Definition
Vincent Impellitteri served as mayor of New York City from 1950 to 1953, completing William O'Dwyer's term after an unexpected independent-ticket election. A former City Council president with no political base of his own, he is remembered in The Power Broker less as a leader than as the figure under whom Robert Moses's reach grew effectively unchecked.
Impellitteri is the archetype of the weak mayor — the chief executive of a major city who, lacking machine backing or independent stature, becomes a ceremonial figurehead for stronger administrators below him.
Why it matters
How it works
A weak mayor accelerates the centralization of power in whichever subordinate offices have their own funding, their own statutes, and their own press. In Impellitteri's New York, that subordinate was Moses, whose Triborough Authority controlled bond revenue the city could not touch and whose construction tempo set the de-facto agenda for the administration.
The general pattern is durable: the formal hierarchy of a city government does not equal its real hierarchy. Where the elected head is weak and an unelected administrator commands money, contracts, and headlines, the administrator governs.