This seems odd to me – back in the '70s, I could have named several more – were mayors more important then? Or just in office longer (Daley)? Any more, it seems like there has to be a scandal (Marion Berry) or some other major news event to bring a mayor, even the mayor of a major city, to national attention.
My standard response to people who talk about how uneducated Americans are, because they don’t know who the names of the prime ministers of Luxembourg and Andorra, is “Name the mayors of some major American cities, aside from New York.”
That is why he has been so successful as the Boston major. No one has ever understood a word he has said so people give him the benefit of the doubt. Trying to figure out what he is talking about often causes people to come up with good ideas on their own which they can attribute to him.
Only three: the mayor of the city I live in (Shepley), the major of Chicago (Daley, the younger) and NYC, (Bloomberg). The last is only because I am originally from the NY metropolitan area, though not the city proper. I have forgotten the name of the mayor of the NY town I actually lived in.
And you know what? Even though I am one of those people who love knowledge for knowledge’s sake, I really don’t think that knowing mayor’s names, outside that of your own mayor, and perhaps that of a major, influential city nearby, is all that important.
NYC, Chicago, Boston. If I think for a minute, I can tell you LA. That guy with the Spanish name, right? I only know Chicago because I just went there. People kept saying “Daley” and I was like, “I thought he was the mayor a long time ago??” Then I found out, different Daley.
Yep, Antonio Villaraigosa. The first Los Angeles mayor I remember is Sam Yorty, because he was mentioned on Dragnet and other cop shows. Tom Bradley (the city’s first black mayor) and Richard Reardon also come to mind.
I agree with twickster – I became aware of politics around 1967, and mayors seemed to be more prominent then. Maybe the impact of civil rights was one reason – I was living at the time in a suburb of Cleveland, and the “big city” of the county was electing “great-grandson of slave” Carl Stokes over “grandson of a president” Seth Taft. Even Richard Hatcher’s ascendancy to the mayor’s chair in the Indiana city of Gary was big news because he was (and still is) African-American (or, as he was styled at the time, a “Negro”).
Philadelphia has Mayor John Street (I mostly know that because I’ve been in the city recently). My current hometown is currently deciding whether to retain Tony Roswarski, while Jan Mills is seeking another term in neighboring West Lafayette. Down in Indianapolis, Bart Peterson holds sway. Back in Cleveland, Frank Jackson is the man (his name appeared in some of the coverage of a recent school shooting there).
Have we already forgotten Ray Nagin of New Orleans only two years after Hurricane Katrina dominated the news for weeks?