Jerry Finkelstein, New York Power Broker, Dies at 96
Jerry Finkelstein, who made a fortune in business, real estate and newspapers, including The New York Law Journal and The Hill, and for many years was a self-styled Democratic power broker in New York City, died on Wednesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 96.
Jerry Finkelstein
His death was confirmed by his son Andrew J. Stein.
With money and connections drawn in a wide-ranging career that placed him at the nexus of the legal profession, publishing and politics in New York, Mr. Finkelstein assisted presidents, governors, mayors, members of Congress, city and state officials and a host of judges, lawyers and lesser luminaries.
But he was instrumental to only one politician: his son Andrew, who shortened his surname and in campaigns heavily financed by his father became an assemblyman, Manhattan borough president and City Council president. Mr. Stein quit his last race, for the 1993 Democratic nomination for mayor, lacking public support. The incumbent, David N. Dinkins, won the primary but lost the general election to the Republican candidate, Rudolph W. Giuliani.
Mr. Finkelstein was the retired chairman of Struthers Wells, a conglomerate that manufactures a range of heating, fuel handling and thermal engineering equipment, and the owner of a newspaper chain that includes The Hill in Washington. He derived much of his power from The Law Journal, which he acquired in 1963 and built into the leading publisher of New York's court decisions, with news and analyses of legal affairs.
For all his considerable influence, Mr. Finkelstein ran for office only once - for a State Senate seat in 1942 - and lost. He held a few appointive posts. But for 30 years in New York, he was a man to see for political support, votes, a favor, a job or a friend with connections.
For President John F. Kennedy, he helped raise money for what became the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. For President Lyndon B. Johnson, he helped pick a patronage dispenser. He promoted the mayoral campaigns of Robert F. Wagner and John V. Lindsay, raised money for Senator Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 presidential race, and served as a conduit to the Democrats for Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, a liberal Republican.
Mr. Finkelstein was born in New York on Jan. 26, 1916. His father, Albert, ran a small business. He attended George Washington High School and New York University and graduated from New York Law School in 1938, but did not take the bar exam. He became a reporter for The New York Daily Mirror, and with a colleague, Seward Brisbane, son of the Hearst editor Arthur Brisbane, founded The Civil Service Leader, a newspaper for public employees, in 1939.
In 1942, he married Shirley Marks. She died in 2003. Besides Mr. Stein, he is survived by another son, James Finkelstein, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
He managed the 1949 re-election campaign of Mayor William O'Dwyer, who, before resigning in a scandal in 1950, named Mr. Finkelstein chairman of the City Planning Commission.
In 1963, Mr. Finkelstein bought The Law Journal, the official paper of the city's legal profession, for $1 million. Its circulation was small, and it was an ocean of tiny print: legal notices, case calendars, texts of decisions. But he turned it into a leading journal, and he wielded enormous power by deciding which cases to publish, in effect determining what the bar read - a leverage not lost on judges, lawyers and politicians.
Mr. Finkelstein built his fortune in a series of ventures. In the 1950s, he borrowed $85,000 and, with the help of friends on Wall Street, bought the Fifth Avenue Coach Company for $5 million. He later sold his stock in it for $990,000. He then went into public relations with Tex McCrary, the columnist and radio and television personality. They helped a client, Louis A. Chesler, a stock speculator, with some difficulties he had with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The commission later reported that Mr. Finkelstein had earned $2.3 million in Chesler stock speculations.
