Brooklyn remembers Mayor Koch
Brooklyn political figures and others in public life on Friday remembered Ed Koch, the feisty, sometimes abrasive three-term mayor of New York City who died of congestive heart failure Friday morning.
Koch, a lawyer who broke into politics as a Reform Democratic congressman serving Manhattan’s “Silk Stocking” district from 1969 to 1977, was elected first mayor in 1977, and was re-elected in 1981 and 1985 with Republican as well as Democratic support. His tenure as mayor was marked by economic growth but also racial tensions.