A Recent History of Corruption in Major American Cities

Shady unlimited.

Complex Original

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The legislative process can be a drag. After all, what's the use in jumping through a bunch of legal hoops to affect change when you can just blackmail, and coerce and extort your way to political glory? In the playbook of classic American politics, entering into elections with the universal support of thousands of dead voters is what's called "a winning strategy." Whistle-blowers might balk at the so-called corruption a scheme like this entails, leaving the bosses among us—people like Boss Tweed, Richard J. Daley and Rod Blagojevich—with no other option than to jail these killjoys.

For better or worse, this is the legacy of street-level politics in America: bribery, patronage, and deception. And so it continues today, with government scandals breaking out in so many of our most important locales. Get to know our nation's latest shady dealings: A Recent History of Corruption in Major American Cities.

10. New York's Scandal-Ridden Streets

City: New York
Year: Ongoing

The New York Times published a piece in April titled "A New Era in Political Corruption" that documented a slew of what the writer called awful corruption scandals. And if the charges in question are any indication, she wasn't exaggerating. Specifically mentioned are a Democratic state senator reportedly under fire for trying to buy the city's mayoral nomination and a man accused of taking bribes from people who reportedly wanted to start adult day care centers. Meanwhile in Queens, a republican official frisked a barber (who ended up being an undercover F.B.I. agent) to ensure he wasn't wearing a wire. Terrible luck? Karma's more like it.

9. Ray Nagin's Shady Dealings

City: New Orleans
Year: 2012

The mayor who helped New Orleans pull through the worst natural disaster ever to strike American soil apparently isn't much of a hero, after all. A federal grand jury investigation targeted some of Nagin's shady business dealings in 2012. A granite seller reportedly paid the mayor $50,000 and delivered hundreds of pounds of free granite to the businesses of his sons in exchange for favorable treatment. The mayor was also charged with with wire fraud, conspiracy, bribery, money laundering and filing false tax returns. He'll be tried later this year.

8. The Other Sneaky John F.

City: Philadelphia
Year: 2005

After the FBI bugged Philly Mayor John F. Street's office during a 2005 re-election campaign, they discovered a boatload of municipal corruption inside. A friend of the mayor's reportedly led a large scheme involving the city treasurer and 15 others, who were convicted on a laundry list of charges. The mayor himself was never formally charged, but many of his friends and cronies were. A former member of the mayor's transition team was sentenced to 87-months' time after using political connections to obtain loans, donations, and city contracts. An advisor trying to develop a "crucial" piece of city property, was charged with fraud and conspiracy, and the mayor's own brother was found guilty of tax evasion. It's fitting that Akon's "Lonely" came out right around this time.

7. Buddy Cianci's Bouts with the Law

City: Providence, RI
Year: 2002

Cianci's claim to fame is that he's the only figure on our list forced to resign from office twice, both times due to felony convictions. Providence's long-serving mayor first left office in 1984, after assaulting a local contractor with a lit cigarette, an ashtray, and a fireplace log. The man had apparently been fooling around with his wife. Cianci's political infidelity, however, was uncovered 2001 after he was charged with racketeering, conspiracy, extortion, witness tampering, and mail fraud. A video surfaced that showed one of his aides accepting a bribe—emphasizing a supposed culture of corruption within the mayor's administration. Cianci was sentenced in 2002 to five years' federal prison time.

6. Shady Business Deals in Chicago

City: Chicago
Year: Every Year

To the surprise of no one, Chicago was named the most corrupt city in America by a 2012 University of Illinois study. The reason? Well, going down the list:

1. There were 1,531 convictions for public corruption in "the federal district dominated by Chicago" between 1976 and 2010, according to the report.

2. Four of seven Illinois governors have been convicted of corruption or related crimes since the 1970s. So, too, have 31 members of Chicago's city council.

3. Scandals like the William Cellini fiasco, in which a Hollywood real estate investment firm would be barred from receiving $220 million in eachers pension money to invest unless the producer contributed to the Blagojevich campaign. Yeah, validated.

5. William Lantigua Doesn't Care

City: Lawrence, MA
Year: Ongoing

The mayor of a city deemed Massachusetts' poorest recently divorced his wife to marry his mistress, to the apparent chagrin of no one. See, Lawrence has bigger problems. Of course, it's not like Lantigua actually cares. As Vice put it: "The unemployment rate is 17 percent, but Willie has found jobs for his wife, mistress, and his daughter who gets $100 a day as a per diem educator." He recently traveled to the Dominican Republic to attend the wedding of a recycling foreman he appointed. Ah, yes, when your city is almost literally burning to the ground, the mayoral thing to do is, well, leave.

4. Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's Ongoing Troubles

City: Detroit
Year: 2002-????

The embattled mayor of Detroit was hit with a litany of charges in 2008, after a prosecutor uncovered a series of questionable text messages on the cell phones of Kilpatrick and his former Chief of Staff and lover Christine Beatty. Allegations of perjury, misconduct in office, and obstruction of justice followed. The city's youngest mayor in history reportedly held a wild party on Labor Day weekend in 2002, where strippers showed up to the mayor's official residence and a city-owned mansion. Kilpatrick's wife reportedly attacked one of the women, sending her to the hospital. The stripper was murdered in 2003 in a case that remains unsolved. Kilpatrick has faced a string of jail sentences since the scandals broke out, and currently faces sentencing on 24 federal felony counts. Why's it always gotta be Detroit?

3. Sharpe James Reigns Over Newark

City: Newark, N.J.
Year: 2008

Newark's longest serving mayor, a man known for cruising the city in luxurious automobiles and dishing out cheap real estate to local females, is no stranger to scandal. His savvy for machine politics was documented in the 2005 film Street Fight, in which he allegedly dispatches police officers at his whim and intimidates supporters of his opponent, Cory Booker, in a brutal show of voter suppression. The footage shows James making jabs at Booker's heritage and threatening cameramen with legal action, surely on no legitimate legal grounds. James was convicted of fraud in 2008 after conspiring to sell nine city lots to a mistress, who quickly turned them over for hundreds of thousands in profit. He served two years in prison.

2. Chicago Pension Scandal

City: Chicago
Year: 2012

Few Chicagoans were surprised to learn in 2012 that retired city politicians were receiving obscene payouts from the city's pension fund. The city's politics are, after all, synonymous with municipal corruption. That doesn't make these figures any less jarring: 21 city alderman were expected to receive nearly $58 million in pension money during their lifetimes, despite only paying around $20 million into the fund. "Guess who pays the other two-thirds," the Chicago Tribune pointed out rather bluntly. "If you wondered why the aldermen usually supported whatever [Mayor Richard M.] Daley set before them, now you can appreciate one important reason: His administration had bought their servitude by engineering pensions beyond their wildest expectations." Daley himself takes home a city pension of $66,149 a year, in addition to $117,629 from the state. Yes, the city mayor who decades ago earned a cool $17,500 as a state legislator now receives checks of a whopping seven times that—from a body he served in for less than a decade.

1. Demolition of Meigs Field

City: Chicago
Year: 2003

Mayor Richard M. Daley evidently wasn't so pleased after Illinois legislators agreed in 2001 to allow Chicago's iconic Meigs Field airport to remain open for twenty-five years. He'd long planned to close the airport, but legal hurdles from officials downstate had gotten in the way. Needless to say, the Chicago machine bigwig evoked an angsty 12-year-old girl one night in 2003, acting as if city officials had taken away his texting privileges and sent him to his room. With authority from no one, on a Sunday night in March 2003, the Mayor ordered crew to etch the runway with large X-shaped gouges, effectively destroying it without informing Federal Aviation Administration officials. Sixteen planes were left stranded at the airport for the mayor's trouble. "To do this any other way would have been needlessly contentious," the mayor explained, later citing national security concerns as a reason for his spontaneous bulldozing. The airport was dangerously close to Chicago's downtown. As a result of the mayor's decision, incoming flights had to be redirected at the last-minute. If destroying a historic airstrip at midnight on a whim doesn't constitute boss status, we're not sure what does.