Harry Arista Mackey (26 June 1869 – 17 October 1938) was Mayor of Philadelphia (R) from 1928 to 1931, succeeding W. Freeland Kendrick and preceding J. Hampton Moore.
Biography[]
Harry Arista Mackey was born in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania in 1869, and he was a football team captain before becoming a lawyer in 1894 and as a head football coach at Widener University and the University of Virginia. In 1905, he became Director of Public Health and Charities under Mayor John Weaver, and he was later elected to the City Council. Mackey supported political boss William Scott Vare's successful 1926 US Senate campaign, and Vare supported Mackey's successful 1928 mayoral campaign in gratitude. He campaigned against W. Freeland Kendrick's administration, whose police force received hundreds of thousands of dollars in payoffs monthly. Mackey supported Prohibition during his tenure, but he launched a failed US House of Representatives bid in 1931 as a "wet" candidate. He died in 1938.