Pennsylvania: Case History of Decay

From Erie in the west to Wilkes-Barre and Scranton in the east, Hubert Humphrey stumped Pennsylvania last week fully aware that if he is to win its 29 electoral votes, he will have to do so largely on his own. The state’s Democratic organization has decayed to the point where it simply cannot be counted on to get out the vote. Nor is the situation atypical. In practically every northern, urbanized state—the kind Humphrey must carry if he is to have any chance of winning the election—the party’s machinery is in desperate disrepair Lyndon Johnson during the past five years has done little to reverse the trend, may even have accentuated it by his indifference.

Bucking Best. As recently as 1960 the party in Pennsylvania was healthy and seemingly growing stronger. David Lawrence, one of those rare bosses capable of combining a strong party organization scandal-free with a administration, progressive, sat in relatively the Governor’s mansion. Richardson Dilworth presided in Philadelphia’s city hall continuing the reforms started by Joseph Clark. before he moved on to the Senate. William Green the Elder ran the party in Philadelphia, and on Election Day his well-financed cadres produced the plurality that John F. Kennedy needed to carry the state. e

Now Lawrence and the elder Green are deard, and have left no heirs capableof ruling the realm. Mayor Joseph Barr of Pittsburgh and Mayor James Tate of Philadelphia can barely control their own baronies, let alone work effectively on the statewide level.

Where Green was smart enough to combine old-fashioned Irish-ward techniques with modern polling and other, newer devices. Barr, 62, and Tate, 58, have encouraged an anachronistic clubhouse atmosphere that is repugnant to the party’s younger members and to most Negroes. During his re-election campaign, Tate actually bragged: “Eight of my ten department heads have beei in city government since the days of Clark and Dilworth.”

Some of the party’s best young men are bucking it—or deserting it. When Arlen Specter, now 38, found his career being stymied, he switched to the G.O.P. in 1965 and won the Philadelphia district attorney’s office. Last year he nearly defeated Tate for the mayoralty. Another enterprising Democrat, James Walsh, 37, thought he was being held back by his elders. He successfully challenged the organization candidate in a mayoral primary, went on to win Scranton’s city hall.

Cleansing Operation. Walsh was an exception. In Philadelphia, Green’s son, Congressman William Green III, has been fighting a losing battle against Tate’s effort to purge the party of in dependent-minded, younger men. Green was a Kennedy backer before the Senator’s assassination. Tate and Barr, along with the leadership of organized labor, supported Humphrey. The stalwarts were strong enough to deliver 103¾ of Pennsylvania’s 130 delegate votes to Humphrey— the very votes that nailed down the nomination for the Vice President— even though Eugene McCarthy had won Pennsylvania’s primary. The leadership, as usual, was out of step with the ranks.

Bitterness over this year’s preconvention fight has intensified the dissatisfaction that has been building within the state party for years. Meyer Berger, national treasurer of the Americans for Democratic Action and a Pennsylvanian, calls Tate an ignoramus.

Councilman Peter Flaherty of Pittsburgh admits: “A lot of people dissatisfied with the party here really don’t feel that a Democratic loss this timewould be a such a bad thing. They’d regard it as a cleansing operation.” Humphrey, suffering from association with the old-line bosses, and Senator Clark, himself in a toughre-election fight, both suffer from this mood.

While organizations like Barr’s and Tate’s maintain a tenuous hold on power, the party’s real strength has been slipping away. In the past six years, the Democrats have lost two gubernatorial elections and one U.S. Senate contest. While the Republicans have been fielding attractive candidates like William Scranton. Hugh Scott and RaymondShafer, and backing them with unite campaigns, the Democrats have been wasting their energies in destructive primary contests.

Permanent Minority. After Shafer won the governorship in 1966, Joe Napolitan, a gifted political manager who had worked for the Democrats, inspected his party’s hardening arteries and concluded. “The Democratic Party in Pennsylvania is ready for a major reorganization.” Progress since Napolitan’s critique has been nil. Former Governor George Leader observes that his party has shown”no sense of urgency” in coping with its problems.

The problem is painfully clear in enrollment figures. Statewide, the Democraticlead of 196,000 six years ago has turned into a deficit of 53,000 in Philadelphia’s Negro and Jewish wards, Republican enrollment used to run 20% at most. Now the G.O.P. commands up to 35% in these areas. In industrial centers, union chiefs are no longer able to dictate the political loyalties of 1,450,000 members.

The mood in Pennsylvania is so bleak that Joe Clark predicts that one more defeat, far from rejuvenating the party, will relegate it to “permanent minority status.” He could be right. The Democratic leadership has succeeded so well in stifling young talent that there maybe nobody around capable of picking up the pieces—and that is true not only in Pennsylvania but elsewhere.