Roosevelt, Mayors and the New Deal Regime: The Origins of Intergovernmental Lobbying and Administration

Abstract

The United States Conference of Mayors (USCM), founded in 1933 to give big city mayors an effective organizational base for lobbying Congress and coordinating with executive branch agencies, was a major force in New Deal politics. It lobbied Congress and the White House to support stronger urban programs and federal-city links. The USCM also acted as an informal extension of the federal bureaucracy by providing program information to municipalities and feedback about implementation and policy impact to the federal agencies involved in urban affairs. The close political relationship between FDR and the USCM was not only a central part of the New Deal effort to create a stronger administrative state, it also set a pattern of politics in national urban policy that would persist until the early 1980s.