Fair Game
GOODMAN, WALTER
Fair Game BY WALTER GOODMAN Running for Mayor Barely half a year to go before the New York City mayoralty primary, and there is much bustle abroad. For several weeks the streets of Manhattan...
...Why, for the same reason that men have always climbed slag heaps...
...Between the writing of this column and its appearance in print, 9 or 19 office holders will announce their candidacy with great hopes and withdraw from the contest with fond memories or hard feelings...
...Perhaps the city can never be what we imagine it used to be, or dream of it being tomorrow...
...In recent years, he has made the transformation from machine pol to bookkeeper, managing to hold onto the best of both tradesthe connections from his days with the Democratic organization in Brooklyn as well as the no-nonsense air of the man who smokes out welfare cheats and Lindsay employes and, unlike the Mayor, has the patience to read a column of figures...
...And even those qualities may not be enough...
...Young men join the Jewish Defense League or the Italian-American Civil Rights League to show that they can act as tough as the toughest black...
...In one view, the entire election is about John Lindsay, who appears to have his eye set on the governorship...
...That accounts for the periodic talk of a fusion candidate, such as the moderate Democratic Representative Hugh Carey of Brooklyn, a dim star even in New York's galaxy...
...he is resplendent even among the Beautiful People...
...When Lindsay enters a room, all eyes turn to him...
...Despite Biaggi's efforts they held hands at many a Bronx shindigottinger lost...
...That pretty well covers their main virtues and most severe drawbacks...
...With reformers, you never know...
...They can be counted on to do nothing, insofar as they can avoid doing something, to disturb the parents of Canarsie or the homeowners of Forest Hills...
...But a debt is a debt, and Ottinger is a rich man...
...In light of what we have been reading about New York's cops in recent weeks, Garelik's switch from policeman to politician may be understood as a brave effort to escape temptation...
...The only glimmer of Republican hope is that the Democrats will manage to destroy one another in the preliminaries, a feat at which they have had a certain amount of recent experience, and that a shaky survivor will enter into a marriage of convenience out of his faith...
...All voters have a notion of what the boss is in the game for, and no one need worry that he will be driven by a burst of compassion or some overmastering idea to do anything startling...
...Let us turn to a few of the more conspicuous hopefuls...
...different models occupy the showcases this year, and there is not much hope that he will be able to pass by June...
...In past elections, the ethnic component brought a bit of fun to politicking...
...It's all very sweaty...
...his main public supporter is Alex Rose, the "shrewd" mover and shaker under whom the Liberal party has sunk into disrepair...
...Jerome Kretchmer is in special trouble on this account, being the candidate most closely connected with the present mayor...
...In this ward we have a pair of likely contenders, Sanford D. Gar-elik, president of the City Council, and Mario Biaggi, a congressman from the Bronx...
...Our cities today, those great brutes, are impervious to heroics...
...Nobody knows how many people exactly are trying to get the Democratic nomination...
...Why do they run...
...Garelik is a Jew...
...This year, however, the drift is back toward bosses and professional clubhouse operators like Meade Esposito...
...There are Republicans in the city, too, but barring a sudden craving by Senator Jacob Javits to sit in the mayor's chair, they are not likely to elect one of their own...
...As for Postel, whose candidacy is not taken seriously outside of his immediate family, he may merely enjoy being listed among the politically adventurous for a spell...
...Abe Beame seems to walk in a shadow, like those government functionaries who once populated Russian novels...
...Ground breakings are absolutely out, and travel by subway has become more hazardous than usual...
...Yet myth tells us that at last, after the dark age of Grendel, a great hero did arise who slew the monster...
...Ottinger tried hard to get reelected in November by making nice to Biaggi, the champ of law and order with a devoted following in the Bronx portion of Ottinger's district...
...Fusion has perennial charms for a perennial minority...
...That is to say, he does not in any way resemble John Lindsay...
...At least for now, its residents seem fated to muddle along, improvising as best they can, resigning themselves to living with danger and discomfort...
...Both are sturdy looking fellows who used to be high-ranking policemen, and they could surely do more to fight crime by walking a beat than by sitting in City Hall...
...The most popular politician in New York at the moment is probably former Mayor Wagner A distinction owing less to any accomplishment of his regime than to the fact that he personifies the pre-Lindsay era, which has attained a place in memory comparable to Europe before World War I or the ante-bellum South...
...The time of the reformer will surely come againbut when it does Koch, Blumenthal and their generation will most likely be the ones whom the young firebrands are out to scorch...
...He prefers that we do not think of them as "gratuities...
...They will campaign on a platform that has borne many candidacies over many decades: We shall make all the necessary changes without shaking up anybody...
...The Noisy Reformers In this crowded ward we have, among others, Albert H. Blumenthal of Manhattan, deputy minority leader of the Assembly...
...City Councilman Robert I. Postel...
...The physical difference between them is vaudevil-lian...
...The beauty of this Beame is that he is altogether without charisma...
...The above-named all bear the burden of being reform Democrats edward Koch deposed Carmine DeSapio a decade ago...
...I do not find the name of Beowulf in this year's lists...
...A 1973 endorsement by the Mayor may be fatal, and all contestants, except Kretchmer, who lacks a political base of his own, are keeping their distance...
...Abe Beame, the invisible man for this season...
...The idea seems to have gotten to him that he is not well liked in outlying sections of his city...
...Doing his darndest to blur his liberal credentials, Ottinger went beyond the call of political exigency...
...Joking about the mayoralty hopefuls would give more pleasure if it were not for the condition of the municipality they aspire to govern...
...Now, I can understand why Blumenthal should be willing to exchange Albany for Manhattanbut why Koch, with the ghost of John Lindsay still hovering, should seek to give up the Capital for Bedlam is a mystery...
...The Quiet Man Finally, we have Abraham Beame, the unannounced frontrun-ner...
...Biaggi is an Italian...
...But now it's mostly muscle-flexing and "pride" and emblems of distaste for other groups...
...While they maneuver for support and scramble for attention, the city seems to watch them as, in John Gardner's novel, Grendel watches Hrothgar's warriors make their heroic boasts, then hurl themselves against the monster and perish...
...Beame has been around a long time...
...Herman Badillo, of course, has a base among Puerto Ricans, blacks and the city's beleaguered white liberals...
...Garelik's prospects may have been marred by the report of the Knapp Commission that while on the police force, he accepted certain gifts from admiring citizens...
...But let us leave matters of motivation where they belong, with the disciplines of psychoanalysis and religion...
...If he could avoid taking a position on any difficult question in the next six months, he might have a fair shot...
...It is expected that Mario Biaggi will have in his corner Richard L. Ottinger, a former liberal congressman from Westchester County...
...The air is unacceptable...
...From all sides we hear that the city is ungovernable, yet on all sides prance men eager to take on a job that promises only to spoil whatever reputation and diminish whatever political credit they may enjoy...
...To bring New York to bay will require, aside from large amounts of money and ingenuity, a mixture of compassion and ruthlessness not often found in politics, or anywhere else...
...by mid-campaign he was extolling Biaggi's so-so record in the House as "superb...
...For several weeks the streets of Manhattan have been risky for voters allergic to Democratic politicians in heat...
...Representative Edward I. Koch...
...The times, though, are not propitious...
...A citizen can't safely attend any public or quasi-private function, from fashion show to roller derby, lest one of those fellows step forward to have his hand shaked...
...But enough...
...He is far from tall or handsome or blond or special looking...
...Badillo is an unfashionable ethnic, out of date...
...and Environmental Affairs Administrator Jerome Kretchmer, who a few weeks ago hired a fund raiser to throw a $500-a-guest party for him: "Your contribution of $500 per person will provide the means of advancing a promising career...
...Taking a seat in a restaurant, he disappears...
Vol. 56 • January 1973 • No. 2
