They have very little they can do to make it feel like a special occasion. I don’t want to take that away from them. We should just sweep more often.” The cost to the city in dollars was minimal, but the benefit to its citizens in joy was substantial. This was my vision of government: do not create rules that make life more difficult for people, but create opportunities that make life easier and better for people.

It was a city requirement that the bride and groom appear in person to apply for a marriage license. If for some reason one could not—perhaps because he or she was ill or bedridden or hospitalized—a letter of explanation was required. It didn’t have to come from a physician, but often it did. The letter would read “The applicant can’t appear because. . . .” The reason would be stated, and we would then send a clerk to the residence or hospital. On one occasion a letter said the applicant was terminally ill and wanted to get married before he died. Instead of saying simply “terminally ill,” the letter indicated that the man was terminally ill with AIDS.

No clerk wanted to go. These were the days when the disease was relatively new in the public’s awareness, when one would enter the hospital room of an AIDS patient only while wearing a mask. I hadn’t studied the disease, but I knew enough to know that the mask wasn’t meant to protect the visitor, it was to protect the patient. So I went. This wasn’t some heroic act. I simply knew that one couldn’t get AIDS through the air and was willing to perform my duties with that knowledge. This man had a limited amount of time left and wanted to marry. I wasn’t about to stand in his way.

After I made the first visit, the objections disappeared and on the rare occasions that AIDS patients applied for a marriage license, they were treated evenhandedly. I am proud to have had some small hand in that progress.

...

In January 1977, Percy Sutton announced his intention to run for the Democratic Party nomination for mayor of the city of New York. The notion was in many ways historic: this was the first time any black person had sought the city’s highest office. Some of us, when confronted with the idea of a mayoral run, thought, Well, that’s never happened before, we can’t get that done. Percy, by his nature, was never deterred by the fact that something had not occurred before. He was a visionary. Born in San Antonio, Texas, he had stowed away on a train and arrived in New York City at age fifteen. Percy was a barnstorming stunt pilot who joined the Air Force and became one of the Tuskegee Airmen. The armed forces deemed his vision impaired just enough that he wasn’t allowed to fly, so he became an intelligence officer. The way we tell the story, Percy was so smart that he got the other guys to fly for him.

Percy was prepared to become the first black mayor. That would be a triumph, a real racial milestone. I was proud that he would take on that challenge. Percy was vastly intelligent, dedicated, verbal, convincing, and capable of moving and shaking with the best of them.

He decided to announce his candidacy in Queens, which some thought was pretty clever and others considered not so smart. Queens was a populous borough, and most of its voters were white; in his first public appearance as a mayoral candidate, Percy was clearly attempting to send the message that, if elected, he not only would be Harlem’s mayor but was intending to represent the entire city.

In 1973, when he was Manhattan borough president, Percy was viewed as the “dean” of the Board of Estimate. In those days, the board was the primary generator of city projects: if you wanted anything done, you had to get it past the board. The citywide elected officials on the board were the mayor, the president of the City Council, and the comptroller, all of whom had two votes. Each of the five borough presidents had one vote apiece. Through the force of his political acumen, supreme deal-making ability, and winning personality, Percy could move business through the board like no other. He assisted then-mayor Abe Beame in getting the mayor’s agenda acted upon and actualized. In return, Percy told me, Beame promised to back him in the next mayoral election, in 1977.

But New York damn near went bankrupt under Abe Beame. In fact, Herman Badillo, a member of Congress from the South Bronx at the time, counseled for bankruptcy. The Municipal Assistance Corporation was formed to get New York City out of its fiscal difficulty. Bankruptcy papers were actually drafted to file in court. (I don’t know where those papers are today, but they’re probably in a frame on someone’s wall.) Fortunately, that was avoided, but because Beame, the former city comptroller, had taken the brunt of the criticism for the city’s financial straits, he apparently felt compelled to run for a second term to vindicate himself. He reneged on his promise to Percy not to run again and never offered his support.

The lineup of Democratic candidates for mayor in 1977 was formidable: incumbent mayor Abe Beame, Congressman Ed Koch, former congresswoman Bella Abzug, New York secretary of state Mario Cuomo, “civic watchdog” Joel Harnett, and Manhattan borough president Percy Sutton. Each came with expectations and constituencies, and each had his or her own relationship with the press. I remember vividly that Percy held a press conference in the Observation Tower of the Empire State Building to make the point that tourism in New York was big business. I thought the location was a clever choice. Unfortunately, because of the way the media treated Percy’s candidacy, nobody showed up to cover the event, as I recall, except the Amsterdam News.

Nevertheless, Percy was doing well in the polls; none of the candidates had more than 22 or 23 percent, and there was a very real possibility that he might finish well enough to qualify for a runoff. In June, however, Congressman Badillo entered the race. Badillo was a very smart, self-made man, a lawyer and a CPA who was so gifted that he was sometimes accused of thinking himself the smartest man in the room. A former Bronx borough president who was born in Puerto Rico, Badillo was the first Puerto Rican to serve in the US House of Representatives and had a large Latino following. He lost the 1973 Democratic primary to Beame in a runoff and must have thought that by coming in late he could circumvent the field. He failed in that, though he did succeed in splitting the potential African American–Latino coalition vote sufficiently to undermine Percy’s bid. Some say it was a maneuver that cost Badillo significantly in his future political life, particularly in regard to his subsequent inability to secure support from the African American community.

I was solidly behind Percy. I knew that if he was elected he would be an excellent mayor. When he told me he was running, it took me about thirty seconds to say, “What about borough president?” Manhattan borough president was not considered a “black” job, but it had been held by African Americans since Hulan Jack was elected to the position in 1953. “Oh,” said Percy, “you should run for that.”

I thought I had a pretty good shot at it. Percy was a friend and mentor, he was going to go all out to win his election, and he would turn out a large constituency that might vote for me as well.

What I did not know and did not understand was that Percy and some of his supporters really didn’t want me to run. They felt that two black men on the Democratic ticket would be too much, that some white folks would look at the slate and not want to put political control of the city in so many black hands. They also feared that my presence on the ballot would give people who thought they were open-minded an out: they could withhold their vote from Percy and still tell themselves, “Well, I didn’t vote for Sutton for mayor, but I’m not a bigot because I voted for Dinkins for borough president.” I think Percy and his advisers were entirely wrong; if anything, two of us running would have increased the turnout, at least in Manhattan, and put both of us in a better position to win. But at that point I wasn’t even politically savvy enough to be aware that I was being sandbagged. Percy told me to run, but I’m not sure that he didn’t give the same advice to two or three others.

I was ready to be borough president. I was prepared to move the city forward, to tend to the neighborhoods, to work in the best interests of all the people of the city. I was in a tough primary race against State Assemblyman Andrew Stein, City Councilman Bobby Wagner, and Ronnie Eldridge, a very outspoken woman who was a good friend of the Kennedys, a good friend of John Lindsay, and a leader in founding the reform movement on the Upper West Side. Stein was well funded, but Wagner, who hadn’t been able to bring himself to vote for me for city clerk, was the front-runner. Ronnie Eldridge and I were such good friends that we would share a car on our way from one club to the next for speaking engagements. On top of the recent debacle regarding the deputy mayorship and my taxes, I was largely frozen out of the Sutton campaign.

The highly effective and articulate community leader Lloyd Williams was having these “Harlem Day” events, and I thought it was perfectly logical that I, a former Carver Democratic Club captain and active community political presence, would be the centerpiece of one. That didn’t happen. And though I was chairman of the Council of Black Elected Democrats, I would be shouted down at meetings when I tried to discuss my own candidacy; they were committed to Percy.

Only Charlie Rangel, Harlem’s congressional representative, encouraged me. One day he found himself riding in a car with Jewell Jackson McCabe, who was former director of public affairs for the New York Urban coalition, former public relations officer at Special Services for Children, associate director for public information in the Women’s Division of the New York State Office of the Governor, and a woman who had devoted a large portion of her life to advancing the cause of blacks and women. She proceeded to tell him she was supporting Bobby Wagner. That did it. He stopped the car and made her get out!

Andy Stein had a lot of family money and social connections but was not widely thought of as a considered or committed candidate. For much of the election the issue was “Are you for or against Andy Stein?” Wagner, Eldridge, and I split the “against Stein” vote. Stein won, and I came in third.

Percy lost as well, while Koch and Cuomo faced a runoff for the nomination. Contrary to popular opinion, African Americans did not vote in lockstep, and there was considerable jockeying for positions of power in the city among black politicians, particularly between Harlem and Brooklyn. In times of decision there is always opportunity, and Brooklyn’s Vander L. Beatty, who had only recently lost his seat in the State Assembly, attempted to increase his political standing by putting an end run on Percy and what he described as the “Harlem leadership” by coming out for Cuomo. It is my assumption that Beatty thought that, if he came out early and Mario won, he would be in line for a quantitative leap in status. Percy’s reaction was, “Fine, we’re with Koch”—and by “we” I mean Percy Sutton, Basil Paterson, and the vast majority of black elected officials. It was certainly a calculated move. Koch, though he had a liberal past and was still perceived as a relative progressive at that time, ran a law-and-order/pro-death-penalty campaign to the right of the rest of the Democratic field and beat Cuomo for the nomination. Mario took 238 of the 250 votes cast in the Liberal Party primary and ran atop its ticket, but Koch defeated him and Republican Roy Goodman in the general election and became mayor. So began Ed Koch’s twelve-year reign in New York. Among his first appointments was Basil Paterson as deputy mayor. And like all career politicians, Mario Cuomo did not forget who his friends were and who had not supported him.

...

One has a political life and at the same time one’s personal life forges ahead. Often, if one’s work is one’s passion, they coalesce. Our daughter Donna attended Yale University and excelled, earning a degree in psychology in 1980. Of course she was politically active, as we knew she would be. At the time of her graduation a significant sexual harassment suit was pending at the university, and Donna, along with several women’s and Third World student organizations, was considering not participating in the ceremonies. She told her mother, “I’m not going to march. At the very least, I will not wear a cap and gown.” She and her fellow students felt that Yale’s behavior demanded a statement from them and that by absenting themselves or showing disrespect for the traditions of the institution they would bring attention to the issue. Joyce saw things differently. “You will march,” she told our daughter. She felt that in some way this degree was ours as well and that such disrespect extended not only to the educational institution but to others. Donna and her like-minded compadres did march, but wore armbands proudly displaying the universal sign for “woman.”

Donna came home from Yale and announced that she had joined the Peace Corps. She did not ask, “What do you think?” or, “How about if I . . .?” She said, “I have joined the Peace Corps.” I was her first call, I’m pleased to say, because I had always counseled our daughter to pursue what was important to her and she knew I would be supportive of her decision. Donna was also aware that her mother would be far more concerned. “Don’t worry,” I told her. “I’ll take care of your mom. I’ll tell her.” Ultimately my bride agreed to her daughter’s decision. Not that she or I had a say in the matter.

Donna earned an assignment to the Dominican Republic because she spoke Spanish, but turned it down because she wanted to go to Africa. When a placement in Liberia was offered, she took it.

Liberia was colonized by freed American slaves as part of the nineteenth-century Back-to-Africa movement, which held that ex-slaves would have greater freedom and equality in the land of their ancestry. The Republic of Liberia was founded as a democracy in 1847, and the colonists, known as Americo-Liberians, dominated the political and economic sectors of the country. Its government had a strong and healthy relationship with the United States and with the Peace Corps. Once your identity as a Peace Corps volunteer was established, Donna was informed, you were safe and secure. “That’s one of the most stable governments in Africa,” she was told during training. “We’ve had Peace Corps volunteers there for years, and there’s never been a problem.” As with all Peace Corps assignments, there was a backup plan in which all personnel could be airlifted out in case of emergency.

Donna was stationed in a remote village, approximately one hundred miles up-country from Monrovia, in which individual homes not only had no telephone service but were not equipped with electricity. This was a time before the Internet and Skype and cell phones and the constant interactions of the modern world. Our only communication with our daughter was by mail, and letters would take two or three weeks to be delivered.

Donna arrived in Liberia in December 1979. In April 1980 the Liberian military staged a coup.

We heard about it on the morning news. Organized bands of indigenous soldiers led by Master Sergeant Samuel Doe had seized control of the country from the Americo-Liberian leadership class, brutally killing the president, his family, twenty-four members of his cabinet, and sixteen leading politicians. The threat to Liberians of American descent was palpable, and our American daughter was there in the middle of it.

We called the State Department and got a live person at the Peace Corps desk, not a machine. The man told us, “All American citizens are safe.” I said, “No, you don’t understand, this is our daughter here, you’ve got to tell me more than that.”

“I’m sorry, sir, that’s all the information I have.”

I said, “Well, maybe Cy Vance could do better.” I knew Secretary of State Cyrus Vance from our interaction at the New York City Bar Association. The Peace Corps representative said, “Well, you do what you think you have to.”

My daughter was in danger, and of course I would use any and all contacts to secure her safety. Donald McHenry, whom I knew from his time as deputy to Andrew Young, the first African American U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was by this time himself the UN ambassador. Carl McCall, whom I had known since he was a Harlem state senator and Percy Sutton’s protégé, was McHenry’s deputy. I reached them, and they moved mountains to communicate somehow, some way, with those out in the bush who could establish the health and whereabouts of our child. The wait was agonizing.

Fortunately, word came back that everyone was safe. The upheaval was in Monrovia. In the recesses of the backcountry, we were told, they barely knew the coup was going on.

Months went by, and we did not hear from the most important girl in our lives. Finally a letter arrived. Donna wrote home like a kid from college: “Send this” . . . “send that.” On the second or third page, she said, “Oh, by the way, there was a coup.” Daddy’s angel, bless her heart.

When Donna finally returned to the United States, we learned that her experience had been a bit more harrowing. She and all the other volunteers had surrendered their passports to the local Peace Corps office so that in case of evacuation all would be simultaneously available. She had faced soldiers brandishing M-16s and became inured to the sight of people walking down the street carrying automatic weapons.

We were overjoyed when her Peace Corps service was finally ending and Donna was coming home. She had been away at college for four years and spent three years in Africa; Joyce and I as parents were looking forward to seeing our daughter again.

Donna had not been back a day before Joyce commented on the noticeable increase in maturity that had taken place during her time away. “It was like she grew up overnight,” my bride remembers. “She was always interested in serving and helping people, but now she had real feeling and understanding for their problems, and she appreciated her own life.” During college Donna had worked on various women’s health issues. In Liberia she had worked as a maternal child health volunteer in a local clinic and taught science in the local school, as well as performing public health outreach activities. She had seen traditional birth attendants and many deliveries and came home passionate about midwifery; in choosing a career, she was now trying to decide between public health, nursing, and medicine. I thought she should aim high. “Why don’t you think about med school?” I told her. She said, “Daddy, you don’t have to be a doctor to help people!” For that response alone I am as proud of her as if she had won the Nobel Peace Prize.

...

I was a stronger candidate in my second race for borough president, in 1981, but Stein won a second term. He ran for Congress on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in 1984 but lost to Republican Bill Green, and I think he was sufficiently concerned about my growing electoral power that in 1985 he chose not to attempt a third term but to run instead for City Council president.

The 1985 election was intricate. A group called the Coalition for a Just New York had formed sometime earlier to try to influence the selection of a schools chancellor, and when that effort ended the group had turned its attention to the city government as a whole. I, along with several prominent political leaders, was part of this group. There was an effort, spearheaded by Brooklyn state assemblyman Al Vann, who was chairman of the New York State Black & Puerto Rican Caucus, to build a citywide black-Latino coalition. Vann, a Bedford-Stuyvesant-born African American, was running for Brooklyn borough president; I was running to represent Manhattan; and Jose Serrano, born in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, was running in the Bronx. Herman Badillo presented himself to the group, trying to win its endorsement for the Democratic nomination for mayor. He was a powerful presence and thought he would be the candidate. If we all won, the thinking went, we could control the city.

Some within the coalition organization thought they had the votes lined up to swing its endorsement to Badillo. A vote got canceled one week. We were a notable group, and the city was waiting for an announcement. At the last minute, Herman D. “Denny” Farrell Jr., an African American state assemblyman and New York Democratic Party county leader, made his move and approached the coalition for its endorsement. We had interviewed and heard from all the candidates; now we met with Denny, after which we were to make our decision.

There were fewer than thirty of us in the room, voting on whom to recommend for mayor. Basil Paterson, State Senator Leon Bogues, and Percy Sutton spoke. Charlie Rangel was present, and although I do not recall his actual words, knowing Charlie, I have to assume he spoke as well. At this particular meeting I didn’t say a word; I just sat there and let it unfold as Herman Badillo’s 1977 mayoral end run was prominently mentioned. I didn’t feel we owed Herman anything, and there were many in the room who were strongly opposed to him.

Denny Farrell was awarded the coalition’s endorsement.

Village Voice journalist Jack Newfield, who was very close to Badillo, wanted to be a kingmaker; he wanted to make the mayor, not report the news. Without actually having been in the room, he named Basil, Percy, Charlie, and me the “Gang of Four.” His reference was to the Chinese Communist Party officials who came to prominence during the Chinese Cultural Revolution and were warned by Mao Tse-tung: “Do not try to begin a gang of four to accumulate power.” Apparently, in this scenario, Jack was playing the part of Mao. We were clearly not plotting revolution, but the moniker stuck.

Unfortunately, the coalition’s endorsement did not prove decisive. Ed Koch was reelected. Jose Serrano was narrowly defeated but went on to become a twenty-year congressman from the Bronx. Al Vann continued to represent Brooklyn in the State Assembly into the new millennium and became an active member of the New York City Council. Denny Farrell represented Harlem, Inwood, and Hudson Heights in the State Assembly and became a member of the Democratic National Committee.

In my third race for borough president, I ran against reform candidate Jerrold Nadler. The major issues were homelessness and affordable housing. Education and health care have always been Manhattan constants as well; it’s hard to think of a time when those two issues were not vital to the well-being of New York.

Running for office is hard work. It is hard if you win, and it is even more difficult if you do not win. This is an inexact analogy, but if you play poker all night and you lose, you’re in bad shape, you feel bone-weary, and you look like crap. If you win, you take a shower and go to work, and even though you’re dog-tired you feel terrific. Running for office is grinding, and to survive intact you truly must love people and believe that your quest is of value. I was not looking forward to losing again. Fortunately, having run twice before, I was well known among the voters. I always believed—and it worked for us—that Manhattan was a collection of neighborhoods and that we had to find a way to pull them all together. I cared about all Manhattanites—not just the poor, not just people of color, but everyone from Wall Street to Washington Heights, from Irving Place to Inwood. I had an excellent campaign staff, a lot of really good, smart people, and we ran an intense campaign.

I am a great fan of tennis and I recall the wonderful player Vitas Gerulaitis. After he lost sixteen straight matches to Jimmy Connors, he finally beat him and then told the gathered media, “Let that be a lesson to you all. Nobody beats Vitas Gerulaitis seventeen times in a row!” Well, I defeated Jerry Nadler, and on my third try, in 1985, after ten years as city clerk, I was elected Manhattan borough president.