Edwin Jaeckle - Retrospective and Death

Retrospective and Death

Jaeckle was a liberal Republican who established a tough political machine, ran it with an iron fist, insisted on integrity in party and government affairs, and fostered a progressive agenda.

In his own dealings as party leader, he was attentive to his subordinates and fair but firm. As Van Devander noted: "Jaeckle spends half of each week at home and during the rest of the time shuttles back and forth to New York City, to Albany when the legislature is in session, and to other parts of the state. He is in frequent touch will all of the county chairmen, and succeeds in giving them the double impression that he is devoted to their individual interests, and that he is quite capable of breaking any one of them, politically, who might attempt to put anything over on him."

In his political retirement, Jaeckle built a substantial law practice and a substantial personal fortune. He retired from his law firm in 1988.

He lived long enough to see the demise of party control of politics and government and to lament the rise of the cult of individual personality over party organization. He believed this phenomenon fostered a lack of accountability in government. As he told The Buffalo News toward the end of his life: "Politics no longer operates the way it should. There's no party responsibility; too many individuals are calling the shots. . . . Everybody is a victim of this system. In the old days, the party was responsible for the conduct of government. If you did the job right and served the people, they kept you in office. If not, you were gone. It's not like that anymore."

After retirement, he divided his time between Rochester, Minnesota and St. Petersburg, Florida, where he died of pancreatic cancer at age 98.