After V-E Day, because he could speak German, Koch was sent to Bavaria to help remove Nazi public officials from their jobs and find non-Nazis to take their place.

In 1962 Koch ran for office for the first time, unsuccessfully opposing incumbent William Passannante, a DeSapio ally, for the Democratic nomination for the State Assembly.

[22] 1974 Koch won reelection (with career-best 76.7% of the vote) to the 18th district against John Boogaerts Jr. (Republican, 18.8%), Gilliam M. Drummond (Conservative, 3.7%), and Katherine Sojourner (Socialist Workers, 0.8%).

According to historian Jonathan Mahler, the New York City blackout of July 1977 and the subsequent rioting helped catapult Koch and his message of restoring public safety to front-runner status.

[26] Koch swept all five boroughs by landslide margins, breaking 60% of the vote in Manhattan and 70% in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island.

The New York Times called Cuomo's victory a "stunning upset" that relied on "an unusual coalition of liberal Democrats, labor, minorities and upstaters".

Dinkins was helped in part by large margins in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn, while Koch carried Staten Island and Queens.

[33] Koch said he began his political career as "just a plain liberal", with positions including opposing the Vietnam War and marching in the South for civil rights.

[35] At about the same time, Koch began his rightward shift toward being a "liberal with sanity" after reviewing the 1973 controversy around then-New York City Mayor John Lindsay's attempt to place a 3,000-person housing project in a middle-class community in Forest Hills, Queens.

In mid-July 1976, the CIA learned that two high-level Uruguayan intelligence officers had discussed a possible assassination attempt on Koch by Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), the Chilean secret police under dictator Augusto Pinochet.

The CIA did not regard these threats as credible until after the September 1976 assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C., by DINA agents coordinated by Operation Condor.

Among the events of Koch's second term as mayor were the Brooklyn Bridge's 100th anniversary, the appointing of Benjamin Ward as the city's first ever African American police commissioner in 1983, the emergence of AIDS as a public health crisis, extensive media coverage of Bernhard Goetz's shooting of four African American teenagers in the subway in 1984, and the United Nations' 40th anniversary.

These positions prompted harsh criticism from the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and many African-American leaders, particularly Reverend Al Sharpton.

In his third term, Koch's popularity was shaken after a series of corruption scandals, touched off by Donald Manes's suicide and the Parking Violations Bureau scandal, which revealed that he had acceded to the requests of political allies (most notably Queens Borough President Manes, Bronx Democratic Party official Stanley M. Friedman and Brooklyn Democratic Party chairman Meade Esposito, an American Mafia associate long perceived as New York City's preeminent political leader) to stack city agencies with patronage appointments.

Michael Tager attributes the scandals not to Koch's failures but to the steadily declining power of the Democratic machine and its bosses' desperate efforts to reverse the collapse.

[48] He became a controversial figure in the 1988 presidential campaign with his public criticism of Democratic candidate Jesse Jackson, who surprised many political observers by winning key primaries in March and running even with the front-runner, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis.

Koch endorsed Tennessee Senator Al Gore, who had run well in his native South but hadn't won 20% in a northern state.

[49] A 1993 survey of historians, political scientists and urban experts conducted by Melvin G. Holli of the University of Illinois at Chicago ranked Koch as the 15th-worst American big-city mayor to have served between 1820 and 1993.

He added, "Koch bravely faced one of the worst crises in New York history, restructured the city with minimal help from the federal government and kept it solvent and growing for a generation."

And Soffer concluded, "Koch's tireless personal lobbying campaign led to quite simply the greatest turnaround accomplished by any New York mayor in the twentieth century, including Fiorello La Guardia.

[54] A street in southern Tel Aviv was named after Koch in an August 12, 1993, ceremony attended by him alongside prominent Israeli and American dignitaries.

[80] Koch endorsed Republican Bob Turner for Congress in 2011 because he "wanted to send a message to Obama to take a stronger position in support of Israel.

Koch praised New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, saying that he had the right approach in reducing government spending and refraining from raising taxes.

He added that the U.S. must still "prepare for the battles that will take place on American soil by the Islamic forces of terror who are engaged in a war that will be waged by them against Western civilization for at least the next 30 years.

"[85] On April 8, 2010, Koch wrote a piece in The Jerusalem Post excoriating what he saw as increasing anti-Catholicism in the media, largely made evident by coverage of the priest sex abuse scandals.

While denouncing the abuse, Koch wrote, "the procession of articles on the same events are, in my opinion, no longer intended to inform, but simply to castigate."

The Times reported that Koch disclosed his sexuality only to friends who were also gay, and was only known to have had one long-term relationship, with health care consultant Richard W. Nathan.

In the 1980s, activist and writer Larry Kramer, who was critical of Koch's handling of the AIDS epidemic, unsuccessfully attempted to out him after learning of the relationship with Nathan.

[90][95] A former spokesman later suggested that the anxiety Koch experienced from efforts to out him during that period caused a decline in his health, which could have contributed to the stroke.

[96][97] On January 31, 2013, he was admitted to Columbia University Irving Medical Center in Manhattan due to fatigue, where he died from heart failure at 2 a.m. the next day, aged 88.