Demanding an investigation backfired when the mayor had secretly broken with the machine.

Evidence

In the time-honored ploy of politicians whose party is in power, Ahearn demanded an official investigation, assuming that it would be conducted by Tammany faithful. Unknown to him, however, Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr., had just decided to break with Tammany. McClellan gave Ahearn the investigation he had asked for—but the man appointed to conduct it was an independent twenty-eight-year-old Yale graduate and lawyer, John Purroy Mitchel. Mitchel confirmed the Bureau’s findings. City Club President George McAneny, ignoring Tammany pressures on his business, volunteered to deliver Mitchel’s report personally to Governor Hughes with his own endorsement, and Hughes summoned Ahearn to public hearings in Albany. At the hearings, Ahearn said he didn’t know anything about the contracts; Hughes said he should have—and removed him from office. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 260

Categorization

• SEED: Ahearn’s own demand for investigation becoming the instrument of his removal is the classic political-siege irony — could seed an essay on how incumbents arm the very process meant to clear them.