Talk:William Sulzer

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.	Biography Portal
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the project's quality scale. [FAQ]
	This article is supported by the Politics and government work group.

	This article is part of the New York State WikiProject, an attempt to better organize and improve articles related to the U.S. state of New York. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. Bulletin: The next New York City meetup is Sunday June 1st.
Start	This article has been rated as start-Class on the quality scale.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.

This entry reads more like a work of hagiography than an encylopedic account. I didn't really know a damn thing about William Sulzer, except that he was impeached, before I read this article. Having now read the article, I know that A: he was impeached; and B: that some editor somewhere thinks he's Robin Hood.

Yeah, it's in bad shape as it now stands.Sylvain1972 14:43, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I have added material from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress , which adds some balance at least to the extent of more fully acknowledging the rest of his political career. To address the matter of the justice or injustice of his impeachment would take a lot more research, which is a task for someone who's actually interested... BPK 20:03, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

There is no question to the following facts:

• He filed an incorrect campaign contribution statement, signed and sworn to, which is perjury according to the law.
• He was, for a long time, a Tammany man who followed instructions from Murphy.
• Nobody had ever been impeached until then for acts committed before taking office, this was the first time.
• The accusation was made as a means to get him out of the way, when he ceased to follow instructions from Murphy.

There is still controversy as to how to evaluate the facts.

• If Murphy had not pressed the charges, would anybody have said anything about diverted campaign funds? Certainly nobody ever had questioned before such statements filed with the Secretary of State.
• Even convicted of this form of perjury, could the Court for the Trial of Impeachments have voted for his remaining in office, accepting it as "a mistake somebody made without Sulzer's knowledge"? The majority of the court being state senators under instructions from Murphy, they simply obeyed.
• A long line of Governors had committed more or less corrupt acts during their time in office, but none was impeached, so why Sulzer?

These questions are still being debated, and anyone can make up his mind to arrive at whatever conclusion or opinion. Kraxler (talk) 20:09, 17 February 2008 (UTC)