Background
He was born in New York City, the son of Henry Timothy and Sarah Mallon Flynn. His parents, who came to New York from Ireland about 1870, were well-to-do by immigrant standards, and his father was a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin.
He was born in New York City, the son of Henry Timothy and Sarah Mallon Flynn. His parents, who came to New York from Ireland about 1870, were well-to-do by immigrant standards, and his father was a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin.
Flynn grew up in a comfortable home in the Bronx, attended local parochial schools, and studied at Fordham University, where he received the LL. B. degree in 1912.
He was admitted to the New York bar in 1913. Flynn's long career in politics began in 1917, when he received the regular Democratic (Tammany Hall) endorsement for New York State assemblyman for the Second District.
Winning easily, he served in Albany for four years before being elected in 1921 as Sheriff of Bronx County, a lucrative sinecure. His big boost came early in 1922, when Arthur H. Murphy, the Bronx Democratic leader, died. Rather than appoint a new man to guide the vast county organization, Charles F. Murphy, the head of Tammany Hall, selected a triumvirate consisting of Stephen B. Nugent, Thomas H. O'Neill, and Flynn, who was then but thirty years old.
That arrangement did not work to the satisfaction of Murphy, who arranged a vote on May 15, 1922, that left Flynn alone as chairman of the county executive committee. From that date until his death more than thirty years later, Flynn dominated and controlled the Democratic party in the Bronx, a borough more populous in 1920 than all but three cities in the United States.
He played a key role in electing two mayors--James J. Walker in 1925 and William O'Dwyer in 1949--and, together with Carmine G. DeSapio, was a principal sponsor of Manhattan Borough President Robert F. Wagner's successful campaign against Mayor Vincent Impellitteri in 1953.
Flynn was also instrumental in cutting down Mayor John P. O'Brien in 1933. By supporting Joseph V. McKee against O'Brien, Flynn cost the incumbent enough votes to enable Fiorello La Guardia, the famed "Little Flower, " to become mayor with less than half the total vote. Flynn was an early and consistent supporter of governors Franklin D. Roosevelt and Herbert H. Lehman, both of whom appointed Flynn Secretary of State, a post he held from 1929 to 1939.
As a reward for Flynn's loyal support over two decades, President Roosevelt sought in 1943 to appoint him minister to Australia (because of British Empire connections there was no ambassador to Australia at that time) and ambassador-at-large to the Southwest Pacific. But Flynn's confirmation by the Senate was stalled by extensive publicity about an incident involving the use of New York City workers and paving materials early in 1942 at his summer home in Carmel, about sixty miles north of Manhattan.
Although Flynn argued persuasively that the work had been arranged without his knowledge and that the affair had come to light only when he sought advice on how to pay for it, the publicity, nevertheless, made Flynn appear a petty grafter. The president withdrew the nomination, and Flynn resigned as Democratic national chairman, national committeeman from New York, and Bronx County leader.
His career apparently finished, Flynn instead resumed his city and state posts. In general, he was associated with the liberal or New Deal-Fair Deal wing of the New York State Democratic party, and often he opposed the more conservative group led by James Farley. But Flynn was hardly a radical; he broke with the American Labor party because he believed it was dominated by Communists, and he would not permit Bronx Democratic candidates to accept Labor party endorsements.
A ruddy-faced, well-built six-footer with an attractive personality, Flynn was better educated and more articulate than most machine politicians. But he insisted on the traditional organization virtues of discipline and party loyalty, and he prided himself on keeping his word.
Although his family maintained a long and cordial relationship with the Lehmans and the Roosevelts, with whom they often exchanged visits, Flynn remained socially distant from his political subordinates and had few close friends.
In May 1950 Flynn suffered a heart attack while attending a Democratic meeting in Chicago. Thereafter, he continued to make important political decisions, but his health weakened perceptibly and he retired from public view.
On July 25, 1953, he sailed with his wife and daughter on the liner Mauretania for a vacation at the home of Chief Justice Conor Maquire of Ireland's Supreme Court. He died at St. Vincent's Hospital in Dublin.
The crowded funeral service at St. Jerome's Roman Catholic Church in the Bronx, where he had been married and where all of his children had been baptized, was appropriate to Flynn's long association with the neighborhood and borough of his origin.
At the 1940 Democratic National Convention, Flynn was one of the inner group of Roosevelt supporters who engineered the draft movement to renominate the president for a third term. When Postmaster General James A. Farley refused to withdraw his own candidacy for the presidential nomination, Roosevelt chose Flynn as Farley's replacement as national chairman of the Democratic party.
In that office, Flynn was instrumental in the effort to secure the vice-presidency for Senator Harry S. Truman in 1944 without revealing Roosevelt's hand in the maneuver.
He entered politics as a Democrat; and was a member of the New York State Assembly (Bronx Co. , 2nd D. ) in 1918, 1919, 1920 and 1921.
On June 15, 1927, after a long courtship, Flynn married his childhood sweetheart, Helen Margaret Jones. They had three children and lived for many years in the fashionable Riverdale section of the Bronx.