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

Edward KocheEdward Koche
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Session:         Page of 617

the floor. And he's very embarrassed, very embarrassed. And I say to him, “Don't worry about it. I only have one rule. All knives are checked at the door.” (laughs) You know, in a jocular way.

I thought about it. I was not affronted. Obviously he didn't bring the knife because he was afraid of me. If I lived in the environment that he's living in, with the crime and the poverty that breeds crime -- it's not safe to walk around -- I'd carry a knife, too, maybe a gun. So I'm not upset by that.

Now, I had a meeting subsequently when Arturo put together again a group of Puerto-Ricans and it was near the end/of the period when I'd already decided I'm not really going to stay in the race because I can't raise the money. Frank McLaughlin, who's now the deputy police commissioner in charge of public relations, was my campaign manager and we had agreed I was going to get out. I'd raised $100,000, and there was no hope of my raising any more, and it had all been used up, and I wasn't going to go into debt. I will not ever get into a race where I have to carry the financial burden and worry about paying back people years later. I just don't want it. I'm a person of very modest financial resources, and I'm not going to carry a debt on my back -- I won't do it.

Okay, so knowing all this, we go to this meeting on the Lower East Side in some apartment, and Henry Ramos was one of the radical Puerto-Ricans -- he's really a revolutionary. And





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