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Edward KocheEdward Koche
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Session:         Page of 617

that Lindsay at that point was at his lowest ebb or at a low ebb -- maybe not his lowest. And so when the letter arrived supporting Seymour -- and it was sent in red, white and blue envelopes; I mean it was the most garish thing in a certain sense; to give this letter from the mayor of the city of New York the greatest prominense; and it must have lost votes for Seymour, but it could not come at a worse time in terms of support. That is to say, people just did not like Lindsay. The school strike -- he was blamed for it. I can't even remember why anymore, but he was blamed for it: he was blamed for almost everything. And therefore the impact, if anything, was helpful to me. It was sort of strange in a way.

Seymour, by the way, never got over the fact that I brought in an issue which he said had nothing to do with Congress, but I was a city councilman and I brought up the issue of rent stabilization. Did we talk about that on a prior occasion?

Q:

We have not talked about rent stabilization.

Koch:

Okay. Well, I'm a city councilman; it's 1968. The single greatest issue affecting the people in my district, which is primarily made up of apartment houses that are not rent controlled (I shouldn't say primarily but a substantial number; they were built after Feb. 1, 1947 -- therefore they were not under rent control) was that the landlords were unmercifully raising the rents, in many cases 100% increase. So





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