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be two or three people for me in that whole room of district leaders. And she said, and I'll never forget it -- I remind her of it occasionally, “Boy, do they hate you. Why?” And I said, “I don't know why, Edith.” I really didn't know why. I suspected again it was the publicity I was getting and the hair shirt quality. The reform movement has this operation where they'll destroy anybody whose head is lifted above the grass.

Anyway I decided I'm going to run for the city council, and the hate against me was so great by some of the richies like Eleanor Clark French -- a very rich lady on the east side, lives on East 38th Street -- that rather than support me for whatever reasons (now she says she loves me: they all love me now that I have an element of power and I've beaten them, so to speak, at the polls), she is supporting a guy called Morty Schiff from the New Chelsea Club, a real jerky guy who used to walk around with a Mexican serape and sandals. Now, that's okay if you're walking around in your own home. It's not exactly the kind of costume that endears voters to you -- a Mexican serape on the east side of Manhattan. She wouldn't have him in her own home as a social guest, I can tell you. That's the kind of person she is. But she would rather be for him at that time than for me. It was so interesting, the hate that built up. But I beat him. He didn't even go into the primaries. It was a club operation and he got out, and I did not have a primary, and then