41.   Ms. Messinger has been in training for years to be the first female mayor in New York City history.

42.   Not so much because he became the first black mayor of a major Texas city, though he acknowledges that milestone.

43.   Not that he is the first mayor to turn personal feelings into policy.

44.   Not to mention, he says, that he is the first mayor in ages whose administration is free of even a whiff of corruption.

45.   Norman Steisel, who was first deputy mayor under Dinkins, said that could prove most difficult of all.

46.   Sanders became an active campaigner for the New South Coalition, an election machine created by Richard Arrington, the first black mayor of Birmingham.

47.   Ron Kirk was elected the first black mayor of a mayor Texas city.

48.   Sixty of them were arrested but soon released, including Coleman Young, who went on to become the combative first black mayor of Detroit.

49.   Soon, he heard from Sobchak, who had quit teaching to become the first mayor of a newly renamed St. Petersburg.

50.   That fall, when she became the first black mayor with a black majority on the council, the first thing she did was replace those signs.