I WAS a late arrival to the Ed Koch fan club. I grew up in a liberal, Jewish, Bella Abzug-loving household, and my parents spoke of him with a level of contempt they usually reserved for Republicans. Centrist Democrats are a dime a dozen these days, but back in the 1970s the prospect of a union-bashing, death penalty-backing Democrat winning City Hall was driving Manhattan Jewish liberals crazy. I was expected to hate him.
I was also gay, and by the early 1980s, every gay friend I had, every gay newspaper I read, every gay activist I admired grouped Mayor Koch in the same circle of evil as Ronald Reagan. It infuriated them that a man they took for granted as homosexual — the dearth of proof notwithstanding — was shutting out Larry Kramer and other activists as our friends were dying of AIDS. Even when his eyes eventually opened and money for AIDS prevention and treatment started flowing from City Hall, the mayor was growing increasingly close to Cardinal John O'Connor, considered another charter member of the evil elite by AIDS and gay activists. Cardinal O'Connor was using his pulpit and media megaphone to condemn homosexuality, condom distribution and AIDS education at the time. Mayor Koch disagreed with him, but they were so tight that they would go on to write a book together. My gay friends expected me to hate the mayor as well.
In truth I had secretly grown to like him. I loved his iconoclastic politics, his unabashed pride in his Jewishness, his outspoken style in a profession dominated by the cautious and the mediocre. I was as enamored as anyone by his politics of joy.
To speak with Ed Koch was to be in awe of his certitude. I once got into a conversation with him about a barrage of criticism he'd been leveling at one of the city's most influential rabbis. "You're Jewish!" I said. "Don't you feel a little intimidated to attack a rabbi?" He thought for a second. "Mayor trumps rabbi," he said.
Moral certitude in a politician can be a turnoff if you don't share his politics (or his morality). To be a New Yorker in the 1970s and '80s was to marvel at the blizzard of insensitivities, personal insults and bullying attacks that emanated from City Hall every day. But New Yorkers tend to judge their mayors by how well they can keep the city under control. And for much if not most of his mayoralty, he performed the job exceptionally well. Like Rudolph Giuliani several years later, Mayor Koch's belief in his own righteousness was his weakness as well as his strength.
To know Ed Koch personally was to experience a merry-go-round of approval and disapproval that could leave you perpetually off balance (which may have been the idea). For all the paternal encouragement he'd give you, he could also turn on you on a dime.
Once, sitting on the set of "Inside City Hall" with me to discuss the war in Kosovo (you could invite Mayor Koch on to talk about anything), I thought I had him trapped in a contradiction. He evaded and I pursued, over and over until the smile faded into a scowl. "I can explain this to you," he said. "I cannot comprehend it for you." I was rendered speechless but completely impressed.
Despite his insulting me on live television, the doubts that I'd picked up at an early age about him had faded by then — he was several years removed from his last days as mayor — and I think that went for a lot of other New Yorkers as well. His incessant boast that he was "a liberal with sanity" didn't seem as irritating as it once had. Most of his views didn't seem particularly conservative any more, even to liberal ears.
History will judge him on the totality of his career. His failure to recognize the severity of the AIDS crisis was of a piece with that of most other American politicians of his era. If he was in fact gay and closeted, he failed to make a show of extraordinary courage that could have saved lives. So did hundreds of gay people in positions of power at the time.
As he grew older, his hard edges softened and he became a more forgiving man. When Bella Abzug died in 1998, his instinctive hostility gave way to a wistfulness that the lions of his time were beginning to fade away. He knew that the day was approaching that he'd be one of them.
In my last, increasingly warm conversations with him in his final years, he conceded a mistake here and there. And he confessed in a book that he regretted never falling in love.
But to the end, Ed Koch wasn't big on admitting he was wrong.
One day while I was sitting at my desk at New York 1, he arrived for his weekly gig on the station's "Wiseguys" segment. From across the newsroom, he yelled something horrifying to me in a voice so loud it turned heads.
"You're gaining weight!" he shouted.
Claire Brinberg, my producer, evidently called him soon afterward to tell him how I'd taken his hurtful observation — which wasn't well — because the following week, he walked up to me and said, "I'm sorry."
He looked as if he'd swallowed castor oil. "O.K.?" he asked.
"O.K.," I said, and he walked away.
It was the worst apology I'd ever gotten.
Andrew Kirtzman is the former host of the political interview shows "Kirtzman and Co." on WCBS-TV and "Inside City Hall" on New York 1 News. He is the author of "Rudy Giuliani: Emperor of the City."
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