Supporting Republican candidates

[DFW]

10. Absolutely. The first vote I ever cast was for a Republican, and I still stand by it.

The voting age had been reduced to 18 from 21 while I was 19. I was a sophomore in college in Philadelphia in 1971, and the corrupt chief of police, Frank Rizzo, was running for mayor. His opponent was a mild-mannered bureaucrat named Thatcher Longstreth. Rizzo was an odious loud-mouthed buffoon (sound familiar?) who won the election easily because Philadelphia is such a strongly Democratic town. You could no more win a race for mayor as a Republican in Philadelphia, PA in those days than you could as a Democrat in Philadelphia, Mississippi today (I'm just assuming here--don't actually know Philadelphia, MS).

As it turned out, Rizzo proudly boasted that Richard Nixon was "his friend," switched, appropriately enough, to the Republican Party soon after the election, and had to stop construction on a $400,000 (in the early 1970s !!) house, whose financing he couldn't explain, given his $40,000 salary. Rizzo was the scum of the earth, and I proudly stand by the only vote I ever cast for a Republican.