During the 1920s, Arthur Carter from Amsterdam worked as an auditor for the State Comptroller’s Office in Albany and got to know Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Roosevelt became President in 1933. Later that year, Carter was elected mayor of Amsterdam, defeating incumbent Republican Robert Brumagin by 1,169 votes.
The nation was gripped by the Depression. An estimated ten thousand people turned out in Amsterdam on a raw and windy November 9, two days after the city election, to parade for economic revival.
Roosevelt was launching the New Deal, a key part of which was the National Recovery Administration or NRA, later abolished by the U.S. Supreme Court.
According to the Albany Evening News, the NRA Parade was the biggest in Amsterdam’s history up to that time and featured hundreds of marching mill workers, office employees and school children.
Mayor Brumagin watched the parade from the reviewing stand. But it was Mayor-elect Carter receiving cheers from the crowd as he walked at the head of the contingent from the James T. Bergen American Legion Post. A World War I veteran, Carter was past commander of the post.
Also marching was Michael J. Wytrwal, named by FDR as NRA chairman for Montgomery County. Wytrwal, a Carter supporter, was a prominent businessman and community leader in Amsterdam’s Polish neighborhoods.
Lionel Fallows, son of Carter’s sister Nellie, said Roosevelt came through for Carter and Amsterdam. It was a triumvirate of Democrats in power—Carter, New York Governor Herbert Lehman and Roosevelt.
There was federal money for a golf course, named for Carter. Amsterdam was honored when a U.S. Navy light cruiser was named for the city. Fallows said Carter could have done more but political opponents sometimes stymied him.
Occasionally Carter would get in an Amsterdam police car for a trip to Washington to visit Roosevelt. Carter was state chairman of the fund raising campaign against polio, which pleased FDR.
Carter was born in 1897 in Kidderminster, England, a center of the English carpet trade that was a source of rug-savvy immigrants who helped build Amsterdam’s leading industry. He came to America when he was nine and lived on Lefferts Street.
Carter never took to carpet making, working instead in the grocery business while taking correspondence courses. In 1923, he married Lorraine Conrad. They did not have children.
Carter ran unsuccessfully for office three times before being elected mayor. Fallows said his uncle was terrified at first by public speaking but through practice became an expert at holding an audience.
Carter, with Wytrwal’s support, was elected five times and served ten years as mayor. In 1940 according to a document at Columbia University, a state Democratic Party official visited Carter and said the mayor, who was also Montgomery County Democratic chairman, was disgruntled.
Lithgow Osborne wrote, “Carter is always inclined to be crabby about something; but he is an experienced politician with a successful record of leadership.”
In 1943 Carter left the mayor’s job for the Army. Awarded the rank of major, Carter served as military mayor of Bologna, Italy during the Allied occupation. He learned Italian on the job.
When he returned to America, Carter hosted a program on WSNY radio in Schenectady called Carter’s Comments. In 1948 he was principal founder of radio station WCSS in Amsterdam. Carter was station president until 1953. He later worked in the financial field.
In 1963 Carter was prevailed upon by fellow Democrats to oppose Republican Marcus Breier in a race for mayor. Breier won by a large margin, over 1,600 votes.
Carter died on August 29, 1983 at age 86. He was buried at St. Mary’s Cemetery.
Photo: Arthur Carter upon his election in 1933, from the Amsterdam Evening Recorder, December 13, 1933.
This post was first published in the Daily Gazette, October 4, 2014.
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