City for Sale: Ed Koch and the Betrayal of New York.

• Author: Ledbetter, James

City for Sale: Ed Koch and the Betrayal of New York. Jack Newfield, Wayne Barrett. Harper &

Row, $22.50. "Today's reformer is tomorrow's hack," Brooklyn boss Meade Espos >;ito used to say.

Esposito had a special knack for making this motto a self-fulfilling prophesy. Surely one of his greatest triumphs was the sell-out he and other New York City machine bosses orchestrated around Ed Koch. When he was elected mayor in 1977 Koch's reputation rested on his antimachine credentials. But by 1982, he was kicking off an ill-fated gubernatorial campaign with a press conference flanked by Democratic party bosses-Bronx boss Stanley Friedman (convicted in 1987 for bribery and rackete >;ering), Queens boss Donald Manes (who committed suicide in 1986 while under investigation), and Esposito (convicted in 1988 for bribing Rep. Mario Biaggi). The reformer had come full circle.

That is the central story of City for Sale, written by Village Voice reporters Jack Newfield-who moved to the New York Daily Next's in mid-1988-and Wayne Barrett. The book's timing is particularly apt, as it was released during the Bess Myerson trial (which had featured testimony from the mayor himself). And in J >;anuary yet another city hall patronage scandal began breaking, with revelations that the bosses exposed in this book used a Kochinitiated affirmative action program to place their hacks in key city agencies. With the mayoral primary coming in September, investigative journalists and opportunistic opponents are going to have a field day examining the paper trail of corruption. City for Sale may be the first book to document the corruption in Koch's administration, but it probably won't be the last.

Muni >;cipal corruption in New York has a lustrous history. Koch knew exactly how to play this legacy to voters. A liberal congressman from an ultraliberal Manhattan district, Koch had a history of reform that was almost as deep-seated as his ambition. To be elected mayor of the entire city in 1977, however, required several measures designed to distance himself from the image of the goo-goo from Greenwich Village. One way was to parade about with Myerson, the politically connected former Miss America, to thwa >;rt rumors that Koch was a homosexual. The second strategy was to publicly support the death penalty, a popular issue with which Koch could needle two of his strongest primary opponents, Bella Abzug and Mario Cuomo.

But the final and most devastating deception was cutting...