James K. McGuire

This is the story of a self-educated, charismatic, gifted leader who overcame personal tragedy in childhood and was elected the youngest mayor of a major city in America at age twenty-six. It is the story of a reformer who possessed a genius for politics. James K. McGuire (1868-1923) was elected mayor of Syracuse three times as a Democrat in a Republican bastion. As a candidate for governor in 1898, he nearly derailed the rise of Theodore Roosevelt. His ideas and positions informed the candidacy of William Jennings Bryan in his quest for the presidency and the platform of the Democratic Party in those elections.