Mayor Flaherty from Pittsburgh
The latter, symbolizing the ineffectiveness associated with seventies mayors, came under attack from the driver of Pittsburgh Progressive economic development, the Allegheny Conference. Blaming Mayor Flaherty for Pittsburgh’s obvious decline, the Allegheny Conference’s executive director screamed “A few months after Mayor Flaherty took office in 1970 everything was over; all progress came to a standstill. A great and powerful city came under the power of a nitwit”[1].
In retrospect, however, Flaherty was correct. He was the first of what we will later call the Messiah mayors–out of step with his time period, but spot on in addressing the crisis of the seventies: a fiscal crisis created by increased services and less taxes. Flaherty fired police officers as crime rates skyrocketed–but Pittsburgh did not go bankrupt. There was no correct answer for mayors in the seventies
[1] Jon C. Teaford, the Rough Road to Urban Renaissance, p. 216
Ron W. Coan 