Frank Zeidler

Zeidler was Milwaukee's third Socialist mayor (after Emil Seidel [1910-12] and Daniel Hoan [1916-40]), making Milwaukee the largest American city to elect three Socialists to its highest office (a fact that singer Alice Cooper pointed out in the 1992 film Wayne's World).

During Frank Zeidler's administration, Milwaukee grew industrially and never had to borrow money to repay loans.

During this period, Milwaukee nearly doubled its size with an aggressive campaign of municipal annexations: large parts of the Town of Lake and most of the Town of Granville were annexed to the city.

The park system was upgraded.

Frank Paul Zeidler (September 20, 1912 – July 7, 2006) was an American socialist politician and mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, serving three terms from April 20, 1948, to April 18, 1960.

Zeidler, a member of the Socialist Party of America, is the last Socialist Party candidate to be elected mayor of a large American city.

Zeidler was born in Milwaukee on September 20, 1912.

He studied at both the University of Chicago and Marquette University, but was never able to graduate due to ill health.

He became a socialist because of socialism's emphasis on peace and improving the conditions for workers.

Zeidler became an active member of the Young People's Socialist League (YPSL), the youth branch of the Socialist Party of America, he later became the leader of the Milwaukee branch of the Red Falcons during the 1930s.

In an interview, Zeidler said he chose the ideology of socialism in 1933 "because of several things in its philosophy. One was the brotherhood of people all over the world. Another was its struggle for peace. Another was the equal distribution of economic goods. Another was the idea of cooperation. A fifth was the idea of democratic planning in order to achieve your goals. Those were pretty good ideas".

He distanced himself from the beliefs of communism, especially communism linked in any way to the Soviet Union.

Indeed, he was (and remained) an active Lutheran, a religious commitment which he saw as being fulfilled rather than contradicted by his Socialist activism.

Later, however, he credited his adoption of socialism to reading left-wing literature, with the majority being written by Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas during the Great Depression.

Zeidler was elected Milwaukee County Surveyor in 1938 on the Progressive Party ballot line (the Socialist Party and Progressives were in coalition in Milwaukee at that time).

He was elected to a six-year term on the Milwaukee Board of School Directors (a non-partisan office) in 1941, just after his brother Carl Zeidler was elected Mayor of Milwaukee in 1940.

In 1942, Frank Zeidler was the Socialist nominee for Governor of Wisconsin, receiving 1.41% of the vote in a six-way race.

He was re-elected to the Milwaukee School Board in 1947.

After two years in office, Carl Zeidler enlisted in the Navy at the height of World War II.

Carl was killed at sea when his ship was lost and became a local hero, helping to pave the way for his younger brother to become mayor.

In 1948 Frank Zeidler ran for mayor in a crowded field of fourteen candidates and won, undoubtedly aided by the familiarity of his surname.

The large field of candidates was due to Mayor John Bohn declining to seek re-election in 1948.

Zeidler faced the vexing issue of race relations as Milwaukee's African-American population tripled during the 1950s.

Zeidler was a vocal supporter of the civil rights movement and his opponents tried to exploit this to their advantage.

Zeidler's political enemies spread false rumors that Zeidler had put billboards in the South asking blacks to come north.

Many workers in Milwaukee were threatened for supporting Zeidler.

One manufacturer even threatened to fire employees who voted for Zeidler.

Zeidler was re-elected in 1952 and 1956, but declined to seek another term in 1960, citing health reasons.

Among the candidates that year was attorney Henry S. Reuss, a Democrat who later went on to win election to Congress in 1954.

Zeidler spearheaded planning and construction of the beginning of Milwaukee's freeway system, and turned it over to Milwaukee County in 1954.

A transportation advocate claims that Zeidler always maintained that the projected Milwaukee freeway system should have been built and that the city's competitiveness had been compromised by the failure to complete the planned system.

Zeidler's plans for the city were only a partial success.

Zeidler, angry about the resistance to his plans, said in 1958: "The city consults with suburban governments, but we do not believe they have reason for existing."

Milwaukee doubled in area through annexation and it experienced very little decline in population during a period of American urban decline starting in the 1960s and lasting until about 1990.

Suburban residents and governments fiercely resisted annexation and the politics of regional Milwaukee became highly factional.

An attorney who sued to block annexation claimed Zeidler planted listening devices in his office.

Zeidler cited bad personal health and the race issue as reasons for not running for re-election in 1960.

A 1993 survey of historians, political scientists and urban experts conducted by Melvin G. Holli of the University of Illinois at Chicago ranked Zeidler as the twenty-first-best American big-city mayor to have served between the years 1820 and 1993.

After leaving office, Frank Zeidler worked as a mediator, as development director for Alverno College, and served in the administration of Wisconsin Governor John W. Reynolds.

As a leader of the Public Enterprise Committee, Zeidler was a frequent and severe critic of his successor, Henry Maier.