US Socialist mayor Frank Zeidler dies at 93

CHICAGO, July 9 (Reuters) Former Milwaukee Mayor Frank P Zeidler, the last Socialist to run a major US city, has died, a spokesman for a Milwaukee hospital said.

Zeidler, 93, died on Friday of congestive heart failure, a spokesman for a Milwaukee hospital said yesterday.

The son of a German Lutheran barber, Zeidler led Milwaukee for three terms from 1948 to 1960 and also ran for president as a Socialist in 1976.

He was the last in an era of Socialist mayors who ran Milwaukee on and off from 1910 and the last Socialist to serve as mayor of a major American city.

Zeidler's tenure in the industrial Midwestern city was marked by large-scale public housing construction, slum clearance and strong statements on behalf of civil rights.

''We had ideals and the philosophy of liberalism that caused our fight for the people against the special interests to take on the nature of a crusade for better government and a better city,'' Zeidler said in his book, ''A Liberal in City Government,'' which was written in 1962 and published in 2005.

In 1972, when the Socialist Party/Social Democratic Federation splintered, Zeidler emerged as leader of one faction, the Socialist Party USA, and served as its chair for many years.

Zeidler was the Socialist Party USA's presidential candidate in 1976, getting on 10 state ballots and winning slightly more than 6,000 votes.

He remained active in politics and in a June 2004 interview with the public radio program Democracy Now! termed the United States ''as divided as it has ever been, perhaps, almost since the Civil War.'' Reuters SHB GC0856