James R. McManus was born in Hell’s Kitchen in 1936 and recently died in 2019. For 54 years (from 1962 to 2016) he was the Democratic Party District Leader from the Hell’s Kitchen area. This was a position that his father Eugene E. McManus had held for 20 years before him.
Previously Eugene McManus’s great grand uncle, Thomas J. McManus, had held the position, since the formation of the McManus Democratic Club in 1892, when he defeated the prior District Leader George Washington Plunkitt, author of Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics (1905). [Read more…] about Tammany’s Last Stand: The McManus Club & The McGovern Campaign
Trivia clue: This New York governor showed up too late to play in a November 12th golf game promoted as a friendly match between “is” and “to be.”
Frances Perkins, who served as President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor in all four terms of his administration, is often credited with designing many of the New Deal’s social welfare programs, including Social Security. As such, she ranks among 
Schenectady County Historian Bill Buell’s new book George Lunn: The 1912 Socialist Victory in Schenectady (The Troy Book Makers, 2019) looks back at Schenectady native George Lunn, and his life in politics.
Historian Robert Chiles is set to discuss his book The Revolution of ’28 at the New York Public Library’s Grand Central branch, 
On the most recent episode of the podcast A New York Minute In History, co-hosts Devin Lander and Don Wildman examine how two New Yorkers – Al Smith and Franklin Delano Roosevelt – influenced the Progressive Era of the early 20th Century. The episode also explores how the administrations of Smith and Roosevelt shaped modern day politics and the role of government. 
Robert Chiles new book, The Revolution of ’28: Al Smith, American Progressivism, and the Coming of the New Deal (Cornell University Press, 2018) explores the career of New York Governor and 1928 Democratic presidential nominee Alfred E. Smith.