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Ronnie Eldridge, the longtime Upper West Side resident who shaped New York City politics across four decades as an adviser, activist, and elected official, has died at 95.
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As the New York Times reported in its obituary, Eldridge was a self-described lifelong political animal who shared a birthday with Franklin D. Roosevelt. She rose from Reform Democratic leader on the Upper West Side to become one of the most influential women in city government. Along the way, she served as a trusted adviser to Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Mayor John V. Lindsay, and Representative Bella S. Abzug — and from 1989 to 2001, she represented an Upper West Side district on the City Council.Her West 93rd Street brownstone was the setting for a pivotal moment in American political history. In 1967, she opened her home to a group of antiwar Democrats planning to challenge President Lyndon B. Johnson. That gathering helped spark the movement that drew Senators Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy into the presidential race and ultimately led to Johnson’s withdrawal.
Kennedy’s assassination in 1968 briefly left Eldridge disillusioned, but she soon found a kindred spirit in Mayor Lindsay, whose liberal stances on civil rights, the Vietnam War, and the women’s and gay rights movements matched her own. She persuaded her friend Bella Abzug to join her in endorsing Lindsay’s 1969 re-election after he lost the Republican primary, and she became a key member of his inner circle at City Hall.
Colleagues remembered her as the administration’s moral compass. Jay Kriegel, Lindsay’s chief of staff, recalled that her values were instinctual and that her laugh alone could shame people into doing the right thing. As special assistant to the mayor and later deputy city administrator, she championed causes including day care, drug addiction treatment, and lead paint poisoning — and served as a bridge between City Hall and liberal Democrats, women’s rights advocates, and the gay rights movement.
Born Roslynn Myers in Manhattan on January 30, 1931 — her name a combination of her grandmothers’ names, Rosa and Lena — she graduated from the High School of Music & Art and Barnard College. She married psychologist Lawrence Eldridge in 1955; he died in 1970. She later married columnist Jimmy Breslin in 1982; he died in 2017.
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Her post-Lindsay career was characteristically restless: she worked as an executive producer at WNET, ran for Manhattan borough president, directed the state Division for Women under Governor Mario Cuomo, co-founded the New York City Battered Women’s Defense Committee, and finally won her own seat on the City Council in 1989.Breslin loved to tell the story of that first election night. After she promised him she would serve only one term, she leaped out of bed at 6:30 the next morning to attend a breakfast with labor leaders. When he protested that she had just won, she replied: “Don’t be silly. This is how you get re-elected.”
She is survived by three children from her first marriage, Daniel, Emily, and Lucy Eldridge; four stepchildren; six grandchildren; six step-grandchildren; and a step-great-grandchild.
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