LARRY PROVOST: NYC Mayoral Election Echoes 1965 And 1969 Races

In the summer of 1965 and 1969, New York City had a young mayoral candidate who captured the attention of a nation. Once elected, John Lindsay almost ruined New York City.  Sixty years later, another candidate may do the same.

Mr. Lindsay, before that a representative, was one of the most, if not the most, liberal Republican in the Congress.  He was the only Republican congressman to vote against a bill to impound obscene mail and one of only two representatives to vote against intercepting mail from the Communist bloc.

In 1965, a three-way race for mayor pitted Lindsay the Republican against Democrat Abraham Beam and Conservative William F. Buckley. Immediately after assuming Gracie Mansion, Mr. Lindsay was met with a transit strike where he failed to take hard action against the public unions. This set the tone for the rest of his administration, where he did strange things such as putting Abbie Hoffman on the City payroll. Crime skyrocketed and relations with the NYC Jewish community soured.

By 1969 Mr. Lindsay was so radicalized that he lost the Republican nomination for mayor but was re-elected in a three-way election (Lindsay ran as the Liberal Party candidate while a somewhat Conservative Democrat and a Republican ran against him, splitting the vote). (RELATED: Mamdani’s Socialist Group Backs ‘Death To Imperialism’ Summit Praising North Korea)

Mr. Lindsay was, like Zohran Mamdani, someone who openly pitted different neighborhoods and races of New York against each other.  While John Lindsay bravely walked the streets of Harlem after the assassination of Martin Luther King and, in doing so, prevented riots on the scale of Newark or Watts, he did not do much else for racial harmony.