Abraham David Beame was the 104th Mayor of New York City, from 1974 to 1977. As mayor, he presided over the city during its fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s, during which the city was almost forced to declare bankruptcy.
While in college, he co-founded an accounting firm, Beame & Greidinger. He was an accounting teacher at Richmond Hill High School in Queens from 1929 to 1946 and also taught accounting and commercial law at Rutgers University from 1944 to 1945. From 1952 to 1961, he served as New York City's Director of the Budget, having also served as Assistant Director from 1946 to 1952. In this capacity, he "he negotiated all city labor contracts without a strike and kept books on city spending and borrowing; he also set up management programs that saved the city $40 million."
Early political career
Beame was a "clubhouse" or machine politician, a product of the Brooklyn wing of the patronage-oriented "regular" Democratic organization as opposed to the policy-oriented "reform" Democrats who entered New York City politics in the 1950s. Prior to being elected to two nonconsecutive terms as city comptroller in 1961 and 1969, he was a longstanding member of Crown Heights' influential Madison Democratic Club and retained as the personal accountant of political bossIrwin Steingut. Members of the Madison Club frequently liaised with developer Fred Trump. The organization also played a decisive role in the political ascent of Park Slope-based attorney Hugh Carey, who served as Governor of New York during Beame's administration, although Carey would eventually break with the organization by endorsing Mario Cuomo's 1977 primary bid to unseat Beame. In 1965, he was the Democratic nominee for Mayor but was defeated by then-Republican John V. Lindsay.
Beame defeated State Senator John Marchi in the 1973 mayoral election, becoming the 104th Mayor of New York City. He faced the worst fiscal crisis in the city's history and spent the bulk of his term attempting to ward off bankruptcy. He slashed the city workforce, froze salaries, and reconfigured the budget, which proved unsatisfactory until reinforced by actions from newly created state-sponsored entities and the granting of federal funds. However, "he was credited with distributing the City's dwindling resources equitably". He served during the 1977 blackout crisis as well as the United Nations 30th anniversary in 1975, the Statue of Liberty's 90th anniversary in 1976, coinciding with the nation's bicentennial that year, Studio 54's grand opening in 1977, the Son of Sam 1976-1977 murder spree of David Berkowitz which ended on August 10, 1977 with Berkowitz's arrest at his apartment in Yonkers, hometowners' Kiss first four Madison Square Garden shows in 1977 and President Carter's presidential debut tour in 1977. When he left office on New Year's Day 1978, the city budget had changed from a $1.5 billion deficit to a surplus of $200 million. After a chaotic four years as mayor, Beame ran for a second term in 1977, and finished third in the Democratic primary, behind Representative Ed Koch and New York Secretary of StateMario Cuomo, and ahead of former Representative Bella Abzug, Representative Herman Badillo and Manhattan Borough PresidentPercy Sutton. He was succeeded by Koch, who won the general election on November 8, 1977. Beame was the first mayor of New York City who was a practicing Jew.
Personal life
Beame was 5 ft 2 tall. He was married to his childhood sweetheart, Mary, for 67 years. They raised two sons, Edmond and Bernard, and resided in Brooklyn, first in Crown Heights and later in a "modest apartment" on Plaza Street West in Park Slope. Throughout his life, he summered in the Rockaway neighborhood of Belle Harbor.
