Lenny Clotch

Mayor Leonard Clotch was the mayor of New York City at the time the Ghostbusters first began to become famous in 1984. He was usually addressed simply as Mr. Mayor or Your Honor, but some of his closer confidants called him Lenny. Following the accidental release of all of the ghosts from the Ghostbusters' ecto-containment unit, New York was thrown into complete chaos and so the Mayor ordered the four Ghostbusters brought to his office - along with Walter Peck - so he could speak with them personally. Although Peck tried to convince him that the Ghostbusters were frauds, the Mayor ultimately sided with them when Peter Venkman assured him he'd be saving the lives of millions of registered voters.

This seemed to have worked, for five years later, Clotch was still the Mayor of New York as of 1989, although he had acquired a new assistant named Jack Hardemeyer, who, like Peck before him, considered the Ghostbusters frauds and did everything he could to distance them from his boss. The Mayor didn't believe the Ghostbusters' tale of a psychomagnetheric slimeflow building up beneath the city until it was almost too late, and when the slime overflowed to the surface and once again threw his city into a state of panic, the Mayor was forced to call upon the Ghostbusters for help a second time in his career. He almost wasn't able to, as Hardemeyer had had them all committed to an insane asylum. In retaliation, the Mayor fired Hardemeyer and made it possible for Louis Tully to get the Ghostbusters freed from the asylum in time to stop Vigo the Carpathian.

The Mayor's political career following the defeat of Vigo is uncertain, although at one point prior to his termination Hardemeyer mentioned that Clotch would be running for governor in the fall of 1990, so one can assume he would go on to become Governor of New York following a second successful backing of the Ghostbusters.

Comments

• He is identified simply as "Mayor" in the credits for both Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II. The surname Clotch comes from the novelization of the second film by Ed Naha.