New York: Woise Than Ever

Despite the rain trickling down from a train trestle overhead, some 200 people last week gathered around a sound truck on a Bronx street to hear New York City’s Democratic Mayor Robert Wagner plead for reelection. Smiling painfully, Wagner shook a few hands, then launched into a pallid denunciation of New York’s Democratic machine bosses. The audience response, at best, was mixed. An enthusiastic urchin yelled: “Yay for Wag’ner baby!” A tenement dweller shouted down from his window: “Get outa here, yah bum!” In the crowd, a heckler chanted a bitter litany: “New York is woise than ever, New York is woise than ever.”

If the quality of the campaign for mayor of the nation’s largest city is any indication, New York may yet get worse. Heading toward primaries next week and the general election in November are four more or less major candidates who have turned the contest into a tragicomedy of charge and countercharge. The four:

Robert Wagner, Democrat-Liberal, was elected mayor in 1953 and re-elected in 1957, both times under the sponsorship of the Democratic organization bosses he is now attacking. His first term was plodding; his second has been studded with proliferating scandals: inadequate or nonexistent school maintenance, graft in the real estate bureau, profiteering in slum-clearance projects, conflict of interest in the city council, extortion in the police department, bribe taking in the controller’s office and by inspectors of departments that supervise buildings, markets, water supply, gas and electricity. Trying to hold onto the support of reform Democrats, led by former Governor Herbert Lehman and Eleanor Roosevelt, Wagner last winter demanded that Tammany Boss Carmine De Sapio resign. Emboldened by the applause he got for that move, Wagner decided to drop his machine-honed running mates and pick his own candidates for deputy mayor and controller. That lost him the support of two borough bosses far more powerful than De Sapio: Brooklyn’s Joseph Sharkey and The Bronx’ Charles Buckley. For this belated display of courage, Wagner earned the endorsement of the New York Times, which admitted that his administration has been “shot through with an accumulation of defects and scandals.” But, said the Times, Wagner was unlike Levitt in that he was at least “free of the old clubhouse control.” The Republican New York Herald Tribune noted the endorsement “with puzzlement” under the editorial headline: OH, COME NOW, NEW YORK TIMES.

Arthur Levitt, Democrat, ran for a second term as state controller in 1958—and was the only Democrat to win statewide office in Nelson Rockefeller’s Republican sweep. With that credential as a vote getter, and as a down-the-line party regular, Levitt was the organization leaders’ logical choice to buck Wagner in the primary. Accepting the bosses’ decision, Levitt amiably announced that he had received a popular “mandate.” Where Wagner’s platform style is spare and uninspired, Levitt’s is florid and uninspired.

Lawrence Gerosa, Independent, an amiable trucking millionaire with tight-fisted fiscal ways, was twice elected the city’s controller on tickets with Bob Wagner. Dropped by Wagner this year, Gerosa announced that he was the candidate of “God and the good people,” is running on a ticket of his own making but has only nuisance value.

Louis Lefkowitz, Republican, who doggedly fought his way up from an East Side Manhattan slum to Fordham Law School, a city judgeship under Fiorello La Guardia, and a successful private practice, has served 4½ years as a hard-working state attorney general. Elated by the rift in Democratic ranks, New York City’s feeble G.O.P. tried first to get either liberal Senator Jacob Javits or personable young Representative John Lindsay to run for mayor. Both refused; the party finally settled on Lawyer Lefkowitz, and picked running mates to produce a ticket that sounds like three parts of a Notre Dame backfield: Lefkowitz, Fino and Gilhooley. The G.O.P. campaign, based mostly on the possibility that the Democrats will destroy themselves, has not yet gotten off the ground.

Last week was characteristic of the campaign’s level. Gerosa began a merry-go-round of accusations by pointing a finger at Wagner for using city-paid domestic help in his Long Island summer home (the New York district attorney’s office looked into the case, cleared Wagner of wrongdoing). Gerosa also complained that Wagner had run up a $5,605 food bill between June and September 1960 at Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence. Bob Wagner rose in righteous indignation. “I,” he cried, “am the first mayor to pay my own food bills at Gracie Mansion.” Then Wagner began tossing out his own accusations: he charged both Gerosa and Levitt with responsibility for a deal that enabled the sponsors of a Queens housing project to make a windfall profit of $2,400,000. Understandably pained, Democrat Levitt accused Wagner of issuing a “vile, vicious slander.” The mayor, he cried, was “unfit to hold public office.” As for Republican Lefkowitz, who faces only token opposition in his party primary, he spent most of the week vacationing in Saratoga.

As of last week, New York City’s voters seemed almost as confused as the can didates. The Times, reporting on a Levitt foray into the garment district, discovered that many voters still did not know who the state controller was—and that those who recalled the name thought he was Lefkowitz. Levitt was regarded as a slight favorite in the Democratic primary on the basis that a small turnout (400,000 or less) would enable his organization support to pull him through. But even if Wagner is defeated in the primary, he will still be the nominee of the Liberal Party and of the brand-new, labor-backed Brotherhood Party, and will appear on the November ballot. So, too, will both Republican Lefkowitz and Independent Gerosa. Thus, there is a distinct possibility that between September and November the same four candidates will still be at it—which should make the campaign even woise than it was before.