The “Boss” in American Politics.

Vincent A. Cianci, better known as Buddy, died a few days ago, aged 74. He was the former mayor of Providence, Rhode Island. Press coverage states Cianci was both loved and reviled in his city that, like many other America cities, has been rocked by financial troubles and shaped by demographic change. His obituaries suggest he was loved for leading a small, dying city through a renaissance and for being its biggest cheerleader. He was reviled because of his shortcomings, particularly criminality.

Cianci spent 54 months in prison overall after twice being convicted of felony charges. He was ousted from office on two occasions, once for attacking the man he thought was having an affair with his wife. Evidently, Buddy tried to jab a cigarette in the man’s eye before throwing an ashtray at him. The second conviction was for corruption, after Cianci had made a comeback to lead the city.

American city history is littered with stories of unscrupulous men gaining power and lining their pockets at the public’s expense. The infamous boss of New York, Boss Tweed, led that city for more than a decade. When he fell from grace, the extent of his chicanery was uncovered. One example was the mark-up he charged the city for pencils. At $70 a pop, the profit was outrageous, and this was in the 1880s! One of Tweed’s colleagues described the transaction as “honest graft.”

Come forward to the 1920s and 1930s, to one of the most notorious city bosses, Frank Hague of Jersey City. He became a very wealthy man, abusing his position as mayor. For example, he would buy land which he knew was ripe for development and sell it at a huge profit. Hague is rumored to have owned more than a third of New Jersey during his years in office. However, he ran a clean city. Residents of Jersey City could live their lives free from drug dealers, prostitutes and saloon keepers. Mind you, these pleasures could be enjoyed over the city line.

Hague would always start his election campaigns by tuning up the band, holding parades in town and free entertainment for all. He would also reduce property taxes before increasing them in the second year of his term! And he stayed in power for more than 20 years by giving his voters what they wanted.

Arguably, the most notorious boss of the inter-war years was Tom Pendergast of Kansas City which, by the way, is mostly in Missouri, not Kansas. Pendergast became a multi-millionaire, courtesy of the voters. He helped the poor when there was no federal or state welfare and made sure that destitutes and poor immigrants had places to live, clothes to wear, food on the table and a job for the man of the family. He covered the cost from business ‘donations’ in return for which business got tax breaks. Pendergast also sold goods and services to the city, especially cement. His cement company enjoyed a virtual monopoly in Kansas City and Jackson County road building contracts.

Before every election, Pendergast would levy political contributions from all city workers. 3% of salary from the lowest paid up, to 15% from the sheriff and other high office holders. How much of the levy went into Pendergast’s pocket is unknown. He, too, lasted more than 20 years in office.

The machine methods to achieve election victories for the boss were often flagrant breaches of state election laws. The practices included “ghosting,” putting names of dead people on the electoral register and having people impersonate them; “repeating,” voting more than once, hence the saying, “vote early and vote often”; and “ballot box stuffing,” handing a ready-made ballot box, stuffed with fictitious votes, to the counting authority in exchange for the real box. To retain power, bosses had to show they could control their patch. Success in elections meant control of the city.

Bosses could not have held power for so long if they had not given back. Both Hague and Pendergast ran their cities during the Great Depression, a time when, in the early 1930s, one in three adults had no work at all and most of the rest earned wages at or below subsistence levels. In 1930s Kansas City, unemployment varied between 1% and 2%. How did Pendergast achieve this record, which can be verified through the US Census and other surveys? An example is in road building and repair. Where automation could have been used by the city, it used manpower. It was better to have men employed, even if the cost to the city was higher. Business had its arm twisted to employ people, in exchange for tax breaks. It might not have been pretty but it was pragmatic.

City politics is retail. It does not deal with who goes to war, what taxes to levy aside from city tax and other big decisions made at federal and state level. In contrast, the federal and state governments do not cover the running of schools, the fire brigade, street maintenance and city roads. There are so many services provided courtesy of city government that the federal and state governments ignore. And the burden of the dreaded “unfunded mandate,” the order by the federal government to provide a service without providing the funds to pay for it, often falls on a city administration. No wonder bosses have to be imaginative to provide services to so many.

For most of the 20^th century, pretty well every American city was run by a machine, whose honesty and scruples were often open to criticism. Some machines and their bosses ventured into mainstream politics. For example, Mayor Daley of Chicago is alleged to have brought in the winning Illinois vote for John Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election.

Buddy Cianci is just one in a long line of American politicians who operated both inside and outside the law. Legislation in the latter half of the last century has prevented many machine outrages of the past. Even Chicago has lost quite a bit of notoriety, although Rahm Emanuel, its current Mayor, is surviving attempts to have him recalled. I don’t see things changing. There will always be room for the likes of a Buddy Cianci in the American political system.