A losing court fight against Robert Moses launched Macy’s thirty-year political career

Evidence

W. Kingsland Macy, who had possessed before it a vague desire to enter politics, had been precipitated by it into the political arena—and had found he enjoyed fighting there. And Macy had learned in his first bout many tricks. After fighting Robert Moses, he was to say, fighting anyone else was easy. Becoming active in 1927 in the Suffolk County Republican organization, within a year he threw out its leader and seized his place. When the Depression loosened for a moment the barons’ stronghold on the state’s GOP organization, Macy tore it from their grasp and by 1932 was Republican State Chairman. Although the GOP’s Old Guard later re-formed and ousted him from the chairmanship, he was to rule Suffolk County, unchallenged, for more than thirty years. When there came a time when it would be useful to him to be in the State Senate, he sent himself to the State Senate; when he wanted to go to Congress, he sent himself to Congress. Macy’s views were liberal, and he introduced progressive governmental innovations in Suffolk County, but to achieve his aims he ruled the county as an old-time political satrapy. Ruthless and cunning, he seemed to know every trick of bending men to his will, and he bent them so successfully that Kingsland Macy was called “the Little King of Suffolk County.” — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 952

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the theme of how adversaries minted by a fight with Moses later become close allies (Moses’ pattern of converting enemies into dependents), echoed across Caro’s portrait of Moses. — connects to: Moses and his fiercest early adversary became thirty-year allies until Macy’s deathbed — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 953