Jerry Finkelstein, whose newspaper and business empire made him one of New York’s most powerful political insiders and sometimes kingmaker, died yesterday at his Manhattan home. He was 96.
Finkelstein graduated from New York Law School but shunned the bar to become a reporter for the feisty tabloid the Daily Mirror, then co-founded The Civil Service Leader at age 23.
He later bought The Law Journal, the bible of the city’s legal profession, acquired a string of weekly papers on Long Island and in the city, and in 1994 opened a Congress-watching Washington publication, The Hill.
“He was a publishing giant as far as I’m concerned,” said mayoral hopeful Tom Allon, who worked as an executive at Finkelstein’s News Communication.
Finkelstein had a brief career in public relations with columnist Tex McCrary, in a firm whose staffers included a young Barbara Walters and William Safire.
Safire, later a presidential speechwriter and New York Times columnist, once signed one of his own books, “To Jerry Finkelstein, who taught me everything I know — but not everything he knows.”
Walters, however, quit after she asked Finkelstein for a raise and he replied, “Not now, sweetheart.”
Through his conglomerate, Struther Wells, Finkelstein acquired a considerable fortune, a triplex in Manhattan — whose artwork and furniture were valued at about $1 million — and a Southampton estate.
He raised money for Democrats as well as Republicans, managed the successful re-election campaign of one mayor, William O’Dwyer, and helped promote two others, Robert Wagner and John Lindsay.
His greatest efforts were reserved for the political career of his son, former City Council President Andrew Stein. Finkelstein financed Stein’s first race, for an East Side seat in the state Assembly, with $250,000, the biggest war chest raised at that time for a local campaign.
With his father’s powerful support, Stein was elected Manhattan borough president in 1977 and City Council president in 1985 and 1989 but failed in his challenge to wrest the Democratic nomination from then-Mayor David Dinkins in 1993.
Finkelstein himself tried elective politics only once, when he lost a race for a state Senate seat at age 26. But he was appointed chairman of the City Planning Commission by O’Dwyer and named a commissioner of the Port Authority by Gov. Nelson Rockfeller.
He was well connected to Republicans in the state, like Rockefeller and Sen. Al D’Amato, and Democrats in Washington, like the Kennedys. Finkelstein raised money for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and helped convince Bobby Kennedy to run for the US Senate from New York in 1964.
Survivors include Stein and a younger son, James Finkelstein, chairman of the company that bought The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard and Adweek in 2010.