Word: wagnerism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...bipartisan, four-man New York State Commission of Investigation last week held open hearings into bribery charges by Mayor Robert Wagner against Democratic State Chairman William McKeon. After two days the commission threw up its hands, made no findings or recommendations, decided merely to send a transcript on to Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Even that, insisted Commission Chairman Jacob Grumet, should not lead to the inference "that we believe a crime has been committed...
...Accusation. The first witness was Mayor Wagner himself. In an emotional appearance, he told this story. On the night of last Jan. 11, McKeon summoned six other Democratic state officials to a meeting in the manager's suite of Albany's DeWitt Clinton Hotel. Present besides McKeon were Nassau County Leader John English; Schenectady County Leader George Palmer; Joseph Crangle, subbing for Erie County Boss Peter J. Crotty; J. Raymond Jones, Negro chief of New York City's Tammany Hall; Queen's County Assemblyman Moses Weinstein, and New York City Election Commissioner Maurice...
Purpose of the confab, Wagner said, was to settle the party dispute over the majority leadership of the state legislature, taken over by the Democrats in last year's election. In that fight, one slate is backed by Wagner, who was represented at the meeting by Jones, Weinstein and O'Rourke; the other is supported by an anti-Wagner coalition including McKeon, English, Palmer and Crotty, and attaching itself to the political star of Freshman U.S. Senator Bobby Kennedy...
...Wagner said, was a legislative committee chairmanship with a $10,000 expense allowance, or "lulu," as New York legislators call it, and a $26,000-a-year state court judgeship to legislators Wagner was backing for the leadership posts-on condition that they withdraw their candidacies...
Asked by one reporter if he had not "broken the rules," Wagner looked incredulous. "Broken the rules! What! Disclosing something that I think is morally wrong?" He continued: "It may be suggested that the offer I have brought to light is part of a pattern accepted by usage. I can neither believe that, nor do I think that it is pertinent. Such a pattern, if it exists, would itself be abhorrent to public policy...