Ronnie Eldridge, an outspoken Manhattan activist and local television host, who served on the City Council for 22 years, died on Thursday. She was 91.
Whether she was advocating for women, championing peace causes or sharing the spotlight with her larger-than-life newspaper columnist husband, Eldridge always managed to stay relevant, a description she borrowed for her popular public affairs program.
Andrew Schwartz/For New York Daily News
Former City Councilmember Ronnie Eldridge with her husband, author and columnist Jimmy Breslin in their home in 2010.
“Keeping Relevant with Ronnie Eldridge,” produced by the City University of New York, tackled such issues as voting rights, child welfare and criminal justice, and featured a number of newsmaking guests, including her Pulitzer Prize-winning husband Jimmy Breslin.
The high-profile marriage between the feminist politician and the gruff city columnist inspired the CBS sitcom, “American Nuclear,” a show about their blended family.
Eldridge and Breslin were the parents of nine children and 11 grandchildren. They married in 1982, and remained together until Breslin’s death in 2017.
But Eldridge was making headlines long before she and Breslin got together.
A 1977 headline in the New York Times announced her entry into a crowded Manhattan Borough President race.
She was the only woman in a contest to succeed Percy Sutton, a pattern she found troubling, but all too common.
“There aren’t large differences on the issues but we have definite personality differences,” Eldridge said at the time. “ And I am a woman and I think that’s the strongest asset I have.”
She lost. More than a decade later, she would lean on her experience as a Democratic district leader in Manhattan, a vice chairman of the party’s national platform committee and a deputy city administrator for former Mayor John Lindsay to win a seat on the city council, representing Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
She also worked in the administration of former Gov. Mario Cuomo.
“I’m extremely sad to learn of the passing of former NYC Councilmember Ronnie M. Eldridge, a great Manhattan leader, with deep roots in the womens’ and peace movements, an astute grasp of local and municipal politics, and a record of service devoted to opening doors and breaking down barriers,” Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal wrote in a social media post.
Before running for office, Eldridge was an executive producer at Channel 13, where she worked on such television series as “Woman Alive!”
