Brooklyn's Pragmatic Boss
FLEMING, THOMAS J.
NATIONAL REPORTS Brooklyn's Pragmatic Boss By Thomas J. Fleming Brooklyn "When I was eight or nine," says Stanley Steingut, "I can remember standing on the steps of our clubhouse with my...
...The first Federal Credit Union to operate from a political clubhouse opened three years ago in downtown Brooklyn...
...And what I'm doing happens to be, in my judgment, the only way a political organization can succeed today...
...It takes hard work, it takes know-how to be a competent politician these days...
...A few months ago, in the same New York Assembly, Stanley Steingut sponsored a bill calling for the election of district leaders in New York State every two years...
...Robert Wagner's political future all but disappeared when his handpicked successor, Paul Screvane, lost to Steingut's candidate, Abraham Bearne, in the mayoralty primary...
...Several people from the district came to Steingut's office seeking direction...
...This candid recollection would only seem to confirm what former Mayor Robert F Wagner and numerous Reform Democrats in New York have said about Stanley Steingut...
...He has no illusions, however, that he has reached perfection...
...Steingut's conviction that patronage is not enough has led him to involve his political organization in what he calls "the life of the community...
...Brooklyn, thus became the first major city area in the nation to get this kind of help for its poor...
...Yet this is exactly what happened...
...Steingut honestly believes that big political organizations like his can survive the massive injection of democracy he contemplates...
...He delights in telling how he personally campaigned against Wagnerites and Reformers in some districts in Brooklyn, using all the lore and connections he has garnered in his own and his father's name...
...Steingut's confidence in his backing does not appear to be misplaced...
...The meeting underscores the national implications of Steingut's ideas...
...You can't have progress without order," he says...
...But two years later, Wagner asked Steingut to step down...
...New York's Negro state Senator, and first Negro Supreme Court Justice, have recently emerged from Steingut's domain...
...Some of the old people," he says with obvious pleasure, "came out and kissed me...
...They formed a corporation with some of the leading people in Brooklyn on the board-the head of the Brooklyn NAACP, a prominent Congressman, the head of the Economics Department of Brooklyn College-and went down to Washington and won a Federal green light for their plans...
...I was fighting for my political life...
...You can't kid people along any more and you can't get their votes with handouts...
...The dream of reformers for over two decades, the bill had been submitted more than a dozen times in the past only to expire in committee...
...Steingut's district leaders spend their time beavering about Brooklyn solving social problems...
...Brooklyn's 3 million (round number) citizens have the biggest-and all Democratic-Congressional delegation in the country...
...No decent district leader would have let Lindsay appoint a Charles Moerdler as Commissioner of Buildings-a man whose in-laws are slumlords...
...Once close personal friends, the enmity between the two men now is bitter...
...Steingut is particularly harsh on Congressman William Ryan, who ran in the last Democratic mayoralty primary, garnered over 100,000 votes and then refused to endorse Abe Bearne...
...That's the name of the game...
...At the moment, the Brooklyn organization is trying to decide on a replacement for Congressman Eugene Keogh who is resigning at the end of this term...
...Now with factions still tearing each other apart in all the other boroughs of New York's Democracy, Steingut is emerging from his Brooklyn bastion, determined to rid himself of the boss label and give his party some badly needed leadership...
...Several Reform Democrats came to my desk and asked me if they could co-sponsor the measure," Steingut says...
...The people I don't worry about...
...The contradictions of Stanley Steingut may add up to a new kind of political boss: a man who gets elected to the New York Assembly with the Citizens Union endorsing his integrity, who says, "You can't run a political organization on patronage any more...
...In all these operations, Steingut emphasizes that the idea and most of the legwork and paperwork came from the regular Democratic organization...
...So help me, right there on the street...
...As a professional politician, Steingut believes in leadership...
...But Steingut and his braintrusters found two census tracts around the Brooklyn Navy Yard that had the qualifying number of unemployed...
...According to one source, the man was only a nominal Democrat...
...If you have confidence in the quality of your district leaders, you don't have to impose your choices on them...
...Already I think we merit a lot more respect than we get-in the press, at least...
...The reformer wants to have it both ways...
...Quietly, without demonstrations, they persuaded local unions to open their ranks to Negroes, and set up a training program to help Negroes qualify...
...After all, was not his father, Irving Steingut, Speaker of the New York Assembly and for 30 years one of the top sachems of Brooklyn's Tammany...
...Robert Wagner knew that his own political survival depended on removing Steingut as the Democratic leader in Brooklyn...
...a tree-planting campaign in the neighborhood around his own Madison Club...
...Can Steingut change the style of big city politics...
...With brains.' This Brooklyn poverty ploy reportedly threw Mayor John Lindsay into something close to frenzy...
...He repeatedly called for Steingut's ouster as another step in his war on "bossism...
...Gone is the old-style politician who sat in his clubhouse dispensing favors like a medieval baron...
...I feel sorry for Lindsay," Steingut says...
...On the record, this combination of wry pragmatism and shrewd idealism is at least worth watching...
...Thomas J. Fleming, a new contributor, is author of three political novels: All Good Men, The God of Love, and King of the Hill...
...Several, such as Emmanuel Celler and Abraham Multer, are among the most powerful Congressmen in Washington...
...If you've got good people and they are performing genuine services, they don't have to worry about getting elected...
...He is a political boss, steeped in the corrupt, anti-democratic ways of clubhouse politics...
...And it was the politicians who did it," Steingut says triumphantly...
...A "critique" of Brooklyn education was recently forwarded to the Board of Education...
...He wants to be in the party...
...This is more than the total voting population of 32 other states...
...Steingut declares that the late Leo Eagan, the New York Times political reporter, told him of tracing smears against Steingut's character directly to City Hall...
...He backs up the implication by arguing that only through party structures can the man at the top get realistic evaluations of the men he must appoint to run the government...
...They are an old pro's answer to the much discussed concept of amateur participation in politics...
...It's not the old story of appointing a commission and spending a couple of hundred thousand dollars of public money to pick the brains of experts...
...It's only when a leader has a bunch of clowns under him that he has to start giving orders...
...A district leader knows a man personally...
...I told them it was their problem,' he said...
...I was perfectly willing...
...I'm not saying every politician in Brooklyn is honest," he says, "much less a knight in shining armor...
...That it would sail through both House and Senate with resounding majorities bordered on the miraculous...
...He says he welcomes the influence of Reform Democrats in the party, but he has some scorching things to say about the way these idealists play politics...
...Brooklyn also commands the largest delegation in New York State's Legislature...
...But the party is responsible for the final result...
...They muster no less than one-fifth of all the voters in the Empire State...
...Not with pull, either...
...But when he loses in a primary, he picks up his marbles and goes home...
...Other Steingut programs: a study of hospital and ambulance services in Brooklyn, which calls for massive improvements in medical care...
...Steingut is by no means against amateurs, but he believes their outburst of activity around election time leads to political incoherence and something approaching chaos in local government: "Politics shouldn't be something you get active in once every two years...
...The people know what you're doing for them.' Steingut's significance does not shrink when one realizes he can deliver the largest block of votes in America...
...Steingut has brought dozens of talented young men and women into the Brooklyn organization...
...But speaking generally, I think we've upgraded the quality of our people tremendously and we're going to keep on doing it...
...Basically," he says, "I like to win elections...
...He repeatedly beat off Wagner's attempts to unseat him...
...I didn't have time to talk," he says, in his clipped but genial manner...
...A Steingut coup, perhaps his biggest to date, was the recent approval from Washington for an Economic Development Administration grant that may bring millions in anti-poverty money into Brooklyn...
...Until recently Steingut stayed in Brooklyn and kept his mouth largely shut...
...He is much too professional to see himself in such a messianic role...
...There just isn't enough to go around,' but who bluntly adds, "Nobody gets my recommendation for any political job from Supreme Court Justice down to janitor unless he's worked for the party...
...Somebody's got to be in charge to make the decisions that have to be made at the top.' But he also believes that these top decisions can be kept to a minimum...
...They said I played cards for money up in Albany, and that's how I collected payoffs, that I was a drunk, chasing women, every dirty rumor you can imagine," Steingut fumes...
...Ten years ago, even five years ago, the mere idea that such a measure would be sponsored by the leader of Brooklyn's Democratic party would have been greeted with wild guffaws...
...New York as a whole, which has an average rate of unemployment, does not qualify...
...They have to live with him, they have to pick him...
...Under the existing law, only areas that have twice the national rate of unemployment qualify for this kind of assistance...
...Wagner originally supported Steingut for the Brooklyn leadership, thereby deposing Joseph T. Sharkey, an old Tammany type...
...If the local politician is going to survive in our society," Steingut says, "he has to render a service to the people that they can't get elsewhere...
...Steingut refused to resign-and Wagner forthwith began smearing him as a boss...
...It depends on the quality of your leaders...
...Let's just say he was totally unacceptable to me, personally, and he would have wrecked the party in Brooklyn...
...Jesse Unruh, leader of one wing of California's Democrats, huddled for several hours with Steingut during a recent Eastern visit...
...It struck at the very heart of the boss system in politics-by injecting democracy into every precinct...
...We consult experts when necessary...
...NATIONAL REPORTS Brooklyn's Pragmatic Boss By Thomas J. Fleming Brooklyn "When I was eight or nine," says Stanley Steingut, "I can remember standing on the steps of our clubhouse with my father and John McCooey, the Democratic leader of Brooklyn, on the day before Thanksgiving...
...He's a man without a party...
...He can tell you his habits, his family background...
...Steingut manages to make this sound like a man without a country...
...Steingut men are constantly huddling with local PTA'S, neighborhood betterment societies, war on poverty officials, discussing, smoothing and sometimes solving local problems...
...Steingut declines to say who Wagner wanted to name in his place...
...The line went around the block three times -the people waiting to get their free turkeys...
...It badly undercut bis hopes to project himself as the man who brings home Federal and state bacon to New York...
...They know what we're doing...
...It's an every day thing...
...a series of "forums" at which candidates and civic leaders can air their views...
...Every chance he gets he passes the responsibility for local decisions down the line to the people directly involved...
...A "Fight Narcotics Week" held seven countywide meetings at which social workers, police experts and others spoke...
Vol. 49 • August 1966 • No. 16
