Former New York mayor Ed Koch dies aged 88

Former New York mayor Ed Koch, the combative politician who rescued the city from near-financial ruin during three City Hall terms, has died aged 88.

After leaving city hall in January 1990, Koch battled assorted health problems and heart disease.

The larger-than-life Koch, who breezed through the streets of New York flashing his signature thumbs-up sign, won a national reputation with his feisty style. “How’m I doing?” was his trademark question to constituents, although the answer mattered little to Koch. The mayor always thought he was doing wonderfully.

Former mayor David Dinkins, who succeeded Koch, called the former mayor “a feisty guy who would tell you what he thinks”.

Bald and bombastic, paunchy and pretentious, the city’s 105th mayor was quick with a friendly quip and equally fast with a cutting remark for his political enemies.

“You punch me, I punch back,” Koch once observed.

The Reverend Al Sharpton, head of the National Action Network, said in a statement that although they disagreed on many things, Koch “was never a phoney or a hypocrite. He would not patronise or deceive you. He said what he meant. He meant what he said. He fought for what he believed. May he rest in peace.”

The mayor dismissed his critics as “wackos”, waged verbal war with developer Donald Trump (“piggy”) and fellow former mayor Rudolph Giuliani (“nasty man”), lambasted the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and once reduced the head of the city council to tears.

“I’m not the type to get ulcers,” he wrote in his autobiography. “I give them.”

When president George W Bush ran for re-election in 2004, Democrat Koch crossed party lines to support him and spoke at the GOP convention.

He also endorsed Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s re-election efforts at a time when Bloomberg was a Republican. Koch described himself as “a liberal with sanity”.

Under his watch from 1978-89, the city climbed out of its financial crisis thanks to his tough fiscal policies and budget cuts. But homelessness and Aids soared in the 1980s, and critics charged his responses were too little, too late.

A lifelong bachelor, Koch offered a typically blunt response to questions about his own sexuality: “My answer to questions on this subject is simply, ‘Fuck off.’ There have to be some private matters left.”

Picture: Ed Koch raises his hands with two thumbs up while addressing the opening session of the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco in 1984. Picture: AP