Thanks for that informative post.
If only NY could go back in time. By about a century :-)
Bad idea. Tammany Hall ran the city in 1919. Over at the New York City Civil Service, Robert Moses was trying to reform operations, but the Tammany people ran rings around him. It wasn't until Gov. Al Smith took Moses under his wing and taught him how power operated in New York that he became effective.
The best time would have been after December 1933 when Republican candidate Fiorello La Guardia was inaugurated mayor. His first words after being sworn in were in Italian: "E finita la cucagna!" ("The free lunch is over!") La Guardia, with the able assistance of Thomas Dewey, Robert Moses and FDR, castrated Tammany and cleaned up the city.