When William F. Buckley, Jr. ran for mayor of New York City

Name: When William F. Buckley, Jr. ran for mayor of New York City
Uploaded: 2024-03-19T15:18:39Z
Duration: P176S
Description: In an effort to drive votes away from "liberal Republican" John Lindsay, William F. Buckley, Jr. ran for mayor of New York City under the Conservative Party. The columnist Pete Hamill said of Buckley at the time, "This is the first person we've ever seen in politics with a genuinely original mind."

Clip: 04/05/2024 | 2m 56s | Video has closed captioning.

In an effort to drive votes away from "liberal Republican" John Lindsay, William F. Buckley, Jr. ran for mayor of New York City under the Conservative Party. The columnist Pete Hamill said of Buckley at the time, "This is the first person we've ever seen in politics with a genuinely original mind."

Aired: 04/05/24

Rating: NR

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Support for American Masters is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, AARP, Rosalind P. Walter Foundation, Judith and Burton Resnick, Blanche and Hayward Cirker Charitable Lead Annuity Trust, Koo and Patricia Yuen, Lillian Goldman Programming Endowment, Seton J. Melvin, Thea Petschek Iervolino Foundation, Anita and Jay Kaufman, The Philip and Janice Levin Foundation, Kate W. Cassidy Foundation, The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, The Ambrose Monell Foundation, Ellen and James S. Marcus, The Charina Endowment Fund, The Marc Haas Foundation and public television viewers.

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- The forgotten families of New York are the low and middle income families caught in the housing squeeze.

We must maintain rent control, and we must build decent housing that every family can afford.

- [Carl] For Buckley, there's nothing worse than a liberal Republican.

- [John] My name's Lindsay, I'm running for mayor.

Pleasure to see you.

- [Carl] What Buckley would like to do would be to cost Lindsay the election, to drain away enough Republican votes to let the Democrat win.

So what can he do?

He decides to run for mayor himself.

(crowd applauds) - [Reporter] Beame leads on the opinion polls with a comfortable 45% of the vote.

John Lindsay has 35%, and the other 10%, enough to wreck Lindsay's chances, goes to Buckley.

- How about Bill Buckley?

Do you think there's any possibility that he might sneak in as a dark horse?

- I think it's a possibility.

Technically, it's possible, if enough people vote for me, I'll win.

- [Geoffrey] Bill Buckley himself said that he ran half in fun, and that made him hugely appealing to the media, especially.

- [William] Thank you to the Overseas Press Club, I sometimes wish all the press were overseas.

(audience laughs) - [Christopher] At the opening press conference, when he announced that he was going to run for mayor of New York, he was asked, "What will you do if you win?"

And his response was, "Demand a recount."

- The candidate of the old line machine promises not progress, but procrastination, not ideas, but indifference, not energy, but evasiveness.

- Mr. Lindsay says of Mr. Beame that he "promises not progress, but procrastination, "not ideas, but indifference, "not energy, but evasiveness."

What is wrong with that sentence?

(audience laughs) Other than its suicidal search for alliteration.

(audience laughs and applauds) - [Richard] We heard that "The New York Times" had to keep switching out reporters on the Buckley beat because they'd come to enjoy him too much.

- [Sam] The columnist Pete Hamill said, "This is the first person we've ever seen in politics "with a genuinely original mind."

- New York is the ganglion city, and what is about to happen in Los Angeles or Detroit or Cleveland usually has just finished happening in New York.

It's always going to be a pressure point.