Word: pecora
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Flynn's influence, he could not make De Sapio's position secure. Beneath De Sapio's shaky perch slavered a whole litter of lesser tigers just waiting for him to make his first slip. He slipped, and soon. With Flynn, he supported Judge Ferdinand Pecora, an honest man cursed with every outward attribute of the typical Tammany stooge, against a Tammany outcast. Vincent Impellitteri, who looked to the voters like a brave little David slinging stones at a Goliath. "Impy," without machine support, won easily. Never had Tammany Hall suffered a more galling defeat. De Sapio...
Then, with the cold introspection that may be his greatest political strength, De Sapio took stock of himself and his situation. "After Pecora," he now says, 'I felt something drastic had to be done to disprove the public impression of me and my organization. As time went on, I could only see that, unless we put our house in order, the Democratic Party in New York would have no value as a party at all. I watched very carefully for the right places to push for or against the right program...
...Currency Committee, Fulbright was asked if he would look into, among other things, the steep rise in the stock market. Why, yes, said Fulbright, "we ought to have a look." The headlines that followed his off-the-cuff answer caused Wall Streeters to brace themselves for something like the Pecora investigation...
...booming stock market, he got a rude jolt. As the news hit the wires, stock prices were falling. Hurriedly, the Senator, scared by the political effect of a market break, called in the press. What he had in mind, said Fulbright, was no punitive probe like the 1932-34 Pecora investigation (when a circus pressagent popped a midget on J. P. Morgan's knee). Instead, Fulbright was planning "a friendly study...
...small that his predecessors would have been humiliated to stoop to it. Forming a coalition with Republicans, he ousted Red-lining Vito Marcantonio from his congressional seat. But De Sapio also took another step -and fell flat on his face. In the 1950 mayoralty race, De Sapio backed Ferdinand Pecora, a born loser, against Vincent Impellitteri, who won easily. Tammany's impotence was measured by the fact that it could not even beat Impy, an insurgent organization man with no machine...