Patrick Gleason (politician)

Patrick Jerome "Paddy" "Battle-Axe" Gleason (April 25, 1844 – May 20, 1901) was an Irish-American politician born in County Tipperary, Ireland.

Gleason held "truly remarkable sway over Long Island City's affairs" for years when his power was in its prime "by his keen personal hold on the majority of the people he ruled.

By nature and by political preference he was a Democrat, but he was voted for simply as 'Paddy,' he was obeyed as 'Paddy,' and the people whom he had once autocratically governed, and a respectable portion of whom had been hostile to him, remembered him as 'Paddy' to the day of his death.

[4] In 1890, Gleason drunkenly approached Associated Press reporter George B. Crowley in a hotel lobby and repeatedly insulted him, calling him a loafer and a thief.

When Gleason died bankrupt and discredited a few years out of office, hundreds lined the route to his interment in Calvary Cemetery.