Not All Leadership Is Created Equal.

Posted on | September 10, 2025 | 1 Comment

Mike Magee

In light of today’s attack on Charlie Kirk (and other recent) events, it seems right to pause and reflect on leadership. Because the truth is, not all leaders are created equal.

We are in the grip of change and our American Democracy is at risk. Change is one of the few human experiences that supports two dramatically opposed human emotions. On the one hand, change is fear, and on the other, change is exploration. And while you can support both emotions simultaneously, you can only do so for a short period of time before the tension created between the two forces you to choose one or the other.

At times like these, leadership really matters. Negative leaders embrace fear, using it as a currency to mobilize and organize populations, and to cement minority rules. In contrast, positive leaders are explorers who use a compelling value-centered vision as currency. Through role modeling and the strength of new ideas, they draw people in as they work through the challenges and shape an environment consistent with the majority’s long-term vision.

Negative leaders retrench and divide; positive leaders connect across the divide. Negative leaders segregate; positive leaders aggregate. Negative leaders build walls. Positive leaders build “islands of common stewardship.”

In our lifetime, we have witnessed the emergence of the Internet and HIV, of globalization and overnight delivery, of bubbles and bursts in our stock market, of the genomic revolution, and artificial intelligence. We have witnessed our health care system creak under the weight of a pandemic, and borne witness to an ongoing attempt to overthrow our democratic form of government. We are heavily armed, are always prepared for war, but show little desire for peace.

People are basically good, but they are not perfect.

People are basically kind, but when afraid can act unpredictably.

People are basically loving, but when misled can respond with hatred.

People are people.

Positive leaders are value driven role models and highly effective leaders worth emulating. They are also defenders and practitioners of Democracy.

Each of us is called to reflect on a simple answer to a simple question: “What type of leader do you want to be. What type of leaders do you wish to support.

My own answers to these questions are well documented. They are organized in 10 cornerstone themes, and 52 personal challenges which are the distillation of values and lessons drawn from one life. They are no more valid than your own.

They are available online HERE. I encourage you to take the time to review and share this free resource with all who might benefit.

Category: Uncategorized

Posted on | September 4, 2025 | Comments Off on

Translation HERE.

Category: Uncategorized

The Un-civil War at HHS

Posted on | August 29, 2025 | 1 Comment

Mike Magee

The Health and Human Services department (HHS) includes in its dominion the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Center for Disease Control (CDC), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It is fair to say that their new leader, RFK Jr. is not a wallflower.

In June, the FDA led the news with its assault on food coloring. On August 7th, it was the CDC with new child and adolescent vaccine schedules. And two weeks ago, the HHS crown jewel NIH hit a raw nerve among the nation’s top medical researchers by grandstanding on the loosely defined term “scientifically justifiable” to declare war on the use of gender data in comparative NIH funded research.

The NIH is housed in 75 buildings on 300 acres in Bethesda, Maryland. It consists of 27 different institutes and centers that together awarded $37 billion in U.S. grant funding in 2024. Reports have documented a 250% return on investment for every dollar in NIH funded research. That includes over 400,000 jobs created and $94.58 billion in new economic activity in 2024.

Jay Bhattacharya M.D., Ph.D., the new NIH Director, assumed his new role as the 18th Director of the NIH on April 1, 2025. As former professor of medicine and economics at Stanford, he has attracted criticism inside and outside the campus boundaries of governmental, academic, and corporate medical science; criticism like this: His attacks on the NIH research partners “seem at odds with the administration’s stated goals of fighting censorship in science at the NIH and liberating public health from ideology.”

This rancor could be considered par for the course in this age of social media and with a president who lives on Truth Social. But when it comes to the NIH, it is not so unusual. Complexity, controversy and intrigue have lived side by side at the organization since its wartime informal beginnings 75 years ago.

Whether it was materials, logistics, or coordinating laboratory studies themselves, the effort to put research on a war footing at the outset of WW II required a group of wily and innovative businessmen-scientists. Primary among them was the bespectacled gentleman who appeared on the April 3, 1944, cover of Time, leaning forward into the lens, tanned, in a light gray suit, with a crisp, white shirt and steel-blue tie, next to a ray-emitting radio microphone. The caption read, “Vannevar Bush: General of Physics.”

As overall head of President Roosevelt’s Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD)—also known as the fifth branch of the military general staff, or G5—Bush coordinated 6,000 scientists working in some 300 laboratories, both university-based and commercial. He had plenty of help at the top. Among others in his management team was one George W. Merck, a close friend and confidant since 1933. After Pearl Harbor brought the US into the war, Merck, who had already moved aggressively to centralize his own pharmaceutical company’s research operations, became head of the US Army Biological Warfare Laboratories within Vannevar Bush’s OSRD.

Born March 11, 1890, in Everett, Massachusetts, the only son of a Universalist preacher and the grandson of a whaler, Vannevar Bush earned a math degree from Tufts, followed by a PhD in engineering from MIT. From the beginning of his career he straddled the academic and the industrial in a way that anticipated the future of almost all scientific research.

In 1917, he became head of the experimental laboratory for Tufts University’s new radio station, owned by the American Radio and Research Corporation (AMRAD). His work focused on wave disturbances in magnetic fields, which Bush and the US Army felt might help identify submerged German submarines.

After World War I, he joined MIT’s electrical engineering department, but he continued his affiliation with AMRAD, all the while codeveloping a thermostatic switch with another company that would be acquired 30 years later by Texas Instruments. By 1924, he was working with AMRAD physicist Charles Smith, who invented the S-shaped gas rectifier tube to increase the efficiency of radios and eliminate the need for batteries. In 1925, its Metals and Controls Corporation was renamed Raytheon. Obviously, Bush was well positioned to benefit from the long tail of his academic-industrial efforts.

In time, Bush left MIT to become head of the Carnegie Institute in Washington, DC, the most powerful philanthropic science organization in America, but he was already leading a shadowy second life helping design code-breaking automated machinery for the predecessor of our modern National Security Agency.

In 1939, with the Second World War consuming both Europe and Asia, Bush and James B. Conant, president of Harvard University, met with Frank B. Jewett, president of Bell Labs and of the National Academy of Sciences, to map out a strategy for overcoming our lack of scientific preparedness. Out of that small meeting came a short, four-paragraph proposal for a centralized science operation—outside the control of the military—which Bush placed before President Roosevelt on June 12, 1940.

The president read the report, seized his pen, and scratched at the top, “OK-returned- I think you had best keep this to your own self. FDR.” With that stroke, the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) was created, and with it, the fully codified and institutionalized era of academic-industrial partnerships in research.

By early fall 1944, the Allies had gained the upper hand on the battlefield, and President Roosevelt had the luxury of thinking about how the US could translate its now thriving wartime-research structure into a postwar world. On November 17, 1944, he wrote to Bush: “There is no reason why the lessons to be found in this experiment cannot be profitably employed in times of peace . . . for the improvement of the national health, the creation of new enterprises bringing new jobs, and the betterment of the national standard of living.” Roosevelt went on to speculate about how the experience gained through OSRD could be adapted “to the war of science against disease.”

By the time Bush had formulated his response in July 1945, Roosevelt was dead of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 63. As a consequence, Bush submitted his report, Science: The Endless Frontier, to the newly sworn-in President Harry S. Truman.

Truman agreed that the government needed to support science in the postwar period not only to boost the economy, but also as a bulwark of national defense in the Cold War that was then taking shape, a war in which East and West would become rivals in everything from nuclear weapons to piano competitions. (And today, AI.)

Where Vannevar and Truman parted ways was on the precise role of government. The president saw Washington as being much more engaged, and the new organization allocating America’s treasure under White House directed, government management. Bush leaned heavily toward a more independent, business-oriented venture relying on cooperation among independent scientists, subject to arms-length government oversight and funding.

In the immediate postwar period, the United States fully embraced the idea of a nationally led war against disease. Energized by a healthy business climate and fueled by federally funded American ingenuity, control over our national research enterprise was transferred to a mid-20th-century version of today’s dynastic venture capitalists committed to eventually turning a budding meritocracy into a stable and everlasting aristocracy. Meanwhile, general public health planning and execution was massively decentralized down to the state and county levels. In 1950, more than 6,000 county health departments served nearly 90 percent of the US population and employed 35,000 workers nationwide. Their outputs varied widely in funding, priorities, training, and execution, and their influence steadily diminished over the next half century.

The spigots for research and development were now wide open. In 1940, the US government funded less than 7 percent of the nation’s scientific Research and Discovery. By 1950, that share had grown to 50 percent of a much larger total. Most assumed that Vannevar Bush would be director of the OSRD’s peacetime equivalent, the National Science Foundation, and many were surprised when Truman did not appoint him. However, Bush was ready to move on. He joined the Board of Merck in 1949, and on George Merck’s passing on November 10, 1957 from a cerebral hemorrhage, became Chairman of the Board.

Who’s to know what Vannevar would have thought about RFK Jr. with his 100 Push-His and 50 Pull-Ups, or what he might advise Jay Bhattacharya to do to calm the choppy waters in Bethesda. Four years before his death on June 30, 1974, he was asked what advice he might have for younger leaders.

He wrote, “My conclusion is that things are not so bad as they seem. We need a revival of the essence of the old pioneer spirit which conquered the forest and the plains, which looked at its difficulties with a steady eye, labored and fought, and left its thinking and its philosophy for later and quieter times. This is not a call for optimism; it is a call for determination.”

Not to worry . . . it’s just an “haboob.”

Posted on | August 26, 2025 | 1 Comment

Mike Magee

We awakened this morning to learn that there is a new word we Americans must learn if we wish our children and grandchildren to breathe healthy air in their near future. It is haboob. According to the National Weather Service, haboob is “an intense, fast-moving wall of dust kicked up by thunderstorm winds.”

One hit Phoenix yesterday, accompanied by not only rain and lightening, but instant darkness “casting an apocalyptic pall over the region.” Official warnings to drivers screeched “pull aside stay alive.” Experts believe we’ll be seeing more of these as global warming continues to gain steam.

The American Lung Association, in their 2025 “State of the Air” report, pointed the dirty finger at Trump’s EPA performance. They say 46% of Americans (156 million) are currently living in “places that get failing grades for unhealthy levels of ozone or particle pollution. That’s 25 million more than last year.

Concerned Americans will soon be mispronouncing their new word “Ha Boob” to describe the smiling Trump official above. That’s U.S. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. On March 12, 2025, he proudly declared “Today is the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen. We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more.”

That’s a decidedly different tone than he struck during his confirmation hearing on January 16, 2025, when he said, “And I will say that we will never have done enough to ensure that our water and our air is clean, safe and healthy. Whatever we do every day to achieve this objective, we need to wake up the next day looking for ways to do more.”

Actions of course speak louder than words. So here are a few steps he’s especially proud of accomplishing in his first 6 months:

Reconsideration of regulations on power plants (Clean Power Plan 2.0)
Reconsideration of regulations throttling the oil and gas industry (OOOO b/c)
Reconsideration of Mercury and Air Toxics Standards that improperly targeted coal-fired power plants (MATS)
Reconsideration of mandatory Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program that imposed significant costs on the American energy supply (GHG Reporting Program)
Reconsideration of limitations, guidelines and standards (ELG) for the Steam Electric Power Generating Industry to ensure low-cost electricity while protecting water resources (Steam Electric ELG)
Reconsideration of wastewater regulations for oil and gas development to help unleash American energy (Oil and Gas ELG)
Reconsideration of Biden-Harris Administration Risk Management Program rule that made America’s oil and natural gas refineries and chemical facilities less safe (Risk Management Program Rule)

But at least his actions aren’t “woke” or slanted toward DEI according to the American Lung Association 2025 update:

“Although people of color make up 41.2% of the overall population of the U.S., they are 50.2% of the people living in a county with at least one failing (air quality) grade. Notably, Hispanic individuals are nearly three times as likely as white individuals to live in a community with three failing grades.”

So what does “Ha Boob” think of the haboob. No comment just yet. But the U.S. Small Business Administration says “Stay tuned.” On August 16, 2025, they encouraged concerned air-breathing citizens to tune in to upcoming public hearings on proposed changes in air regulations. These include:

EPA has extended the comment deadline for the interim final rule “Extension of Deadlines in Standards of Performance for New, Reconstructed, and Modified Sources and Emissions Guidelines for Existing Sources: Oil and Natural Gas Sector Climate Review Final Rule” until October 2, 2025. A virtual public hearing will be held on September 2, 2025.
EPA has extended the comment deadline for the interim final rule “National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants for Integrated Iron and Steel Manufacturing Facilities Technology Review” until October 3, 2025. A virtual public hearing will be held on September 3, 2025.
EPA has extended the comment deadline for the interim final rule “National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants for Coke Ovens: Pushing, Quenching, and Battery Stacks, and Coke Oven Batteries; Residual Risk and Technology Review, and Periodic Technology Review” until October 6, 2025. A virtual public hearing will be held on September 4, 2025.

On a final note: The Trump administration is about to announce a 14% budget cut in NOAA weather research.

Category: Uncategorized
Tags: air quality > dei > EPA > haboob > lee zeldin > trump > woke

Measles Vaccine – Misremembering, Forgetting, and Deceiving.

Posted on | August 19, 2025 | 4 Comments

Mike Magee

If there were a contest for longest titles for a small piece of art, surely Belgian artist Rene’ Magritte’s “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905. From the series Great Ideas of Western Man. would be a contender.

Despite the 26 word label, the 1962 painting housed in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, is gouache and pencil on paper and measures only 13 3⁄8 x 9 1⁄2 in. (34.0 x 24.2 cm) despite its mammoth imagery.

Magritte’s MOMA biography states that “He produced a body of work that rendered such commonplace things strange, slotting them into unfamiliar or uncanny scenes, or deliberately mislabeling them in order to ‘make the most everyday objects shriek aloud.’”

In an age like ours, ravaged by intentional misremembering, forgetfulness, and outright disception, Magritte (who died in 1967) demands that we enter his world where past, present and future collide and distort our human reality. His work screams out “your actions have consequences.”

Cleverly, he co-opted turn of the century, Spanish-born, American made philosopher George Santayana’s quote to drive home the point of his imagery. It comes from his epic 5-volume “Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress” completed in 1906 which includes Reason in Common Sense, Reason in Society, Reason in Religion, Reason in Art, and Reason in Science.

Santayana had greater faith in science than in human capacity to create society. Of science, he wrote, “science contains all trustworthy knowledge.” As for human capacity for self-governance, he believed “a truly rational morality or social regimen has never existed in the world, and is hardly to be looked for.” Rather he hoped it seems that “common sense” might dictate. Where might that reside? If it can be found, it would likely reside ”in the generous atmosphere of love and the home.”

Sadly, the calming tranquility of house and home has been disrupted during the Spring and Summer of 2025 by an unwelcome, and formerly vanquished enemy, the Rubeola virus which causes measles. A potent anti-vax movement, led by RFK Jr. at HHS, has resulted in 1,356 confirmed case of measles with 13% hospitalized and 3 deaths across 41 states nationwide.

We’ve known about the disease for a long, long time. The first published account dates back to Persia in the 9th century. It’s connection to a blood-born infectious agent was confirmed by Scottish physician, Francis Home, in 1757. By 1912, the US Public Health Service deemed it a serious enough threat that reporting was now required. Over the next decade, 6000 cases on average were reported each year. By mid-century, 3 to 4 million people were infected each year, and approximately 50,000 were hospitalized and 500 died.

The first effective vaccine was licensed in 1963 by John Enders, and further refined in 1968. By 1989, it became clear that a booster would be required to reinforce waning immunity to the disease. By 2000, measles was declared eliminated thanks to an effective immunization program which reached 91% of the US population. But lax vaccination 8 years later led to an outbreak of the disease.

Three or more cases in the same locale at the same time constitutes an outbreak. The first outbreak was reported by the Texas Department of State Health Services in West Texas in late January, 2025. By August, 2025, 762 cases had been confirmed. Ninety-nine of the patients had been hospitalized. There were two fatalities in school-aged children who lived in Gaines County, Texas. The children were not vaccinated and had no known underlying conditions.

Since the Texas outbreak, there have been 32 outbreaks reported in 2025 accounting for 87% of confirmed cases. 66% occurred in children under age 20, 92% of whom were unvaccinated.

Measles vaccine is included in MMR vaccine and MMRV vaccine; MMRV is only licensed for children 1–12 years old. CDC recommends children receive 2 doses of MMR vaccine.

Angering the anti-vax community that strongly supported him, RFK Jr. posted this statement on X on April 7, 2025: “The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine” and had the federal government “supply pharmacies and Texas run clinics with needed MMR vaccines.” At the same time, he confused the issue by suggesting a number of other “effective treatments” that infectious disease specialists declared ineffective.

In RFK Jr.’s eyes, the crisis is abating. But Sen. Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer couldn’t disagree more. He recently wrote, “Under your tutelage as Secretary, you have undermined vaccines, gutted public health funding, and dismantled core federal protections meant to keep Americans safe. You have walked our country into the nation’s largest measles outbreak in 33 years.”

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Tags: anti-vax > chuck schumer > george santayana > life of reson > measles > measles outbreak > mmr > rene' magritte > RFK Jr. > vaccine > west texas outbreak

“Lead Us To The Saving Of Our Country.” – FDR

Posted on | August 11, 2025 | 3 Comments

Mike Magee

When the Depression struck, he was 5 years old. Simultaneously, the great dust storms arrived. John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” immortalized the travails of the Joad family from Oklahoma, tenant farmers trapped in the Dust Bowl. Steinbeck could have easily substituted the family with this boy, who remembered years later, “The dust killed everything it covered. The crops died, trees, flowers, and other vegetation died, and people died – some from dust pneumonia, some from despair and self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Everyone in town knew a nearby farmer who had gone to the bank and been turned down for a loan. Everybody in our town had been broke at one time or another.”

The point is that his family’s early life was shaped by hardship, and tempered with sardonic wit and a heavy dose of hope provided by Roosevelt. Watching it play out in his own home, in odd jobs, in small town chats at the drug store and beyond, by the time he neared completion of high school, he came up with a plan. “I was going to earn enough money to attend college. I’d go on to medical school, eventually become one of those doctors who didn’t have to worry about which way the wind would blew or how much rain we were likely to get this summer.”

Not long after, in 1941, he entered his Freshman year at college, with help from the drugstore where he had worked for the past few years of high school. He was away at school on December 7, 1941 when Pearl Harbor was attacked. With classmates, he huddled around the radio when President Roosevelt addressed the nation.

He hung in with school a bit longer, even as his grades suffered for lack of attention. On December 14, 1942, at age 19, a year and a week after Pearl Harbor, he enlisted. This was nearly six months to the day after my father had enlisted as a First Lieutenant, Medical Corps, United States Army. When D-Day arrived on June 6, 1944, the boy, now a young man, was completing his advanced training at Fort Leavenworth in Kentucky. My father was already in Europe at the time, having landed in North Africa some months before.

On D-Day, the young soldier was again tuned to the radio as the President’s voice rang out, ignoring for the moment separations of Church and State, “Almighty God: our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity. Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.”

Perhaps forecasting our nation’s dilemma these many years later, FDR ended that day with these words, “With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister Nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil. ”

Years later, the young soldier, now gone, remembered that night. “Tears clouded the eyes of several of the soldiers sitting near me, listening to Roosevelt’s prayer. A few sobbed openly… Somehow he had tapped into the soul of America, and had expressed its cry without reservations or embarrassment, to God.”

Now a seasoned soldier, he had first arrived in Naples, Italy a few days before Christmas, 1944. Four months later, struggling under the weight of battle gear as part of the 10th Mountain Division, they were charged with “the daunting task of capturing 3,800-foot Mount Belvedere” near Castel D’Aiano in the Apennine Mountains.

When the blast hit him, it ripped through his body, lifting and twisting him off the ground, and landing him face first in the cold dirt. Still conscious, he struggled to spit out blood and soil, realizing as he did that he could move neither his arms nor legs. “Body numb, brain active, vision blurred”, he later recalled of his self-assessment. Six foot two and two hundred pounds, he owed his life to a 5’ 5”, 145 pound sergeant who realized he was still alive and pulled him to safety. “I was conscious, but only my eyes could move. I couldn’t even unclench my teeth.”

He lay there for six more hours, drifting in and out of consciousness, in a crumbled heap, set behind a protective stone wall, with an “M” drawn in blood on his forehead. It told all that he had already received a hefty dose of morphine in the field, and to be cautious not to kill him with an overdose.

His morphine-laced mind was elsewhere. “Lying there on the cold ground, I wasn’t thinking about the future. I wasn’t even thinking about survival. I was thinking of where I had come from. My mind kept going back, back…I didn’t know where else to go, so I went home…

He survived, by way of rapid evacuation to the 15th Evacuation Field Hospital in Pistola, Italy, and from there was sent by ship to the states, ultimately landing at the Percy Jones Army Hospital in Battle Creek, Michigan.

He had been hit in the right back and arm by German machine gun fire, dosed up on Morphine and penicillin, and waited 9 hours on the battlefield near Castel d’Aiano before being rescued. His injuries were severe. Not only was his right shoulder and arm shot up, but his spinal cord was traumatized.

For months, he had minimal movement in his legs, no movement in his arms, and no control over his bodily functions. He would spend two years in various hospitals. On two occasions, his temperature rose to near 108 degrees and death was imminent. In both cases, he was given penicillin, now known as often by the moniker, “The Miracle Drug”.

He gradually regained use of his legs and learned to walk, and even run at a slow trot, again. His arms were a different matter. The right one was all but useless, except, as he said, as a “blocker” for his left arm to brace against. Several surgeries improved the rest location of his forearm and clawed hand. But he would never regain use of his right hand or raise his right arm above his head. As for the left arm, it would carry the load for the rest of his life, but he never again had sensation in that hand, except for his fourth and 5^th fingers.

He’s dead now. But I had the privilege of traveling with him for a little over a year in 1998, often to visit veteran groups around the country. They loved him, rushing to him, reaching out with enthusiasm to shake his left hand.

Category: Uncategorized
Tags: D-Day > depression > Dole > dust bowl > FDR > grapes of wrath > penicillin > Steinback > war injury > WW II

Zohran Mumdani Triggers NYC Memories of Fiorello La Guardia

Posted on | August 5, 2025 | 1 Comment

Mike Magee

What are the chances that citizens of New York, the largest city in the nation, would vote in a majority to oppose a formerly corrupt politician with a party machine behind him, and instead favor a little known candidate – the son of immigrant parents with “swarthy skin and belligerent independence,” from a suspect minority and religious heritage, who actively mixed music and politics, who seemed to come out of nowhere but be everywhere at once, and was ultra focused on “efficiency and honesty in municipal government?”

And what if that had occurred not once, but twice in the last century?

Certainly by now, the name Zohran Mamdani is already ringing in your ears. More on him in a moment. But let’s first travel back a century to introduce another candidate for mayor whose life and career presaged the modern day version.

His name was Fiorello La Guardia, and his remains were laid to rest on September 21, 1947 in Woodland Cemetery, a short distance from his home at 5020 Woodbridge Avenue in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. He died at age 64 from pancreatic cancer.

“The Little Flower” (a nickname that derived from his first name Fiore – Italian for flower) described his stature (5 foot 2 inches) but not necessarily his personality. The New York Times obituary described him “as much a part (of New York) as any of its public buildings” and “a little firebrand.”

By any measure, he was one of New York’s own, earning the morning of his death in 1947 the Fire Department’s 5-5-5-5 signal, a traditional bell code used to honor firefighters who have died in the line of duty.

An Italian immigrant, his father was raised a Catholic in Foggia, Italy, and his mother (from Trieste on the Italian/Croatian border) was Jewish. Fiorello was born on the East Side of Manhattan on December 11, 1882, two years after his parents marriage in Italy. His father was a skilled musician and became the bandmaster for the U.S. Army. As a result, Fiorello was raised on multiple Army bases, and graduated from high school in Prescott, Arizona, a stone’s throw from Fort Whipple. Along the way, the father taught the son to play the banjo, cornet, and trumpet, and taught his sister, Gemma, to play violin, mandolin, and piano.

Skilled in languages (Yiddish, German, French, Italian), by the age of 20 Fiorello was employed by the US Consulate in Europe, and on return to the U.S. served as an interpreter on Ellis Island. Within a few years, he managed a Law Degree from NYU in 1910, and in 1914, at age 32 ran for U.S. Congress as a Republican, losing to the Tammany Hall’s Democratic candidate. Two years later, he won the seat even though Republicans initially supported another candidate. By 2018, he was re-elected but this time with Democratic support and declaring himself a “socialist.”

By 1933, Tammany Hall and its leader, NYC Mayor Jimmy Walker, were out, clearing the way for Fiorello. He ran with the support of a complex coalition of German American Republicans, Democratic reformers, Socialists, middle-class Jews, and Italians who in the past had aligned with Tammany Hall.

He came into the Mayor’s office in 1934 good to go. He had promised work relief for the unemployed, merit-based civil service, efficiency over corruption, and a focus on infrastructure including expanded housing, transportation and parks. Robert Moses was the head of his Parks department, a post he held until 1960.His vocal support during the election for FDR paid off handsomely. Fully 20% of the entire national Civil Works Administration (CPA) budget was allocated by FDR to New York City. In return, he delivered his Labor Party’s (which he helped organize) support to FDR in his Presidential elections in 1936, 1940 and 1944.

One of his main achievements was the maintenance of the Office of Price Administration which placed limits on pricing of food, rents, and other necessities. By the time he stepped down on December 31, 1945, “Tammany Hall had been reduced to a shadow.”

Eight decades later, an independent minded, gifted politician, also occasionally self-defined a “socialist” bucked his own political establishment and soundly defeated the modern version of a Democratic Tammany candidate, Andrew Cuomo, surprising many, but not all political pundits. His name is Zohran Mamdani.

He too is the son of immigrants. He arrived on New York shores at the age of seven, born of Indian parents and raised in his early years in Kampala, Uganda. His father, Mamood Mamdani, is a Muslim from Gujarati, India, and currently a professor of political science at Columbia University. His mother is a Punjabi Hindu, noted filmmaker Mira Nair (Mississippi Masala; Monsoon Wedding; Salaam Bombay! and others).

Like La Guardia, Mamdani has been vocal and politically active since his early years. Soon after graduating from Bowden College, that voice took the form of his Rap alter-ego, Young Cardamom. In 2015, he became a fan of rising South Asian American hip-hop performer Himanshu Suri (Heems) and after reading a Village Voice article on the performer/truned politician, volunteered to help out in Heems’ New York city council campaign. Five years later, Mamdani offered this self-appraisal, “When you are a C-list rapper, seeking to get the word out about your music, in many ways you are using the same principles of being an organizer… We might have an idea of where we should have political debate, we might have an idea of what music should look like and where it should be performed, but frankly it has to engage with the reality of things.”

His music and his politics since 2015 have never shied away from controversy. Pakistani vocalist, Ali Sethi, with whom he collaborated said, “He’s talking about class divisions and the truth about them and overcoming them. But he has such a sunniness, which I love. He’s not lecturing you about anything.”

By 2020, the shift in emphasis clearly pointed to a career in politics. But his time as a performer had been constructive. “Artists are the storytellers of this world…It’s not just that we need to combine the arts with the need for dignity, it’s that we have to.”

Mamdani came out early and often in support of the Palestinian people, emphasizing pluralism and supporting a New York City “where everyone can belong regardless of religion.” In contrast to La Guardia’s final salute by the NYFD, Zohran’s campaign is still in correction territory. As journalist Sanya Mansoor noted, South Asians “see his rise as a sign of hope in a city where racism and Islamophobia erupted following the September 11 terrorist attacks.”

As the Democratic primary approached, a few national leaders like Bernie Sanders and AOC openly supported Mumdani. But most remained quiet, even though internal polls showed the young dynamic candidate in the lead. But young up-and-coming journalist’s like USA Today’s Sara Pequeño didn’t hold back. as she wrote, “The reasons conservatives are criticizing Mamdani are the reasons people my age voted for him. We believe in moving funding from the NYPD into areas like mental health care and community building. We support Palestinian rights. We want to see that working-class New Yorkers can remain in this city. We see taxing corporations and the wealthy as a good thing.”

And the numbers bore her out. In neighborhoods with high South Asian populations, Mumdani won 52% of the first-choice votes. During the Primary campaign, Mumdani’s campaign visited 136 mosques across the city and focused on three Muslim principles: justice, mercy, and commitment to community. But it was more that just values said South Asian advocacy organization Drum Beats: “You need a political program for people that speaks to the grave inequalities in society.” And Mamdani had one. And as if the message needed any amplification, the MAGA ICE campaign reinforced what was at stake. As CUNY Hunter College sociologist, Heba Gowayed, wrote, “ICE was born out of Muslim hate.”

At the same time, Zohran proved himself an agile politician by forming a cross-endorsement agreement with Jewish candidate Brad Lander, city comptroller and highest ranking Jewish official in the city. That led to 2/3 of Lander’s voters choosing Mamdani as their second choice.

Mamdani’s victory speech echoed “The Little Flower’s” themes. He declared to ecstatic supporters, “I will be the mayor for every New Yorker, whether you voted for me, for Gov. Cuomo or felt too disillusioned by a long, broken political system to vote at all. I will fight for a city that works for you, that is affordable for you, that is safe for you.”

Polls seem to suggest that Mumdani, like La Guardia, had his finger on the pulse of the voters. A July 29, 2025 poll found that “support for Palestinian rights” was important to 96% of voters and “willingness to criticize the Israeli government” was important to 88%. Younger voters as predicted overwhelmingly supported Mamdani, but in much larger numbers than predicted. Voters under 40 made up over 40% of the early voter turnout.

UNC 2019 Journalism graduate and columnist for USA Today, Sara Pequeño, said it best and suggests we may be witnessing the emergency of a “Little Flower” of our own. She wrote, “I have personally seen the way my generation has reacted to Mamdani’s campaign. There is a palpable excitement reminiscent of Barack Obama’s first run for the presidency, an excitement fueled by the idea that the Democratic Party can change, in spite of itself.”