‘I’m not the type to get ulcers. I give them’
NEW YORK • Ed Koch’s favourite moment as mayor of New York City, fittingly, involved yelling.
Inspired to do something brash about the transit strike that crippled the city in 1980, he strode down to the Brooklyn Bridge to encourage commuters who were forced to walk to work instead of jumping aboard subway trains and buses. “I began to yell, ‘ Walk over the bridge! Walk over the bridge! We’re not going to let these bastards bring us to our knees!’ And people began to applaud,” the politician recalled.
His success in rallying New Yorkers in the face of the strike was, he said, his biggest personal achievement as mayor. And it was a display that was quintessentially Koch, who rescued the city from near-financial ruin during a three-term City Hall run in which he embodied New York chutzpah for the rest of the world.
Koch died Friday from congestive heart failure, a spokesman said. He was 88. After leaving City Hall in 1990, Koch battled assorted health problems and heart disease.
Koch, who breezed through the streets of New York flashing his signature thumbs-up sign, won a national reputation with his feisty style. “How’m I doing?” was his trademark question to constituents, although the answer mattered little to Koch. The mayor always thought he was doing wonderfully.
Bald and bombastic, paunchy and pretentious, the city’s 105th mayor was quick with a friendly quip and equally fast with a cutting remark for his political enemies.
“You punch me, I punch back,” Koch once memorably observed. “I do not believe it’s good for one’s selfrespect to be a punching bag.”
The mayor dismissed his critics as “wackos,” waged verbal war with developer Donald Trump (“piggy”) and fellow former mayor Rudolph Giuliani (“nasty man”), lambasted the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and once reduced the head of the City Council to tears. “I’m not the type to get ulcers,” he wrote in Mayor, his autobiography. “I give them.”
Under his watch from 1978-89, the city climbed out of its financial crisis thanks to Koch’s tough fiscal policies and razor-sharp budget cuts, and subway service improved enormously. But homelessness and AIDS soared through the 1980s.
Koch was a champion of gay rights, taking on the Roman Catholic Church and scores of political leaders. A lifelong bachelor, Koch offered a typically blunt response to questions about his own sexuality: “My answer to questions on this subject is simply, ‘F--- off.’ There have to be some private matters left.”
At his 80th birthday bash, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Koch was “not only a great mayor and a great source of advice and support to other mayors, he happens to be one of the greatest leaders and politicians in the history of our city.”