Sublime

As Burke said in describing his early years in Albany, “Murphy delegates to the point of anarchy.”7

Journal,

From their seats in the spectator galleries high up over the Assembly Chamber, the reformers could see him roaming the narrow aisles between the legislators’ desks, pleading, cajoling, threatening, bargaining, dealing, trading votes—using every trick he had learned in his years of working for Tammany.

He could watch the Governor twist arms, offer incentives and drop, one by one, with matchless guile, the veils from in front of threats.

But, buried within the lines of convoluted legalisms, the amendment also contained an innocuous phrase—concealed, as was the custom of the man who had been the best bill drafter in Albany, at the end of a long sentence whose other clauses all purportedly limited his powers—allowing the Coordinator to “represent the city in its relations with cooper

First, he and Thatcher were what sociologists called weak ties.