Jack Lessenberry recalls Detroit's "socialist mayor," the one and only Hazen Pingree, who took office in 1890.
Once, a long, long time ago, there was a mayor of Detroit who got it right. He figured out what was wrong — mainly government corruption and corporate greed, Lessenberry writes.
More importantly, he figured out how to fix it.
He had no political experience. He was a little fat man with a pale face, scraggly beard and cold blue eyes. To the end of his days, he called himself a conservative Republican.
His opponents, sounding very much like today’s Tea Party lunatics, called him a socialist. He didn’t give a damn.
