Mario Procaccino

Mario Angelo Procaccino ( ; September 5, 1912 – December 20, 1995) was an Italian-American lawyer, comptroller, and candidate for Mayor of New York City.

Life and career Procaccino was born in Bisaccia, Kingdom of Italy. When he was nine years old, his family immigrated to the United States. He graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx in 1931. Despite family poverty, he attended City College of New York and Fordham Law School, becoming a lawyer later in the 1930s. In the early 1940s, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia heard him address a war-bond rally in Italian, and seeing how excited the crowd was, told him he should be in politics and arranged for an appointment to a $3,500-a-year post with the city's legal department.

Procaccino lost the mayoralty to Lindsay in a three-way race. The vote was very divided, with Lindsay (Liberal) winning 42 percent, Procaccino (Democrat) 36 percent, and John Marchi (Republican), a member of the New York State Senate, 22 percent. Procaccino narrowly carried the Bronx and Brooklyn, with Lindsay taking Manhattan and Queens, and Marchi took his native Staten Island. Following the election, Procaccino worked as Tax Commissioner for Governor Rockefeller and later returned to private practice.

His campaign had several lasting effects on national and New York politics. One was his coining of the term "limousine liberal" to characterize John Lindsay, which has become a part of the American political lexicon. The second effect was a change of New York City's election law. As a result of Procaccino's slender plurality in the Democratic primary, the law was changed so that if no candidate carries at least 40 percent of the vote, a runoff election must be held.

Procaccino was living outside the city, in Harrison, Westchester County, New York, at the time of his death, but died in the Bronx, where he had lived most of his life.