machine politics

1. Politics associated with political machines.

Example Sentences

It was classic Eric Adams fare: calling back to his local familial roots, then drifting toward a mishmash of incoherent culture-war gripes and paeans to the machine politics that his constituents had rejected this round.

Read more on Slate

“In Northern industrial cities, Democratic party bosses built a new style of urban machine politics greased by the exchange of money and personal favors.”

Read more on Salon

The congressman’s chief rival is Ravi Bhalla, the mayor of Hoboken, who has tried to shape the primary into a referendum on patronage, corruption and the corrosive influence of machine politics.

Read more on New York Times

Mayor Ganim's critics - his challenger chief among them - say that the incident has exposed the underbelly of a type of corrupt Democratic party "machine politics" in the city.

Read more on BBC

Comer cut his teeth in the bare-knuckled machine politics of Monroe County, Kentucky, and knew how to win allies, according to those who knew him.

Read more on Seattle Times