Eric Adams became the first sitting mayor in New York City history to be indicted while in office but he’s not the first to have been probed over the last century – and two even resigned under scrutiny.
Jimmy Walker, who was mayor until 1932, and William O’Dwyer, who held office until 1950, both stepped down during investigations into their administrations, though neither was ever charged.
O’Dwyer was the last mayor to resign, though there was already growing pressure for Adams to vacate office before news of the indictment.
O’Dwyer, the 100th Big Apple mayor, cruised to reelection following his first term in office, but was embroiled in controversy after then-Brooklyn District Attorney Miles McDonald opened a probe in Dec. 1949 into a bookmaker who was running a $20 million betting operation without law enforcement caring, the Smithsonian Magazine wrote in 2019.
The investigation led to hundreds of cops retiring early, though 77 officers were indicted. Top officials in the NYPD also stepped down and a close confidante of O’Dwyer was also zeroed in on, the outlet reported.
O’Dwyer quit the mayor’s office and was appointed US Ambassador to Mexico in the summer of 1950 by President Harry Truman as the scandal dragged on.
While McDonald alleged O’Dwyer took a small cut of the protection money the bookie paid out through an intermediary, the former mayor denied any wrongdoing, the New York Times wrote in their obituary of the city leader.
Jimmy Walker, a Tammany Hall pol, resigned in 1932 while under investigation, but was never charged.
All administrations of recent mayors, including David Dinkins, Rudy Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio have faced some type of corruption investigation, but all those probes ended with, at worst, lower-level aides being slapped with charges.
Giuliani was charged decades after leaving office over his effort to overturn the 2020 election.