"[3] After graduating from Stuyvesant High School, Golden served as a United States Navy pharmacist's mate during World War II; in this capacity, he was part of the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944.

[7] In the decade that followed, Golden was an attorney in private practice based out of Downtown Brooklyn's Court Street district, where he first became acquainted with future New York Governor Mario Cuomo and other contemporaries relegated to the implicitly deprecatory "Court Street lawyer"[8] milieu amid enduring discrimination against Jewish and Italian American attorneys at Manhattan white-shoe firms during the epoch.

[1] His political career commenced in earnest when he gained control of the Borough Park-based Roosevelt Democratic Club in 1967[5] by "organizing a rebellion against the entrenched officials and getting himself elected district leader"; under Golden's aegis, the Roosevelt Club ranked among the foremost Democratic organizations in New York City for several decades, serving as the political home for myriad elected officials, judges, commissioners and municipal patronage employees.

(Although Kensington had been characterized as the western section of Flatbush in an official New York City publication as late as 1966,[10] it had recently been placed under the jurisdiction of the Borough Park-based Community Board 12, while a substantial swath of the community—including Golden's longtime residence—was encompassed by the Roosevelt Club-controlled 48th Assembly District; coupled with Golden customarily being described as a Borough Park-based figure in press accounts, this likely fostered the increased perception of Kensington as a discrete neighborhood in the 1970s and beyond.

Under the era's statutes, the New York City Council's Brooklyn delegation formally selected Golden to serve as interim borough president until the next election.

[24] While Golden supported Deputy Borough President Jeannette Gadson in the ensuing primary, he was eventually succeeded by a longtime rival, former tenant activist and State Senator Marty Markowitz, despite Markowitz's previous campaign-finance misdemeanor conviction and controversial role in a 1990 Wingate Park concert accident that left Curtis Mayfield paralyzed for the rest of his life.

[25][26] Immediately thereafter, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes hired Golden as his office's executive director of civic and governmental affairs.