Koch, at 85, Wages a New Campaign

JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ The New York Times 08/08/2010 14:08

Edward I. Koch, 85 years old, thirsty for a Dairy Queen milkshake and ready for a nap, was fuming. “Throw the bums out!” Mr. Koch, the former mayor of New York City, shouted from the steps of a city hall 400 miles from his Greenwich Village home.

The bums in question were four local politicians who had failed to sign on to what could be Mr. Koch’s most difficult campaign yet: to remake the ineffective government in Albany. In front of a lone local news camera and a few curious onlookers, he called out each offender with a jumbo photo.

“You’re either on the side of the angels, or you’re a bum,” Mr. Koch said with customary bluntness, the Buffalo wind muffling his words. “And if the angels betray their pledges, I’m going to run around the state screaming, ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire!’ ”

For the first time since 1982, when he lost a Democratic primary for governor after describing the lifestyle of upstate New Yorkers as “sterile,” the irrepressible elder of New York City politics was back in Buffalo.

Mr. Koch, who estimates that he will live only two or three more years, calls the personal endeavor his “last hurrah.” His tombstone has been set, he has endured a stroke and a heart attack, and he underwent quadruple bypass surgery last summer. So he is devoting himself to a task many have tried and failed to accomplish, with a group he calls New York Uprising. His mission is to shame — and oust — lawmakers he labels “enemies of reform.”