WTI Magazine #4    2013 Nov, 8

Author : Paolo Battaglia      Translation by:

Bill De Blasio is not the first Italian American mayor of New York. The obvious names that come to mind are Fiorello LaGuardia who was the mayor in the 1930's and 1940's and Rudy Giuliani who was the mayor in the 90's.

Not many remember another Italian American who became mayor in 1950.
In that year, New York voters could choose between four mayoral candidates, and three of them were Italian American.

Vincent Impellitteri was born in 1896 in Sicily and arrived at Ellis Island as a child. A graduate of Fordham Law School, he had already served twice as president of the city council and ran in the mayoral election as an independent candidate.

Ferdinand Pecora came from Sicily too: he was born in Nicosia in 1882. Despite growing up in poverty in New York, he was a lawyer at twenty-nine years old. Before the 1950 election he had served as a judge on the New York Supreme Court. He was the Democratic candidate.

Edward Corsi was the son of Filippo, an Italian congressman and socialist activist. At his death, the family moved to New York, where Edward became Commissioner of Immigration at Ellis Island in 1931. In 1950 he was the Republican candidate.

Impellitteri won the mayor's seat with 44,2 % of the votes, beating Pecora (35,6%) and Corsi (14,6%). Paul Ross, the only non-Italian American candidate, was fourth by a considerable distance with only 5% of the votes.

There is yet another famous Italian American who ran for mayor but was not elected: Mario Cuomo who lost to Edward Koch in the 1977 Election. He then became the first elected Italian American governor of the State of New York, an office held today by his son Andrew.