In September 1975, what should have been a huge political windfall dropped into Gerald Ford’s lap with the bankruptcy of New York City. In the 1970s, the “Big Apple” was rotten to the core with graft, corruption, organized crime, and kickbacks. The city was horribly run, dirty, and dominated by extreme left-wing Democrats. In his 1977 Academy Award winning movie Annie Hall, Woody Allen speculated that the rest of America thought New York City was overwhelmed with “left-wing Communist Jewish homosexual pornographers. I think of us like that sometimes, and I live here.” New York City was $4 billion in debt and city fathers appealed to Washington for a bailout to prevent the city from default. Other major cities were also run by corrupt political machines, one example being Richard Daley’s Chicago, but he and his fellow Mayors knew that voters would tolerate “honest graft” only as long as essential services like law enforcement, fire protection, trash removal, and public education were efficiently provided.
