In 1989, our headline was “For the Democrats: Dick Ravitch” in endorsing the businessman and former MTA chair for mayor as a highly qualified contender when our indecisive forebearers couldn’t pick between frontrunners Ed Koch and David Dinkins. Ravitch got clobbered, winning 4% in his only bid for elected office, but he did more for his city than just about any elected pol during a life that lasted almost 90 years and ended on Sunday.
May his memory be a blessing.
Ravitch saved the subway, the electric spine of New York, for the first time when he took a wheezing, dirty, dangerous system and bent to his will the Albany politicians, including the governor who appointed him, Hugh Carey, to impose a series of dedicated taxes in 1981. That was after Ravitch righted the state Urban Development Corp. (now called the Empire State Development Corp.)
