Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Edward KocheEdward Koche
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Session:         Page of 617

people that I had initially sent letters to saying, “I disagree with you,” and said, “I made a mistake and I'm going to vote for the bill. I admit error,” that's what I said. But everybody's entitled to make an error. That's just one illustration.

The third one is: where I don't have an expertise and it's not a matter of morality and I don't have an opinion, then I'm willing to be guided and take the opinion of the vast majority of my constituents.

I think the same kind of thing applies to district leaders. Now, it is somewhat different in that the major area that the district leader gets involved in technically is the political area, but that isn't true in the Village. Indeed, it isn't true anymore in the borough of Manhattan. District leaders to get elected have to take a very involved role in the area of substantive matters, community matters and substantive matters. They were always taking positions on getting out of Vietnam when that was the issue. I'm sure today it will be getting out of Angola. In Carmine's time that would have been a horrible thing for district leaders to do, to be involved in a substantive matter. That's for the public officials, not for the party officials. Well, he was wrong. I believe party officials should get involved in substantive matters. I don't know if I've made myself clear.

Q:

Well, let's amplify that a little bit. Originally then, what





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help