Irving C. Freese (b. East Brunswick, New Jersey February 19, 1903 - September 11, 1964) was the mayor of Norwalk, Connecticut and the third Socialist mayor elected in the United States.
He attended a one room school in East Brunswick, and was graduated from New Brunswick High School. He first came to Norwalk in 1928, while visiting his brother Arnold. He found work as the assistant credit manager at the Norwalk Tire and Rubber Company, as a Johnson & Johnson salesman, as a cost accountant at the American Hat Company, and at the Standard Safety Razor Corporation as a credit manager. He later started a photography business. In October of 1933, he met Elizabeth Hutchinson, the niece of the newly elected mayor of Bridgeport, Jasper McLevy at his victory party. They were married in June of 1934. They had a son they named Jasper after her uncle in August of 1936.[1]
He was an unsuccessful candidate for mayor in 1939, 1941, 1943, and 1945.[2] In those unsuccessful elections, his vote totals were between 400 and 600 votes. Then he was a candidate for the Connecticut House of Representatives from Norwalk in 1946.
In 1947, the citizens of Norwalk, having taken notice of the sound and honest reputation of the McLevy administration in Bridgeport, gave Socialist Freese a total of 8,561 votes, the greatest plurality in the city's history. In the landslide, Socialist candidates won almost every other office in the municipal government. He was elected mayor twice as a Socialist in 1947 and 1949. Then in 1951, he broke from the Socialist Party and defeated Republican candidate Stanley Stroffolino despite the fact Stroffolino had the endorsement of the Republicans, the Democrats, and the Socialists with whom Freese had just parted company. He was elected three times after forming the Independent Party of Norwalk in 1951, 1953, an 1957.[3]
At an annual $2500 salary, he was Norwalk's first full-time mayor, having sold his business so as to be able to put in a full days work at City Hall. No aspect of city government was too small to escape his attention. He often exercised his ex-officio authority on city boards and commissions which is granted to the mayor under the city charter, but had rarely ever been used. He was even known to be seen on top of the Department of Public Works snowplows as they cleared the streets after a winter storm.