Liberals and Democrats certainly have mixed feelings about Ed Koch, a one-time anti-war Congressman who ran a city that was awash in drugs and racial/ethnic tension. The media has largely eulogized him kindly, as is so often the case when someone dies, and I don't know what the proper protocol is for criticizing him. But this is interesting:
David France, the journalist/AIDS activist who made the stunning documentary 'How to Survive a Plague,' was critical of Koch's handling of the epidemic.
"He presided over a city that was broken in many ways. It was broken in that it had a severe housing shortage, it was broken in that it had serious poverty with no social net, and then the hospital system was broken," France said. "He had homelessness, he had a drug epidemic that was ballooning, and then we had this other mysterious epidemic that was filling hospitals. They were overflowing, and he was responding to none of that in an effective way. Instead, he was a pugnacious mayor, and he would respond to requests and really the pleas of his community with hostile retorts."
France says more in the interview about it. Just food for thought.