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American politician (1921–2000)
the American politician

John Vliet Lindsay (/v//l//iː//t/; November 24, 1921 – December 19, 2000) was an American politician and lawyer. During his political career, Lindsay was a U. S. congressman, mayor of New York City, and candidate for U. S. president. He was also a regular guest host of Good Morning America. Lindsay served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from January 1959 to December 1965 and as mayor of New York City from January 1966 to December 1973. He switched from the Republican to the Democratic Party in 1971, and launched a brief and unsuccessful bid for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination as well as the 1980 Democratic nomination for Senator from New York.

Lindsay was born in New York City on West End Avenue to George Nelson Lindsay and the former Florence Eleanor Vliet. He grew up in an upper middle class family of English and Dutch descent. Lindsay's father was a successful lawyer and investment banker.

With the outbreak of World War II, Lindsay completed his studies early and in 1943 joined the United States Navy as a gunnery officer. He obtained the rank of lieutenant, earning five battle stars through action in the invasion of Sicily and a series of landings in the Pacific theater.

Back in New York City, Lindsay met his future wife, Mary Anne Harrison (1926–2004), at the wedding of Nancy Walker Bush (daughter of Connecticut's Senator Prescott Bush and sister of future President George Herbert Walker Bush and aunt of George W. Bush & Jeb Bush), They had three daughters and a son.

Lindsay began gravitating toward politics as one of the founders of the Youth for Eisenhower club in 1951 and as president of the New York Young Republican Club in 1952. He went on to join the United States Department of Justice in 1955 as executive assistant to Attorney General Herbert Brownell. There he worked on civil liberties cases as well as the 1957 Civil Rights Act. In 1958, with the backing of Brownell as well as Bruce Barton, John Aspinwall Roosevelt, and Edith Willkie, He was an early supporter of federal aid to education and Medicare;

In 1965, Lindsay was elected Mayor of New York City as a Republican with the support of the Liberal Party of New York in a three way race. He defeated Democratic mayoral candidate Abraham D. Beame, then City Comptroller, as well as National Review founder William F. Buckley, Jr., who ran on the Conservative line. The unofficial motto of the campaign, taken from a Murray Kempton column, was "He is fresh and everyone else is tired".

On his first day as mayor, January 1, 1966, the Transport Workers Union of America, led by Mike Quill, shut down the city with a complete halt of subway and bus service. As New Yorkers endured the transit strike, Lindsay remarked, "I still think it's a fun city", and walked four miles (6 km) from his hotel room to City Hall in a gesture to show it. In the article, Schaap sardonically pointed out that it was not. The strike was tinged with racial and anti Semitic overtones, pitting Black and Puerto Rican parents against Jewish teachers and supervisors. The episode left a legacy of tensions between African Americans and Jews that went on for years, Quality of life in the city reached a nadir during the sanitation strike as mounds of garbage caught fire and strong winds blew the filth through the streets. In June 1968, the New York City Police Department deployed snipers to protect Lindsay during a public ceremony, shortly after they detained a knife wielding man who had demanded to meet the mayor. With the schools shut down, police engaged in a slowdown, firefighters threatening job actions, the city awash in garbage, and racial and religious tensions breaking to the surface, Lindsay later called the last six months of 1968 "the worst of my public life." President Johnson ignored the report and rejected the Kerner Commission's recommendations. In April 1968, one month after the release of the Kerner report, rioting broke out in more than 100 cities following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. However, in New York City, Lindsay traveled directly into Harlem, telling Black residents that he regretted King's death and was working against poverty. He is credited with averting riots in the city with this direct response, even as other major cities burned. David Garth, who accompanied Lindsay that night, recalled: "There was a wall of people coming across 125th Street, going from west to east  I thought we were dead. John raised his hands, said he was sorry. It was very quiet. My feeling was, his appearance there was very reassuring to people because it wasn't the first time they had seen him. He had gone there on a regular basis. That gave him credibility when it hit the fan." Lindsay showed his support for New York's African American community through his administration's sponsorship of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, which is documented in the 2021 music film, Summer of Soul. The host of the festival, Tony Lawrence, introduces the mayor to the Harlem crowd as "our blue eyed soul brother."

On February 10, 1969, New York City was pummeled with of snow. On the first day alone, 14 people died and 68 were injured. Within a day, the mayor was criticized for giving favored treatment to Manhattan at the expense of the other boroughs. Charges were made that a city worker solicited a bribe to clean streets in Queens. Over a week later, streets in eastern Queens still remained unplowed by the city, enraging the borough's residents, many who felt that the city's other boroughs always took a back seat to Manhattan. Lindsay traveled to Queens, but his visit was not well received. His car could not make its way through Rego Park, and even in a four wheel drive truck, he had trouble getting around. The blizzard, dubbed the "Lindsay Snowstorm,” prompted a political crisis that became "legendary in the annals of municipal politics" Procaccino, who ran to Lindsay's right, went on to coin the term "limousine liberal" to describe Lindsay and his wealthy Manhattan backers. Despite losing the Republican nomination, Lindsay remained on the ballot as the candidate of the New York Liberal Party. In his campaign he said "mistakes were made" and called being mayor of New York City "the second toughest job in America." Two television advertisements described his position: In one he looked directly into the camera and said, "I guessed wrong on the weather before the city's biggest snowfall last winter. And that was a mistake. But I put 6,000 more cops on the streets. And that was no mistake. The school strike went on too long and we all made some mistakes. But I brought 225,000 more jobs to this town. And that was no mistake And we did not have a Detroit, a Watts or Newark. And those were no mistakes. The things that go wrong are what make this the second toughest job in America. But the things that go right are those things that make me want it." The second opened with a drive through the Holland Tunnel from lower Manhattan toward New Jersey and suggested that, "Every New Yorker should take this trip at least once before election day " followed by video of Newark, New Jersey which had been devastated by race riots. While narrowly losing Brooklyn and the Bronx due to Procaccino's entrenched support among ethnic, working class whites (with Marchi winning his native Staten Island), Lindsay was able to vanquish his opponents with support from three distinct groups.

On May 8, 1970, near the intersection of Wall Street and Broad Street and at New York City Hall, a riot started when about 200 construction workers mobilized by the New York State AFL–CIO labor federation attacked about 1,000 high school and college students and others protesting the Kent State shootings, the Cambodian Campaign, and the Vietnam War. Some attorneys, bankers, and investment analysts from nearby Wall Street investment firms tried to protect many of the students but were themselves attacked, and some onlookers reported that the police stood by and did nothing. Although more than 70 people were injured, including four policemen, only six people were arrested. The following day, Lindsay severely criticized the police for their lack of action. Police Department labor leaders later accused Lindsay of "undermining the confidence of the public in its Police Department" by his statements and blamed the inaction on inadequate preparations and "inconsistent directives" in the past from the mayor's office. Several thousand construction workers, longshoremen and white collar workers protested against the mayor on May 11 and again on May 16. Protesters called Lindsay "the red mayor," "traitor," "Commie rat," and "bum." The mayor described the mood of the city as "taut."

In 1970, The New York Times printed New York City Police Department Patrolman Frank Serpico's claims of widespread police corruption. As a result, the Knapp Commission was eventually formed that April by Lindsay, with investigations beginning in June, although public hearings did not start until October 18, 1971. Its preliminary report was not issued until August 1972, and final recommendations only released on December 27, 1972. Because of his forming of the Knapp Commission, many NYPD officers disliked him and didn't want him to attend their funerals in case they died on duty and heckled, hissed, jeered and booed him when he did appear. The wife of Rocco Laurie, one of two city police officers who were murdered by Black revolutionaries in 1972, specifically stated that she did not want Lindsay to attend her husband's funeral that year.

A 1993 survey of historians, political scientists and urban experts conducted by Melvin G. Holli of the University of Illinois at Chicago ranked Lindsay as the sixteenth worst American big city mayor to have served between the years 1820 and 1993.

Lindsay was mentioned as a Republican Vice Presidential possibility in 1968, but was found to be unacceptable by Southern conservatives, and Spiro Agnew was nominated instead. Lindsay’s original break with the Republican Party began immediately after he failed to win the 1969 Republican mayoral primary, and his subsequent association with the New York Liberal Party for that election. In 1971, Lindsay and his wife cut ties with the Republican Party by registering with the Democratic Party. Lindsay said, "In a sense, this step recognizes the failure of 20 years in progressive Republican politics. In another sense, it represents the renewed decision to fight for new national leadership." Lindsay then launched a brief and unsuccessful bid for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination. He attracted positive media attention and was a successful fundraiser. Lindsay did well in the early Arizona caucus, coming in second place behind Edmund Muskie of Maine and ahead of eventual nominee George McGovern of South Dakota. Then in the March 14 Florida primary, he placed a weak fifth place, behind George Wallace of Alabama, Muskie, Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, and Scoop Jackson of Washington (though he did edge out McGovern). Among his difficulties was New York City's worsening problems, which Lindsay was accused of neglecting; a band of protesters from Forest Hills, Queens, who were opposed to his support for a low income housing project in their neighborhood, followed Lindsay around his aborted campaign itinerary to jeer and heckle him. His poor showing in Florida effectively doomed his candidacy. Shortly thereafter, influential Brooklyn Democratic Party chairman Meade Esposito called for Lindsay to end his campaign: "I think the handwriting is on the wall; Little Sheba better come home." After a poor showing in the April 5 Wisconsin primary, Lindsay formally abandoned the race.

In a 1972 Gallup poll, 60% of New Yorkers felt Lindsay's administration was working poorly, nine percent rated it good, and not one person thought its performance excellent. By 1978, The New York Times called Lindsay "an exile in his own city". Lindsay's record remained controversial after he left politics. Conservative historian Fred Siegel, calling Lindsay the worst New York City mayor of the 20th century, said "Lindsay wasn't incompetent or foolish or corrupt, but he was actively destructive". Journalist Steven Weisman observed "Lindsay's congressional career had taught him little of the need for subtle bureaucratic maneuvering, for understanding an opponent's self interest, or for the great patience required in a sprawling government." Lindsay's budget aide Peter C. Goldmark, Jr. told historian Vincent Cannato that the administration "failed to come to grips with what a neighborhood is. We never realized that crime is something that happens to, and in, a community." Assistant Nancy Seifer said "There was a whole world out there that nobody in City Hall knew anything about If you didn't live on Central Park West, you were some kind of lesser being." Many experts traced the city's mid 1970s fiscal crisis to the Lindsay years, and to the new taxes that he imposed. Rev. Al Sharpton has said that he still remembers Lindsay having walked the streets of Bedford Stuyvesant and Harlem when these neighborhoods were doing poorly economically.

After leaving office, Lindsay returned to the law, but remained in the public eye as a commentator and regular guest host for ABC's Good Morning America. In 1975, Lindsay made a surprise appearance on The Tony Awards telecast in which he, along with a troupe of celebrity male suitors in tuxedos, sang "Mame" to Angela Lansbury. He presented the award for Best Director Of A Play to John Dexter for the play Equus. Lindsay also tried his hand at acting, appearing in Otto Preminger's Rosebud; the following year his novel, The Edge, was published (Lindsay had earlier authored two non fiction memoirs): the New York Times, in its contemporary review of the novel, said it was "as dead serious as a $100 a plate dinner of gray meat and frozen candidates' smiles." Attempting a political comeback in 1980, Lindsay made a long shot bid for the Democratic nomination for U. S. Senator from New York, and finished third. He was also active in New York City charities, serving on the board of the Association for a Better New York, and as chairman of the Lincoln Center Theater. On his death, New York Times credited Lindsay with a significant role in the rejuvenation of the theatre. He and his wife, Mary, moved to a retirement community in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, in November 1999, where he died on December 19, 2000, at the age of 79 of complications from pneumonia and Parkinson's disease. and in 2001, the East River Park was renamed in his memory. In December 2013, South Loop Drive in Manhattan's Central Park was renamed after Lindsay, to commemorate his support for a car free Central Park. He was featured on a poster picture with Governor Nelson Rockefeller at the groundbreaking of the former World Trade Center in the city history section of the Museum of the City of New York at Fifth Avenue and 103rd Street.