James K. McGuire: Boy Mayor and Irish Nationalist (Irish Studies)

This is the story of a self-educated, charismatic, gifted leader who overcame

personal tragedy in childhood and was elected the youngest mayor

of a major city in America at age twenty-six. It is the story of a reformer

who possessed a genius for politics. James K. McGuire (1868-1923) was

elected mayor of Syracuse three times as a Democrat in a Republican bastion.

As a candidate for governor in 1898, he nearly derailed the rise of

Theodore Roosevelt. His ideas and positions informed the candidacy of

William Jennings Bryan in his quest for the presidency and the platform of

the Democratic Party in those elections.