1977 New York City mayoral election

Based on Wikipedia: 1977 New York City mayoral election

The Night the Lights Went Out and New York Changed Forever

On the evening of July 13, 1977, lightning struck a Con Edison substation in northern Westchester County. Within an hour, eight million New Yorkers were plunged into darkness. What happened next would reshape the city's politics for a generation.

Unlike the famous blackout of 1965, which New Yorkers remembered almost fondly for its neighborly spirit, this one devolved into chaos. Looters smashed storefronts across Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Harlem. More than a thousand fires burned through the night. Police arrested over three thousand people—the largest mass arrest in the city's history. By morning, the damage totaled somewhere between three hundred million and a billion dollars.

The mayoral campaign that had been simmering suddenly had its defining issue.

A City Teetering on the Brink

To understand the 1977 election, you have to understand just how badly New York City had fallen apart. Two years earlier, in October 1975, Mayor Abraham Beame had gone to Washington hat in hand, asking President Gerald Ford for a federal bailout. The city was broke—genuinely, catastrophically broke, unable to pay its bills or meet its payroll.

Ford said no.

The New York Daily News captured the moment with one of the most famous headlines in American newspaper history: "Ford to City: Drop Dead." The president hadn't actually said those words, but the sentiment was close enough. Ford eventually relented, signing the New York City Seasonal Financing Act of 1975, which extended two point three billion dollars in federal loans. But the damage—both financial and psychological—was done.

Beame was forced to lay off thousands of city employees, including a significant portion of the police force. Crime, already elevated, began to climb even higher. The subways became more dangerous. Graffiti covered every available surface. Middle-class families fled to the suburbs in droves, hollowing out the tax base and making the fiscal crisis even worse. It was a vicious cycle with no obvious exit.

Then came the coup de grâce: a nine-hundred-and-eighty-two-page report from the Securities and Exchange Commission that blamed Beame's administration for mismanagement and deceptive accounting practices that had contributed to the city's financial collapse. For a mayor seeking reelection, this was devastating.

A Crowded Democratic Primary

Beame was wounded, and his challengers smelled blood. The Democratic primary attracted a remarkable field of candidates, each representing a different vision for the city's future.

There was Bella Abzug, the feminist firebrand known for her enormous hats and even larger personality. She had represented parts of Manhattan and the Bronx in Congress before giving up her safe seat in 1976 to run for the United States Senate. She lost that race narrowly to Daniel Patrick Moynihan—a defeat that still stung. Now she was looking for a political comeback.

There was Herman Badillo, a congressman from the South Bronx who would have been the first Puerto Rican mayor of New York City. His candidacy represented the growing political power of the city's Latino community.

There was Percy Sutton, the Manhattan Borough President and a towering figure in Black politics. A former lawyer for Malcolm X, Sutton embodied Harlem's political establishment.

There was Mario Cuomo, a lawyer from Queens who had been appointed Secretary of State by Governor Hugh Carey. Cuomo had lost a race for lieutenant governor in 1974, but he had impressed Carey with his intelligence and integrity. The governor encouraged him to run for mayor, believing Cuomo could unite the city's liberal coalition.

And then there was Ed Koch.

The Transformation of Ed Koch

Ed Koch represented Greenwich Village in Congress, which in the 1970s was about as liberal a constituency as existed in America. The Village was the birthplace of the gay rights movement, a haven for artists and bohemians, a place where radical politics was the norm. Koch had started his political career as what he called "just a plain liberal."

But by 1977, something had changed. Koch began describing himself as "a liberal with sanity"—a formulation that signaled a rightward shift. While his opponents talked about social programs and addressing root causes of crime, Koch talked about law and order. He talked about restoring safety to the streets. He talked about getting tough.

This was a calculated political decision. Koch understood that New York's liberal establishment might dominate the op-ed pages and the faculty lounges, but ordinary New Yorkers—the ones riding the subway to work, the ones whose neighborhoods had been looted during the blackout—were scared and angry. They wanted someone who would fight back.

The blackout crystallized Koch's message. While Mayor Beame blamed Con Edison for "gross negligence," Koch attacked Beame himself for losing control of the streets. Why hadn't the mayor called Governor Carey and asked him to mobilize the National Guard? Why had the city been so unprepared? Why had law-abiding citizens been left to fend for themselves while looters ran wild?

According to historian Jonathan Mahler, who wrote an acclaimed book about New York in 1977, the blackout and subsequent rioting catapulted Koch from also-ran to front-runner status. His message of public safety suddenly resonated with voters who might otherwise have dismissed him as too conservative for their tastes.

The Liberal Party Complication

New York has long had a quirky electoral system that allows candidates to run on multiple party lines simultaneously. A Democrat could also appear on the Liberal Party ballot, and votes on both lines would be combined. This system gave minor parties significant leverage—their endorsement could provide a crucial margin of victory in close races.

In May 1977, the Liberal Party held its convention to choose a mayoral endorsee. Mario Cuomo defeated Bella Abzug for the nomination. This meant Cuomo now had a backup plan: even if he lost the Democratic primary, he could still run in the general election as the Liberal Party candidate.

This seemingly minor procedural detail would end up shaping the entire election.

The September Primary

The Democratic primary was held on September 8, 1977, and the results were inconclusive. Koch finished first, but with only nineteen point eight percent of the vote—not even carrying a single borough outright. The field was simply too crowded and too fragmented for anyone to build a commanding lead.

Under New York City's rules, if no candidate received more than forty percent of the vote, a runoff would be held between the top two finishers. Koch and Cuomo would face each other head-to-head on September 19.

Beame was out. Abzug was out. Badillo was out. Sutton was out. The race had narrowed to two very different visions of liberalism: Koch's "liberal with sanity" versus Cuomo's more traditional progressive approach.

A Bitter Runoff

What followed was one of the nastiest campaigns in New York City history.

Koch, despite his reputation as a crusading reformer, quietly cut deals with the borough political machines. He promised plum city jobs to the power brokers who could deliver votes. It was old-fashioned transactional politics, the kind of thing reformers were supposed to oppose. But Koch wanted to win.

Cuomo ran to Koch's left and made opposition to the death penalty a centerpiece of his campaign. This was a principled position—Cuomo would maintain his opposition to capital punishment throughout his later career as governor—but it was politically tone-deaf in a city gripped by fear of violent crime. New Yorkers weren't interested in debating the morality of executions. They wanted to feel safe walking home at night.

As Cuomo fell behind, his campaign turned negative. Ads compared Koch to John Lindsay, the former mayor whose administration was associated with fiscal irresponsibility and urban decay. Lindsay had once been a glamorous figure—young, handsome, a symbol of the sophisticated modern city—but by 1977 his name had become an epithet.

Then things got ugly in a different way.

Koch was a bachelor in his fifties who had never married. In 1977, this was enough to generate whispers and speculation. Some Cuomo supporters adopted an inflammatory slogan: "Vote for Cuomo, Not the Homo." Whether the Cuomo campaign officially sanctioned this appeal to prejudice has been debated for decades, but it certainly circulated among his supporters.

Koch's backers responded with their own ugly tactics. They accused Cuomo—an Italian-American Catholic—of anti-Semitism, playing on tensions between the city's Jewish and Italian communities. Cuomo campaign cars were pelted with eggs.

When the votes were counted on September 19, Koch had won convincingly. He carried every borough except Queens (Cuomo's home turf) and Staten Island.

Cuomo Refuses to Quit

Here is where the Liberal Party endorsement became crucial. Having won that nomination back in May, Cuomo still had a path to victory. He could run against Koch in the general election as the Liberal Party candidate.

Governor Carey was appalled. He had encouraged Cuomo to run in the first place, but now party unity demanded that everyone rally behind the Democratic nominee. Carey threw his support to Koch and urged Cuomo to step aside gracefully.

Cuomo refused.

This decision baffled and angered many Democrats. What was the point? Koch had beaten Cuomo decisively in the runoff. The general election would include a Republican (State Senator Roy Goodman of Manhattan) and a Conservative Party candidate (talk radio host Barry Farber, who had also run in the Republican primary), fragmenting the opposition vote. Cuomo's continued candidacy seemed more like spite than strategy.

But Cuomo was stubborn. He believed in his message and believed Koch would be bad for the city. He stayed in the race.

The General Election

The general election on November 8, 1977 was anticlimactic. Koch won with forty-nine point nine percent of the vote—just a few hundred votes shy of an outright majority. To this day, Koch remains the last mayoral candidate to win without receiving a majority; every victor since has cleared the fifty percent threshold.

Cuomo finished second with just over forty percent, a respectable showing that kept him viable for future races. Goodman and Farber were afterthoughts, splitting the conservative vote and finishing far behind.

What Happened Next

Ed Koch served three terms as mayor, dominating New York politics through the entire decade of the 1980s. He was brash, combative, and quotable—famous for asking "How'm I doing?" as he walked the streets. He presided over the city's fiscal recovery and its transformation into a global financial capital. He also presided over the crack epidemic and the AIDS crisis, his responses to which drew sharp criticism. He was finally defeated in the 1989 Democratic primary by David Dinkins, who went on to become the city's first Black mayor.

Mario Cuomo's political career was far from over. In 1982, he ran for governor against Ed Koch and won. He served three terms in Albany, becoming one of the most prominent Democrats in the country. His keynote address at the 1984 Democratic National Convention, with its soaring rhetoric about America as "a tale of two cities," made him a national figure. Many expected him to run for president, but he never did—earning him the nickname "Hamlet on the Hudson" for his chronic indecision.

Cuomo's son Andrew would later serve as governor himself, before resigning in disgrace in 2021 amid sexual harassment allegations. Another son, Chris, became a prominent television journalist.

The Echoes of 1977

The 1977 election established a template that has recurred in New York politics ever since: the tension between the city's progressive ideals and its practical anxieties about safety and disorder. When crime is low and the economy is strong, liberal candidates thrive. When fear returns—whether of crime, terrorism, or chaos—voters reach for candidates who promise to restore order, even if those candidates break with liberal orthodoxy.

Koch's victory represented the first major backlash against the social experimentation of the 1960s and early 1970s. He was a Democrat, but a different kind of Democrat—one who prioritized public safety over social justice, who was willing to work with business interests, who didn't apologize for wanting criminals locked up. In some ways, he anticipated the "New Democrats" of the 1990s, politicians like Bill Clinton who sought to reclaim the political center.

The election also demonstrated the enduring power of fear as a political motivator. The blackout of 1977 lasted less than twenty-four hours, but its political effects lasted for years. Images of looting and burning storefronts became the visual shorthand for urban dysfunction, just as images from the blackout of 1965—neighbors helping neighbors, strangers sharing candles—had once symbolized urban community.

Same event, different responses, different political consequences.

The Campaign That Changed Everything

Looking back at 1977 from a distance of nearly fifty years, what stands out is how much was at stake—and how closely the outcome hinged on circumstances beyond anyone's control. If the blackout hadn't happened, would Koch's law-and-order message have resonated? If the SEC report hadn't been so damning, could Beame have survived? If Cuomo had won the Liberal Party nomination and then the Democratic primary, would he have governed differently than Koch?

We can never know. What we do know is that the 1977 election marked a turning point not just for New York City, but for American urban politics more broadly. The liberal coalition that had governed cities since the New Deal was fracturing. New constituencies were emerging. Old assumptions were being questioned.

Ed Koch didn't cause these changes. But he understood them better than his opponents, and he rode them to victory. In politics, timing is everything—and the lights going out on July 13, 1977 illuminated a path to power that Ed Koch was ready to walk.