Later Career
After leaving office, Yorty hosted a talk show on KCOP-TV for five years, later complaining that he was cancelled in favor of the lowbrow television program Hee Haw. After leaving work on the small screen, he returned to the political arena, but failed in a comeback bid for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in 1980, having been defeated by the conservative Paul Gann, who in turn was badly beaten by incumbent liberal Democrat Alan Cranston. In 1981, Yorty failed again in a bid to unseat Bradley.
Afterwards, Yorty retired from public life, aside from being a rainmaker for several law firms. He suffered a stroke on May 24, 1998, then contracted pneumonia. After treatment at the Encino-Tarzana Regional Medical Center, he was sent to his Studio City, California home, where he died on the morning of June 5.
In 1997, a survey of urban historians and political scientists conducted by Melvin Holli at the University of Illinois at Chicago rated Yorty the third worst U.S. big-city mayor since 1960.
Yorty died on June 5, 1998, the thirtieth anniversary of Robert Kennedy's assassination and three months before Yorty's old rival, Tom Bradley, died. Prior to his death, Yorty had told his wife that he wanted no funeral service.
Read more about this topic: Sam Yorty
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