16 Facts About Paul O'Dwyer

Paul O'Dwyer was born in Bohola, County Mayo, Ireland, and in 1925 emigrated to Brooklyn, New York.

Paul O'Dwyer was educated at Fordham University and St John's Law School, and became a United States citizen in 1931.

Active in local Irish-American organizations as a young man, O'Dwyer had a law practice in downtown Brooklyn while his brother William served as the borough's magistrate.

Some of Paul O'Dwyer's more renowned legal cases were those involving people accused of Communist activities.

Paul O'Dwyer's influence protected several Irish Republican Army gunmen from deportation, including "The Fort Worth Five" and Vincent Conlon.

Paul O'Dwyer supported the illegal transportation of weapons to Palestine in the 1940s and to Northern Ireland in the 1970s, and admitted knowledge of such smuggling routes.

Paul O'Dwyer considered the transportation of arms to be an acceptable form of smuggling and compared it to the smuggling of narcotics.

Active in New York City politics, Paul O'Dwyer ran for political office several times.

Paul O'Dwyer was elected to the city council from an at-large seat representing all of Manhattan for a term from 1963 to 1965.

In 1965, Paul O'Dwyer ran for mayor but finished a distant fourth in the Democratic primary won by Abe Beame.

In 1973, Paul O'Dwyer won election to the position of New York City Council President, which was then one of three citywide elected positions.

Paul O'Dwyer served in that capacity from 1974 to 1977.

In 1968, in opposition to US involvement in the Vietnam War and with the support of presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy, Paul O'Dwyer ran in the Democratic Party primary for US Senator from New York and surprised observers with an upset victory.

Again he found his candidacy opposing popular Republican Party incumbent Jacob Javits and again Paul O'Dwyer lost in the general election.

Paul O'Dwyer was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination to the US Senate that was won by Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1976, finishing in fourth in the Democratic primary behind Moynihan, Bella Abzug, and Ramsey Clark.

Paul O'Dwyer died six days before his 91st birthday in 1998.