Word: sapio
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...guest was a pollster who had just completed a postcard survey, ordered by De Sapio, as to the presidential preferences of Democratic voters in New York state. De Sapio places great stock in his polls, used them to confirm his choices of Robert Wagner (over Vincent Impellitteri) for mayor of New York City in 1953, and of Harriman (over Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr.) for governor in 1954. Says De Sapio: "You can't impose your will on the people any more. If they select the candidate in a poll, they'll elect him." De Sapio's surveys...
...clock, De Sapio had begun the workday that would last for 18 hours (seven days a week). His wavy black hair, streaked at the temples with silver, was meticulously combed. The talcum was in place. He wore the tinted glasses that are his trademark. He sat at a grey, formica-topped kitchen table and, in the manner of a man aware of his clothes, hiked up his big shoulders, thereby pulling up his coat-sleeves to reveal his gleaming cufflinks. Passing through the kitchen was De Sapio's 17-year-old daughter Geraldine (whose fierce pride in her father...
Since dawn, the telephone had been ringing. At 8 the house phone began croaking as the doorman, 16 floors below, helped to screen visitors. De Sapio's wife answered the calls. De Sapio stayed at the kitchen table, talking to a visitor he deemed highly important...
...leader of Tammany to be taking postcard surveys like a sort of political science professor must set the bones of Boss Tweed and Dick Croker to rattling about in their coffins. But the public-opinion poll is only one of the many ways in which Tammany Hall, under De Sapio. has changed, is changing, and will continue to change...
...When De Sapio seized the leadership of Tammany Hall in 1949, he found himself in command of a rotten, rat-infested political hulk. From its days of corrupted power, Tammany stank. It exacted a heavy price in public money and civic decency for a service. To New York, as to many another U.S. city in the period 1820-1920, came immigrants by the thousands and by the tens and hundreds of thousands-Irish driven by famine, Italians by population pressures, Jews by persecutions. These were not all or mostly the brave or the gallant; many were the fearful, the rootless...