Wiktionary
n. (context US English) a politician who belongs to a small clique that controls a political party for private rather than public ends
WordNet
n. a politician who belongs to a small clique that controls a political party for private rather than public ends [syn: ward-heeler, political hack, hack]
Usage examples of "machine politician".
The ordinary reform organization falls to pieces after the first successful campaign and the ordinary reform candidate turns out to be a sorrier specimen in office than the Machine politician he displaced.
I fail to see the attraction in working for a bent machine politician like our Taoiseach.
What a man wants in order to run for the office of sheriff is a reputation for being a square, solid, substantial business man, and that is what you had, Wade, and besides that you were a smooth, shrewd, farsighted, machine politician.
Maybe Alderman Strauss was just an old-time, city machine politician desperately fending off disaster from his bailiwick, knowing all the while that it was hopeless.
Maybe Alderman Strauss was just an oldtime, city machine politician desperately fending off disaster from his bailiwick, knowing all the while that it was hopeless.
Especially since he's been so blithely treating Pankarma like one more machine politician from Old Earth he can cut some sort of deal with.
Franklin Roosevelt, patrician reformer and Timothy Macauley, machine politician, had famously loathed each other.