Mayor Alfred Morris

Alfred Morris is the corrupt Mayor of New York in Depression Era Manhattan, a public official campaigning for re-election while keeping his private dealings well out of the papers. He meets in secret with the nightclub singer Cat Hardy at a penthouse high above the city, where the down-and-out private investigator Ben Reilly photographs the two of them together while tailing her for a paying client.

Behind the polished image of a campaigning politician is an uglier man. When the meeting with Cat turns to confrontation, Morris rears back to strike her, the moment that breaks Ben's resolve to stay uninvolved and sends a strand of webbing across the room to stop the blow. The photographs of the mayor and the singer become leverage in the case, a powerful man caught in a compromising position he would pay dearly to keep buried.

Alfred Morris campaigns for re-election in Depression Era New York, working a crowd from the stump as Ben Reilly and Robbie Robertson look on from the back. Playing to a Prohibition-weary city, the mayor promises that a vote for him is a vote to be rid of the dry laws for good, swearing his audience will never go thirsty again, a crowd-pleasing pledge from a man who knows exactly what the people want to hear.

Alfred Morris keeps his hand in the night's happenings from behind his office's respectable face, the mayor who ordered the police raid on Silvermane's dock shipment and who sends the law down on the Hooverville to clear the camps. When Ben Reilly questions the officers wounded in the raid, the trail of the order leads straight back to the mayor's desk.

His ambitions reach toward the masked man rising over the city. Intercepting Ben on his way to meet Cat Hardy, Morris asks the detective to put him in contact with the Spider, looking to turn the vigilante's attention toward Silvermane's operations and the crime lord who has held the city so long.

Alfred Morris pushes his re-election campaign forward while quietly maneuvering against the crime lord who has long controlled him. He sits down to a gala dinner with Chief McNamara, only for Silvermane to track them down and force a confrontation. When the crime lord threatens to throw his backing behind a rival named Hudson, Morris refuses to fold, insisting he still has cards left to play, and stands his ground even as Flint Marko smashes the table apart in a show of force.

His defiance pays off in the streets that night. When the Spider defeats the electrical man terrorizing the Diamond District, Morris seizes the moment, arriving to proclaim a public pact between the city and the masked hero, casting the two as partners to bolster his own campaign. He also leans on McNamara to do his job, though the chief's loyalties visibly tilt toward Silvermane instead.

Alfred Morris finds his campaign under direct assault from Silvermane's powered men, who storm his office and make off with all his cash. He is furious to discover his money gone, the crime lord's war hitting him where it hurts most as his bid for re-election is gutted.

His grip on the situation slips further when even his own chief of police throws up his hands, telling him that he won't be in his position much longer. By the end of the night, word reaches Morris that the Spider holds an antidote to the powers plaguing the city, and like Silvermane, he orders his people to find Ben Reilly, both men now racing toward the same masked target.

Morris stays at the edges of the violence, the rival power whose war with Silvermane has loomed over everything. When the old crime boss is gone and the underworld has torn itself apart, it is Morris who comes out ahead, winning the election and inheriting a city remade by a single bloody night.