It was late summer when New York City’s mayor, floundering under the cloud of scandal and ties to disreputable figures, was in need of a presidential rescue.
The year was 1950. The mayor was William O’Dwyer, the president was Harry S. Truman, and the form of rescue was a cushy ambassadorship to Mexico.
Seventy-five years later, history may be repeating itself.
Close advisers to President Trump have crafted a plan for him to nominate Mayor Eric Adams to be ambassador to Saudi Arabia, in an effort to end the mayor’s long-shot campaign for re-election in New York City, according to four people familiar with the discussions.
Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real estate investor and adviser to Mr. Trump, had actively pursued the matter, meeting personally with Mr. Adams this week in Florida and speaking with other people close to him.
Mr. Adams, a Democrat who is running a third-party candidacy, said late on Friday that he intended to stay in the race. He did not directly address the possibility of taking an ambassadorship, and took no questions.
Mr. Adams may be in need of a face-saving escape: He is running fourth in public opinion polls.
Like Mr. Adams, William O’Dwyer was a former police officer who was elected mayor. Unlike Mr. Adams, he was never accused of a crime. O’Dwyer was first elected in 1945.
“His landslide re-election in 1949 seemed to complete the story of the poetry-loving immigrant who arrived from Ireland with $25.35 in his pocket and became the mayor of America’s biggest and richest city,” David Samuels wrote in Smithsonian magazine in 2019.
But within months, Miles McDonald, the Brooklyn district attorney, uncovered evidence that Harry Gross, a bookmaker, had managed to run a $20 million-a-year betting operation free from interference by the authorities in an era when organized crime enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with the Democratic machine headquartered at Tammany Hall.
O’Dwyer was never directly implicated (although there was testimony that he met with the mob boss Frank Costello for years), but some of his cronies were. The mayor himself, Mr. Samuels wrote, “proved to be quite comfortable in the role of glad-handing frontman for a network of corruption that gave the crime bosses and their political partners a stranglehold over the city’s economic life.”
By the summer of 1950, intermediaries representing City Hall and the White House were mulling a solution to spare not only the mayor, but also his party nationally from a corruption scandal in another Democratic stronghold.
President Truman and O’Dwyer were never close (O’Dwyer had urged Truman not to run in 1948), but on Aug. 16, 1950, Truman revealed O’Dwyer’s escape route.
“For several months Mayor O’Dwyer has been considering the ambassadorship to Mexico,” was all Truman would say at the time. “When I found out that he was in a favorable frame of mind, I sent for him and offered it to him.”
O’Dwyer resigned as mayor and was honored with a ticker-tape parade. He survived Republican efforts to block his confirmation. He returned to New York the following year to testify in the ongoing investigations.
“Your recent announcement of the pending appointment of the ambassador to Mexico,” Paul Fitzpatrick, the New York Democratic state chairman, wrote the president, “again proves to me your deep understanding of many problems and your kindness in rendering assistance.”
Which problems were never specified.
“The O’Dwyer story is one of New York City’s more intriguing political mysteries,” Mike Wallace, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, most recently of “Gotham at War, ”told Mr. Samuels.
O’Dwyer resigned as ambassador in 1952 when the Democrats lost the White House. He remained in Mexico until 1960.
He was succeeded as mayor by his handpicked running mate for City Council president, Vincent R. Impellitteri. In an era of ethnically balanced tickets, legend has it that Democratic bosses searched the index of the Green Book, the official city directory, for the longest Italian name they could find.
Sam Roberts is an obituaries reporter for The Times, writing mini-biographies about the lives of remarkable people.
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