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.