Vincent R. Impellitteri

Born Vincenzo Impellitteri[2] in Isnello, Sicily, and moved with his family to the United States as an infant in 1901. They settled in Ansonia, Connecticut, where Impellitteri spent most of his youth. He was a Catholic. He enlisted in the United States Navy for World War I and served as a radioman with the rank of petty officer third class on board the destroyer USS Stockton, which was based in Queenstown, Ireland and performed convoy escort and antisubmarine duty.[3] He left the Navy after the war and became a U.S. citizen in 1922. Thereafter, Impellitteri attended the Fordham University School of Law (where he received his LL.B. in 1924) while working successively as a night bellboy and manager at a Broadway hotel. He married Elizabeth (Betty) Agnes McLaughlin in 1926.

Following his admission to the bar, he worked in private practice alongside influential Democratic attorney Martin Thomas Conboy Jr.. He served as a state Assistant District Attorney from 1929 to 1938. After returning to private practice for three years as a specialist in criminal law, he served as legal secretary to New York Supreme Court Justice Peter Schmuck, later moving to the chambers of Joseph A. Gavagan in an analogous role. He was reportedly a close associate of gangster Tommy Lucchese, who helped Impellitteri's rise in politics.[4] On the other hand, a report in the New York World-Telegram indicated that Impelliteri opposed organized crime and corruption, and had failed to rise through the city Democratic Party's ranks because he had "the injudicious good taste to snub Frank Costello", the gambler and racketeer who was said to control the Tammany Hall organization behind the scenes.

In 1945, Mayor William O'Dwyer picked Impellitteri to run for President of the City Council on the Tammany Hall slate. He ran on the Democratic and American Labor Party lines in 1945, but when he was up for reelection in 1949 he ran on the Democratic Party line alone.

According to historian Robert Caro, Impelliteri was drafted into his first elected role by Democratic Party leadership, who selected his name out of a municipal employee directory. The party was seeking an Italian American Manhattan resident to bring balance to the citywide ticket, and thought an employee in his position would be easy to persuade on political matters.[5]

On August 31, 1950, O'Dwyer, pursued by both federal and state investigators, was suddenly appointed by President Harry S. Truman as United States ambassador to Mexico, where he would be beyond the reach of officials who wanted his public testimony in several matters on which he preferred not to speak. Under the City Charter of the era, City Council President Impellitteri became acting mayor upon O'Dwyer's resignation. The Tammany Hall bosses determined that Impellitteri was unsuitable for the role and refused to nominate him as the Democratic candidate for the special election in November 1950; instead, highly regarded New York State Supreme Court Judge Ferdinand Pecora, who was also given the Liberal Party line, ran as the nominee. Impellitteri ignored the machine and ran as an independent under the banner of the new "Experience Party". He also popularized the slogan "unbought and unbossed" during his 1950 campaign.[6]

Impellitteri was the first mayor since the consolidation of greater New York in 1898 who was elected without a major party's ballot line, and his election was a populist uprising against the political system. The results were:

• Vincent Impellitteri (Experience Party) 1,161,175 votes
• Ferdinand Pecora (Democratic/Liberal) 935,351
• Edward Corsi (Republican) 382,372
• Paul L. Ross (American Labor) 147,578

Impellitteri's inauguration, held on November 14, 1950, absent either a band or a platform, was both swift and simple. Outside City Hall, he pledged to "do my level best to justify the confidence you have reposed in me."

Shortly after Impellitteri's succession, the Kings County District Attorney arrested bookmaker Harry Gross and launched a corruption investigation that ultimately caused nearly 500 police officers of all ranks to resign, retire, or be fired. Impellitteri opposed the corruption, vigorously supporting the Brooklyn District Attorney, Miles McDonald, and firing anyone in his administration who had been associated with former Mayor William O'Dwyer.

Impellitteri on visit to car factory, Haifa 1952

Impellitteri is credited with trying to rein in the budget, raising the bus and subway fare to fifteen cents, establishing parking meters on city streets for enhanced revenue and increasing the sales tax. He aspired to be a new light in city politics, but his administration met with some resistance from the established order. At the time, Robert Moses wielded significant influence; according to Robert Caro (in his Moses biography The Power Broker), Moses provided Impellitteri regular advice and guidance behind the scenes, and Impellitteri deferred to Moses.[7] The mayor's 1950 visit to his birthplace in Sicily was documented by the Italian author Carlo Levi.[8][9]

Impellitteri ran for a full term in 1953. He was defeated in the Democratic primary by then Manhattan Borough President Robert F. Wagner, Jr. Although New York City Comptroller Lazarus Joseph usually sided in the New York City Board of Estimate with Impellitteri during the latter's term in office, Joseph supported Wagner for the Democratic nomination.[10]

After becoming mayor, Wagner appointed Impelliteri a judge of the New York City Criminal Court. He retired from the bench in 1965. Following the death of his wife in 1967, he lived at the New York Athletic Club's City House on Central Park South. After he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1983, he maintained his Athletic Club residence but primarily resided in convalescent homes, most notably the Carolton Convalescent Hospital in Fairfield, Connecticut.

Impelliteri became a patron of The Lambs Club[11]^: 192 in 1949.[12]

He died of Parkinson's disease on January 29, 1987 at Bridgeport Hospital in Bridgeport, Connecticut.[13] Impellitteri was buried at Mount Saint Peter Catholic Cemetery in Derby, Connecticut.

• List of mayors of New York City
• List of members of the American Legion

• Levi, Carlo. Words are Stones (1958), essay, Part One.
• Lagumina, Salvator. New York at Mid-Century: The Impellitteri Years (1992), scholarly biography; highly favorable
• Moscow, Warren. The last of the big-time bosses: The life and times of Carmine De Sapio and the rise and fall of Tammany Hall (1971), highly negative

• Mayor Impellitteri's biography on the web site of New York City
• Vincent R. Impellitteri at Find a Grave