Who's Who In Knickerbocker Village History: Duke Viggiano

The "vig" comment I made on the previous post triggered memories of Duke Viggiano (that's his son in the picture, I couldn't locate a pic of the Duke). Duke was a Tammany Democract, the kind that sent liberal democrats to the Republican and Liberal Parties in the 50's, 60's and 70's. The result was the eventual election of John Lindsay as mayor. Locally it resulted in the establishment of the LMRC (the Lower Manhattan Republican Club) headed by a Lindsay like John Lamula. Lamula, himself, had been an Assemblyman in the 40's and he lived on Oliver Street. He's worthy of a Who's Who honor at some point because without him there would never had been a LMRC little league team.
Some info on Paul, who I met about "100 years ago" when he was a speech teacher in Brownsville. This was before Seinfeld and there is a baseball team metaphor invisibly at work here. From the downtown express of 2006:
Paul is a former Assemblymember working in the city school system for the past 12 years, was elected one of five new directors and then won the unanimous support of the 15-member board to succeed Seymour Winick as president.
The new Southbridge board president was born and raised on the Lower East Side, the son of the late Duke Vigginao, a long time Democratic district leader. Paul Viggiano was an Assemblymember from 1978 to 1982 and then worked as an aide to Assembly Speaker Stanley Fink. He was also president of Community School District 2 in the early 1980s.
Note: Many former KVer's moved to Southbridge. The name Winick, mentioned above, is certainly a KV name. Of course, the fabulous Sosinskys are well represented there as well as the Feuermans.
In looking around for references to the "Duke" I found something of positive note that he was involved in, stopping Robert Moses' further destruction of the LES
from the streetsblog:
Alex, #28: stated, "as much as we like to romanticize the valiant efforts of yore, the failure of Moses to complete the Lower Manhattan Expressway had more to do with money and poor execution than the voices of the community."

Alex, I respectfully disagree with this assertion. It is absolutely incorrect.
I refer you to Charles Simpson's wonderful book "SOHO, The Artist In the City" published a a dozen years after the defeat of the LME. This LME was stopped due to a coalition of the Italians in Little Italy headed by polticians like Louie diSalvo and 'Duke' Viggiano, the pioneer artists of SoHo, by cast-iron preservationists like Margot Gayle, and by Greenwich Village activists on the community board #2, enthused by Jane Jacobs. It was not killed by lack of money. It was killed by community opposition