Holdover from the Lindsay period, I believe. If you can get yourself elected to local office in NYC you have to commit a crime to get unseated.
My state senator for more than 20 years, in an almost entirely Italian Catholic and heavily unionized neighborhood, was a Norwegian Lutheran Republican named Marty Knorr.
21 posted on 11/20/2004 7:25:13 AM PST by wideawake
(God bless our brave soldiers and their Commander in Chief)