An Opinion on the New York City Election
Harrington, Michael & Howe, Irving
WE BELIEVE JOHN LINDSAY should be reelected Mayor of New York. The choices before us do not fill us with joy. We would have much preferred a victory for Herman Badillo. But in the...
...The Mayor has also shown a proper sense of social priorities which must prevail when peace comes...
...His Republican allegiance led him to extol the candidacy of Spiro Agnew, the Dixiecrat's hostage in Washington...
...Lindsay's conduct of collective bargaining— especially in the transit and sanitation strikes—was often atrocious and a source of needless divisions in the city...
...WE BELIEVE JOHN LINDSAY should be reelected Mayor of New York...
...For these reasons we urge the large liberal and democratic radical community of New York to vote for John Lindsay...
...Perhaps because of an elitist bias, he has failed to understand the social responses of workingclass and lower-middle-class people—responses it would be foolish and self-defeating to dismiss simply as "racist...
...Criticism of his political approach should not be muted, but that criticism will be most profitable if he, and not one of his two undistinguished opponents, is Mayor...
...The choices before us do not fill us with joy...
...We would have much preferred a victory for Herman Badillo...
...On some issues, to be fair, the Mayor has distinguished himself...
...Procaccino represents the dull-spirited reactionary wing of the Democratic party which was defeated in 1961 and managed to capture the party label in 1969 only because the liberal wing was split...
...Marchi and Procaccino are not ideological racists, but they won their nominations by exploiting racist emotions through the tricky and dangerous slogan of "law and order...
...But the other choices are much worse...
...We entirely agree with him that the Vietnam war is a major issue in this election, first because it has become the single overriding problem for Americans everywhere, and second because New York will not get federal funds for dealing with its problems until the horror in Southeast Asia is brought to an end...
...This is not an uncritical endorsement...
...A victory for either of these men would be interpreted nationally as further evidence of a popular drift toward the Right...
...Marchi, as a conservative, is opposed in principle to the radical innovations the city needs...
...Mr...
...And his managers have connived in the outrageous removal of two minor socialist parties from the ballot, an action hardly appropriate to a mayor who so frequently indulges in the rhetoric of high-mindedness...
...But in the present difficult situation, we think all partisans of democratic social change should vote for Lindsay...
...we hope he will stick to these convictions even if it brings him into conflict with his own party's President...
Vol. 16 • November 1969 • No. 6
