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8 — 20 July 1985
The plea: Winfield C. Moses Jr., the flood-fight mayor of 1982, resigned on 8 July 1985 after pleading guilty to three misdemeanor campaign-finance violations. City Controller Cosette Simon acted as mayor for the eleven days between the resignation and the caucus — the city's first woman mayor, in the acting office.
The return: Twelve days after the resignation, on 20 July 1985, a Democratic precinct caucus voted Moses back into the office — 86 of 99 votes — to finish the term. He served out the term to 1987. The episode is the city's strangest mayoral transition: a guilty plea, a resignation, an acting mayor, and a party caucus that undid the resignation almost before the ink dried, all inside a fortnight, and all of it on the public record.
Sources:
- The mayoral record, Government — the resignation, the plea, the caucus vote of 86 of 99, and Cosette Simon's eleven days as acting mayor.
- The mayoral succession record — Simon held the controllership in 1985 and acted as mayor between the resignation and the caucus re-election.