Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,341

This is the grave of Joseph Alioto.

Born in 1916 in San Francisco, Alioto grew up in the large Italian community of that city. His father was a Sicilian immigrant involved in the fishing industry, which was a very common place for the Sicilians of that area to end up. But unlike most of them, his father was actually quite successful and ended up owning some fish processing companies. Interestingly, his parents met while escaping the city’s 1906 earthquake and subsequent fire on the same fishing boat. How romantic.

Given the family’s relative wealth, Alioto got to go to the city’s elite Catholic schools. He went on to college at St. Mary’s in Moraga, today mostly known as the only WCC program to ever challenge Gonzaga’s dominance on in basketball. Then it was on to Catholic University of America in Washington for a law degree.

After graduation, Alioto got a job at the Antitrust Division in the Department of Justice and then worked for the Board of Economic Warfare, a sinister sounding agency that ran a lot of the Lend-Lease operations to the Allies and other direct assistance during the war. After World War II, Alioto decided to move back home. He started a law firm dedicated to antitrust law and given that he was representing people such as Walt Disney and Samuel Goldwyn, I think we know what side of most of this he was on. He got super rich having these clients.

Alioto also was interested in San Francisco politics. He got onto the San Francisco Board of Education in 1954 (private school kid deciding on public education is rich, but then today we have Emily Oster so nothing has changed), and left that in 1955 to become president of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, part of that sweet, sweet urban renewal to tear everything down and turn it into parking lots. But mostly he was an insider. In 1967, Alioto got behind Eugene McAteer to run for mayor. But McAteer dropped dead before the election, having a heart attack while playing handball. Someone had to run and Alioto agreed to do so. There were a total of 18 candidates and Alioto ended up on top, with 42 percent of the vote, as the main Democratic candidate.

For awhile, Alioto got a lot of good publicity as a rising star in the Democratic Party. He was a staunchly pro-development politician with lots of ties to big time Democrats. He gave the speech to nominate Hubert Humphrey at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and what a fun time that was. There was even talk that Humphrey might name Alioto as his VP candidate, but Ed Muskie got that instead. He even defeated a hit piece against him in Look that claimed he had mob ties. Alioto sued for libel and won, which in the U.S. is very hard to do. But it became clear that Look just ran some rumors to try and make money to survive, as it was about to die.

But Alioto was more than a little dirty. He and some other officials did a dirty deal to take a bunch of the money they had won in an antitrust case and distribute it to themselves. The state of Washington led a civil suit against Alioto and his schemers in 1970 over this. The feds started looking into it at this point and the next year, a grand jury indicted him on bribery charges over the money. He was cleared of the charges later by a judge, but his national ambitions were over.

Still, Alioto won reelection in 1972. His second term wasn’t a lot of fun. This the great period of public sector organizing and striking, even though much of it was illegal. Like other mayors, he mostly acquiesced but others attacked him for that. In 1974, his wife simply disappeared for over two weeks because she hated him so much. This became a national story and she only reappeared after 18 days, saying she had been touring California mission sites and didn’t want to talk to the asshole. The divorce followed shortly. Alioto did run for the Democratic nomination for governor in 1974, but lost to Jerry Brown.

Later in his term, there was a big public sector strike in the city. After the LAPD announced a pay raise, San Francisco cops went out on strike, even though it was illegal. Dianne Feinstein urged Alioto to urge Brown to call out the National Guard against the cops, but he refused to do so. But when firefighters attempted to take over the San Francisco Airport, the feds acted. By this time, the cops were totally out of control. They were drinking on the picket lines and then shooting out streetlights. The ACLU got an order for them to not carry their guns on strike, and they refused it. Alioto told the Supervisors to give the cops whatever they wanted, but they unanimously rejected the mayor. Then someone tried to bomb Alioto’s house. It was pretty messy.

In 1978, Alioto did not run for reelection. Alioto kept working on his antitrust law. In fact, he was the lawyer for Al Davis’ legendary lawsuit against the National Football League in 1980 that led to the right for franchise owners to move teams to other cities without the approval of other NFL owners. He had a lot of experience in football law. He was one of the lawyers who worked on Radovich v. National Football League, the 1957 case that established that the NFL did not have an antitrust exemption like baseball did. In fact, he was Bill Radovich’s lawyer. Radovich was USC offensive lineman who was undrafted when he left college. The Detroit Lions signed him in 1938, he played for awhile and became pretty good, then went to the Navy in World War II, and then back to the Lions in 1945. But the Lions were a clown show franchise and didn’t pay well. So Radovich demanded a trade to the Rams, in part to make more money and in part so he could go home. The Lions refused, so Radovich quit the Lions and played some semipro ball out in Los Angeles. That led the NFL to blacklist him and to pressure the minor league teams to not sign him either. Radovich had to become a regular working stiff. He was waiting tables at a restaurant in Los Angeles when Alioto walked in, They started talking, Radovich explained his issues, and Alioto saw gold. As these things go, it took several years to wind its way through the courts, long after Radovich could play, but he finally did win the case in 1957.

Oh and in 1991, he and his son, who also worked in antitrust law, sued each other over fees related to the Raiders case. Nice family.

Alioto died of prostrate cancer in 1998. He was 81 years old.

Joseph Alioto is buried in Cypress Lawn Cemetery, Colma, California.

If you would like this series to visit other mayors of the 1970s, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Carl Stokes is in Cleveland and Tom Bradley is in Los Angeles. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.