Ed Koch is Dead

Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch died early this morning, the New York Post reports. He was 88.

“The larger-than-life Koch, who breezed through the streets of New York flashing his signature thumbs-up sign, won a national reputation with his feisty style. ‘How’m I doing?’ was his trademark question to constituents, although the answer mattered little to Koch. The mayor always thought he was doing wonderfully.”

First Read: “Interestingly, Koch was the first mayor to become a national celebrity,
demonstrating how New York’s top politician could be a larger-than-life
figure — and it’s a model that Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg
later followed. He was the first ‘national mayor’ deciding that one of
the best ways to run the city was to be seen as somebody who was
omnipresent.”