Jerome Patrick Cavanagh was born on June 16, 1928 in Detroit, Michigan, United States. He was one of six children of Sylvester J. Cavanagh, a boilermaker at the Ford Motor Company, and Mary Irene Timmins. Both his parents had been born in Ireland and had originally emigrated to Canada. They moved to Detroit so that the elder Cavanagh could find work with Ford.
Cavanagh graduated from St. Cecilia High School in Detroit in 1946. He received his Ph. B. in political science from the University of Detroit in 1950 and his law degree from its law school in 1954.
After law school he practiced with the firm of Sullivan, Romanoff, Cavanagh and Nelson, but his real passion was Detroit city politics. In 1961 he challenged incumbent mayor Louis C. Miriani and won. He was the second-youngest mayor in the history of Detroit, and his youth and energy attracted wide national attention and many favorable comparisons to the young Irish-American president, John F. Kennedy. The Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson administrations both saw Detroit as an ideal test site for their many programs designed to address the problems plaguing urban America in the 1960's and viewed its Democratic mayor as a natural political ally. The city received a large infusion of federal money for urban renewal, economic redevelopment, and programs to improve race relations. Detroit was widely hailed by the national press and media as a model city in all three areas owing to Cavanagh's leadership and the federal assistance the city was given. Cavanagh was regularly featured in the national press as an exemplar of the new breed of urban mayors, reversing the decline of America's older industrial cities. He was also a highly visible figure around Motor City, promoting the arts and its cultural institutions, pushing for greater racial integration of the police force, and overseeing many federal programs to rebuild and renew Detroit. In 1965, Cavanagh was reelected with 69 percent of the vote and was considered a rising star on the national political scene. In 1966 he served as president of both the United States Conference of Mayors and the National League of Cities. He was one of the first ten fellows selected in 1966 by the Kennedy Institute at Harvard University. In 1966, Cavanagh sought the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate and in the course of the primary campaign came out publicly against the Vietnam War. This was a bold and dramatic step, but it left him isolated both nationally and in Michigan from the mainstream of the Democratic party, which was still supportive of President Johnson and the war. His stand led to a very bitter, public break with President Johnson and reductions in federal assistance for Detroit. His defeat by former Governor G. Mennen Williams in the Democratic primary marked the end of Cavanagh's political ascent. In later years he referred to himself and his life as a "walking Irish tragedy. " In the summer of 1967 a police raid on an after-hours club quickly escalated into a riot. A series of errors and delays, as well as pent-up frustration and grievances against the police force in the city's black community, expanded the riot into one of the most violent and destructive civil disturbances in American history. Federal assistance was slow to arrive, and as the city burned, its failures as a model city and those of its mayor were laid bare for all to see. Once order was restored, the task of rebuilding the city was slowed and made more difficult by the deep rift between Cavanagh and President Johnson. In 1968, Cavanagh faced additional personal and political traumas. That year he and his wife divorced, which in 1968 was a major liability for an Irish-Catholic politician. There were also allegations (never substantiated) of widespread corruption in his administration's handling of the federal grant money that had flowed through Detroit. Cavanagh chose not to seek reelection in 1969 and moved to Ann Arbor at the end of his term in 1970. For several years he practiced law, taught politics and government at the University of Michigan, and served as president of Urban Synergistics, a New York City-based urban policy think tank exploring solutions to the urban problems that the riots of 1967 and 1968 had brought forward on the national agenda. In 1974, Cavanagh attempted a political comeback, seeking the Democratic nomination for governor. Illness that took him away from the campaign for a great deal of time and vivid images in the minds of Michigan voters of Detroit in flames and occupied by federal troops combined to defeat him in the primary. He returned to the practice of law following the primary election. His name frequently surfaced as a potential candidate for office, but he was plagued by poor health and never again sought elective office.
Cavanagh married Mary Helen Martin on November 22, 1952; the couple had eight children.
Cavanagh married Kathleen M. Disser on June 30, 1972, and they adopted one child.
