Part II: A New York Liberal
In America’s most hopeful message of politics comes the story of the up-and-comer. A bartender getting elected to the U.S. Congress against an incumbent or a child from a working-class family that couldn’t afford an Ivy League education becomes President of the United States.
A lesser-known story is that of the political prince who fought- and nearly won the fight for the Republican party. His name was Nelson Rockefeller- a member of the nations’ wealthiest family turned into a political dynasty.
For much of the party’s history, the Republican Party was the home to conservatives and liberals. The term “Liberal Republican” wasn’t an outlier.
A large part of this had come from a geographical divide. The Northeast held prominent influence over the Republican Party. The region was and remained a safe bet for more liberal Republicans, who either win some or all of its encompassing states. They spent on infrastructure, negotiated on Civil Rights, and pioneered new overreach for the Federal Government.
New York was no exception to this faction of Republicanism. It was Rockefellers’ home state. A product of the FDR administration, Nelson Rockefeller had been raised in the New Deal era, which, after bringing an economically distraught America back on its feet, had shifted the country, and the Republican party, further to the left.
Rockefeller had worked closely with the Roosevelt Administration in his 30’s as the man as a U.S. Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs. He had been tasked with trying to increase the standard of living in Latin-American countries using American capitalism. Rockefeller’s involvement in economic development formed the basis of his own economic ideology, which supported New Deal era reforms and support for consistent social infrastructure to develop a social safety net.
In this ideology, he was not alone- the coming decade of Republicans embraced the party’s liberal wing. The first Republican President after FDR expanded Social Security, built the interstate highway system, increased minimum wage, and introduced the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. He was Dwight Eisenhower, and he was no small-government conservative.
In 1956, Rockefeller stepped down from federal politics and made a run for New York Governor. He took down an incumbent- by over half a million votes. Winning over New York is no easy feat, and in the Eisenhower era, you weren’t just the governor of New York. Your name was floated as a future president of the United States.
Republican conservatives weren’t a fan- especially Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona. He was a vocal, libertarian-conservative Republican who made his position on government clear: the less, the better. 4 years after Rockefellers victory, Goldwater had a goal- to turn the Republican party into a party of conservatives.
The year was 1960, and Richard Nixon was the Republican contender for President. His opponent was a charming, romantic man whose past was marked by dramatic literary and political achievements and whose progressivism resonated with moderates and liberals alike. That man was John F. Kennedy.
The election was closing in, and Barry Goldwater didn’t just want a Republican victory. He wanted a conservative win. The state of New York had been holding the party away from his dream, and Goldwater made it clear. As the elections closed in, Goldwater told the chairman of the party to focus on Illinois and Texas’s states and move their efforts away from the Northeast. That was the moment conservative Republicans began the fight for the Republican party.
“I want to win this goddamned election without New York. Then we could tell New York to kiss our ass and we could really start a conservative party.” (Smith, 2015)
Goldwaters’ mission failed. Texas and Illinois went blue. So did most of the East Coast- including New York. Kennedy was elected President.
But there was something else: The South- typically a Democratic stronghold, had split. The conservatives had won a crucial victory. Maybe, the Republican party didn’t need New York, and the Northeast, after all.
Then came 1964.
1964 changed the Republican Party dramatically. Nelson Rockefeller announced he was running for President and became the clear frontrunner for his party. Kennedy and Johnson expected him to be the opponent to face during re-election.
Everything was set for Nelson Rockefeller- the nomination was going to be his. But then, he did something that was so socially unacceptable at the time, his chances of winning the nomination plummeted.
He got divorced.
Nelson Rockefellers’ running opponent took the lead and swept his party by storm, and by the time the convention came around, it was clear. Barry Goldwater was going to be the nominee. The senator who had given New York the finger had beaten its governor was the first conservative in decades to become the Republican nominee for President. But this wasn’t the moment conservatives won the party.
That goes credit to July 14th, 1964. The Republican National Convention. Barry Goldwater is about to get nominated and in comes Rockefeller- with a speech in hand that changes the direction of the party for good.
Like other prominent Republicans, Rockefeller had the opportunity to speak to constituents and delegates. So, he did. But that night- Rockefeller didn’t give a glowing endorsement of Goldwater. He did the exact opposite.
Rockefeller takes to the stage around midnight on the east coast. There’s a swift of unease amongst the Republican party. Here is the man who took 20 years of conservatism away from their grasp. The man who had all but written the playbook prevented their voice from rising up. He was a man who embodied what they hated the most- a smug, east coast, frantically rich, liberal taking their party away from them. Here was that man standing in front of them, instead of the man they wanted to see.
The chairman of the Republican party suggested he halt his remarks, trying to direct him off the stage. Rockefeller was adamant- “You try to push me again, and I’ll deck you right in front of this whole audience.” (Smith, 2015).
As he speaks, the crowd boos- “We want Barry!” they say. He denounces extremism, from communism to fascism. Jackie Robinson cheers in support, telling Rockefeller, “That’s right, Rocky. Hit ’em where they live!”. Rockefeller continues, decrying Republican extremism as a serious threat.
He knows what he is doing. The crowd knows what he is doing- painting Goldwater as an extremist. Whatever President Johnson could do to paint Goldwater, Rockefeller is doing precisely that and making a better masterpiece than Johnson could ever. He’s telling liberals that their nominee isn’t electable.
That speech was engineered to make Barry Goldwater lose. If Rockefeller couldn’t be President, neither could Goldwater.
As Rockefeller continued to denounce conservative extremism, the crowd exploded- booing him louder and louder. But Rockefeller didn’t walk off the stage and didn’t let the public take over. He finished his speech, waved, and walked off like “he had been given a standing ovation.” (Smith, 2015)
The Republican party the day after was a different party. It was a conservative party. It was Goldwaters’ party. The opposition to this form of Republicanism had reached a crescendo that day, and it was then that the strategy of moving to the right became the playbook for the Republican Party.
Goldwater got crushed in the general election. The east had gone blue again. So did every region of the U.S.- all besides the South, which split yet again.
Goldwater might have lost, but his brand of conservatism was set to win the Republican party. Richard Nixon had rerun, in 1968, as a moderate. So did Rockefeller.
Nixon was hated by Republicans across the ballot. At the 1968 Republican National Convention, a coalition between the liberals of Rockefeller and the Conservatives led by Reagan came 25 delegation votes away from losing the Republican Primary. The Republican party was 25 votes away from choosing another direction of history, one that could have brought it back to the left.
The party had chosen its direction- it was the party of Conservatives. The party never changed this decision. When Nixon resigned from the Presidency, his vice president took office. A liberal Republican by the name of Gerald Ford appointed Rockefeller as his Vice President. Come re-election, they had a chance to prove that a liberal Republican party could win an election. They didn’t.
They lost to Jimmy Carter, who then lost to the Republican nominee for President in 1976, Ronald Reagan. Reagan was the man who sold Goldwaters’ Conservatism to middle America, and in 1984, President Reagan grabbed a historic victory, losing only Minnesota and D.C.
Liberal Republicans came dramatically close to keeping the Republican Party. It was a close fight, but another critical detail changes the way the ideological war pans out.
Nelson Rockefeller was essentially separated from his wife for 15 years before he had gotten divorced. If he wanted to, he could have waited until the nomination to lead the party. He had come dramatically close to the Presidency, and in a way, he had chosen not to take it.
Historian Richard Norton Smith describes Rockefeller’s run for President differently- that he didn’t feel as though he was running against Kennedy or Johnson. He thought he was running against FDR- the man who had given him his entire political career.
The New York Governorship nearly propelled Rockefeller to lead the Republican Party. But the hate Goldwater had, the hesitancy Rockefeller had, and the speech he gave that tore Goldwater down- changed what could have been a very different Republican Party. That was the power a single state- and a single man had over the direction of a party and the country it campaigned to lead.
Chapter III: America’s Mayor.
While the Republican Party transformed into a conservative party, the Northeast- including New York, stuck to its roots. The next Republican to get elected to the governor’s position was Goerge Pataki, a moderate who was able to inch out a victory against Mario Cuomo in a bid for his fourth term.
Pataki wasn’t the only Republican elected to a high-profile position in New York in the 1990s. The second prominent Republican was the son of Harold, who had engaged in shootouts with the Mafia and served time.
In his youth, he wasn’t a Republican. He was a Kennedy Democrat, supporting a liberal battalion who was relentless in fighting for civil rights. He assisted Bobby Kennedy as well, and in a house of Goldwater conservatives, he was the man fighting for the other side.
His name is Rudolph “Rudy” Guiliani. He’s better known now as Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, who advocated for “trial by combat” at the front of the Capitol on January 6th. He stated “Truth isn’t truth” on live air, and, reached towards his trousers after an encounter with a female journalist when he had been pranked in “Borat 2”. He was disbarred from the same state he once served. He has become a caricature of the Republican Party- a punchline on the left.
But his name didn’t always have this connotation. For a moment in history, Giuliani was an example of outstanding leadership. He was the face of a country in crisis and was the protector of a scarred country and city. For a moment in history, Giuliani’s name carried the reputation of a president. His story begins in the 1990s.
Giuliani, already having served as the third-ranking position at the U.S. Department of Justice- had been gunning for something more. Now, he was the Attorney for the Southern District of New York. For some, it’s a lawyer’s dream. For Giuliani, it was a stepping stone.
He ran exhilarating press conferences on his cases and had mastered the art of the “perp walk,” a handcuffed convict’s walk carried by officers across public hallways. When he opened his mouth, audiences saw him in anticipation. He was a showman in lawyers’ clothing.
But he needed something more. Rudy had the juice- but no meat. He needed a case so prolific, he could kickstart a career of greater ambition.
Then came Stanley Firedman, the chairman of the Bronx Democratic Party who was charged for bribery and racketeering. If guilty, it would be seen as one of the worst scandals in New York History. Giuliani took over the case as lead prosecutor.
Rudy spent his time in the backroom and “turned a hotel suite into a rehearsal hall” (Barret, 353). He was away from his family and his 8-month old son.
This case needed to break open his career. So Rudy needed something that would break him out.
He wired an informant working with Firedman and silently informed the judge and defense of the audio. When the court came, he pocketed the tape right after his star witness and stunned an unexpecting jury.
Then, at the end of the trial, Firedman himself took the stand. He maintained his innocence under Rudy’s cross-examination. He got emotional at times- yelling denials. Rudy asked him about a series of briberies happening at an organization he had a stake in and his ignorance of them. Firedman responded, “it didn’t faze me.”- despite having millions of dollars invested into it. It wasn’t believable. Rudy broke him.
Then, the day after- the judge told the air, without a verdict- that the story Friedman had given was highly improbable. Though inappropriate, the judge had hinted at his opinion before a ruling.
But the judge doesn’t decide the verdict- that’s up to the jury. On November 25th, 1986- the jury assembled. They didn’t take weeks. They didn’t take days. They took hours- a swift verdict. Firedman knew that he lost and was sure that the decision was unanimously against him.
Giuliani arrived at court in a shaken shape, his face red. Then, the verdict came in. Firedman was right. The jury found him guilty.
Rudy Giuliani got his breakout. Firedman knew what he wanted as well and said it. In a rebuttal to the verdict, Firedman was quoted saying, “When he throws his hat in the ring…I hope you will say, somewhere along the line, Stanley Firedman was right.”
That same year had given another victory to Rudy. He was the lead prosecutor in a monumental trial- the trial of the New York Mafia. They were better known as the Five Families.
They “outwitted, outmaneuvered, and outgunned the FBI and other police agencies, wreaking unparalleled damages to America’s social fabric and business enterprises while emerging as the nation’s most formidable crime empire” (Raab, 2005).
The Mafia ran New York. Rudy didn’t- but this was his chance to do so.
In 1983, Ralph Scorpo, a Mafia member, was recorded in a wiretapped conversation by the FBI extorting contractors to assign kickbacks to the Five Families. Scorpo was the President of a construction labor union, and he was abusing his power. The recording made the intimidation clear when Scopo’s voice was heard saying, ‘Bring the 50,000 because you’re paying.”
That same year, they got a tip from another mobster. They closely followed the Mafia through recordings, eventually revealing their inner workings when 9 of its heads got a 15 count indictment consisting of narcotics trafficking, loansharking, gambling, labor racketeering, and extortion against construction companies in 1985. The charges were not just for taking crime down- it was to destroy the symbol of power the Mafia had altogether. (NYT, 1985).
The jury convicted every surviving Mafia head in that trial. Giuliani’s reputation as a lawyer was untouchable. In a single case, he had wiped out the century-long grip the Five Families had on the city.
Now it was onto higher ambition. When Firedman said, “throws his hat in the ring”- he had meant the electoral ring- and Friedman was right. Giuliani ran for mayor twice. The second time, he won.
Giuliani was no conservative. He ran on a comparably liberal platform to other Republicans and even endorsed the New York Liberal Party the first time he had run. Rudy endorsed Mario Cuomo and considered Goldwater to be an idiot. His own mother had stated, the only reason he had called himself a Republican was to get a job in the Reagan Administration. His focus came from the image he had set- to fix the crime problem on the streets of New York City.
When he got elected- Rudy followed. He followed a strategy of pre-emptive investigation, and the statistics showed New York’s success. In 1987, the number of violent crimes in New York exceeded 200,000 people. By 2000, that number had dropped to below 99,000. Murders, burglaries, and robberies plummeted as well.
Rudy was credited with an outstanding achievement: amidst a growing New York, he had pushed crime down. He revitalized a city that couldn’t solve crime, and now, he was its center of attention.
But Rudy’s strategy didn’t come without problems. Officers were accused of police brutality and racial profiling. Shootings of innocent men and women were making headlines over New York, stop-and-frisk posed racial consequences, and more citizens were getting frustrated and suppressing crime at the cost of justice. Rudy’s legacy was fading.
Eventually, the day had come where New York was electing its new mayor. Rudy wasn’t on the ballot, and whoever won was going to be his successor. The election was taking place on September 11th, 2001.
The day New York was going to decide its political future had become a day that instilled fear in the eyes of Americans. As the towers collapsed and the Pentagon was struck, the heads of the nation were taken to separate bunkers. America’s representatives to the world had to be taken away from the spotlight- even if temporarily to ensure the country would have a government to keep running the next day.
The nation needed to see what was happening, and now, all eyes were on Rudy. He walked to the site of the towers, his jacket crumpled and covered with ash. As a man walked by and grabbed his arm, Rudy walked straight towards where the World Trade Center once stood, 2 days before the President made his trip to the One World Trade Center.
He made public comments to give the people a sense of authority and safety, and for the time being, and was quickly making security decisions, one after another. Who to send, where to send, how to respond, and gathering all information authorities could collect as fast as they could collect them.
“Tomorrow New York is going to be here,” “And we’re going to rebuild, and we’re going to be stronger than we were before…I want the people of New York to be an example to the rest of the country, and the rest of the world, that terrorism can’t stop us.” (Time, 2001).
Without the President able to make much of a statement, what Rudy said represented the nation’s voice. He wanted to show the world that New York was going to keep going. He made requests to keep the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) open. To keep Broadway running the next day. He changed his decision, but his goal was to keep an aura of calm, empathy, and a mission to rebuild the city. He gave security briefings, and the world watched as he led the city through the most significant attack it had ever faced.
That night, as his television screen stayed on, Rudy opened a biography on Churchill. The British Prime Minister served as guidance towards Rudy when he- the mayor of a city- had to speak a voice usually only given to a president.
Rudy’s relentless opportunities the days after served as a glimmer of hope for New Yorkers that their city was going to come back. He kept an image of fearlessness that he used to motivate authorities but kept opened a side to him not typically done by a ruthless lawyer- a side of empathy. He empathized with New Yorkers. He told them that the situation wasn’t great but that it would get better. When citizens were hurt, he tried to listen. In that moment, there were no Republicans; there were not Democrats. It was New Yorkers helping rebuild New Yorkers, and they were not going to show the world anything less.
Rudy attended over 200 funerals, of which many he did not let himself be televised, aside from one- when he told their children that they would never have to wonder if their father had been a great man because they will know he was. He congratulated the NYPD on the most successful rescue operation in the city’s history. Rudy believed in the power of New York, and Rudy let the world know. He wasn’t to stop the city, and he didn’t.
For the third time, Rudy Guliani had picked up New York. He was celebrated for becoming TIME’s Person of the Year, given an SNL monologue, and dubbed “Americas Mayor.”
Rudy Guliani did something no other mayors had done- he represented the voice of not just his city but his people, in a way that a President could not. When people were looking to know how to run a city, they were not looking at George W. Bush- they were looking at Rudy Guiliani.
This brought a new light to the New York Mayor’s office. Every mayor since has run for President. They garner the spotlight, and the city’s elections are covered nationally. It represents the state of local politics in a way the federal and even state levels cannot achieve, and in many ways, can tell you a story about where the country wants to head.
