1966

Robert Kennedy began his campaign for the Senate at the Fulton Fish Market, and the day after election he returned. The same hands pulled at him, and the same voices said, "He looks just like Jack--a little thinner and sadder, but just like him." But this time Senator-elect Kennedy smiled, for the campaign was behind him. Now he looks to the future and what will happen in New York in 1966.

As soon as Kennedy's election appeared certain, talk of him as a Presidential candidate began. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., close personal friend and one of ABC's election commentators, suggested this possibility. And Kennedy's brother-in-law Stephen Smith, his campaign manager, made the same suggestion.

If Kennedy is to challenge Hubert Humphrey or another Johnson candidate in 1968 or 72, he needs control of New York's Democratic party as an organizational base.

Certainly he and Smith possess organizational talent; and both have learned something about New York's own style of polyglot politics in the campaign. They would have allies too in a bid for control. Nassau county's leader John English and the ailing Bronx boss Charles Buckley will surely offer their support.

English, who often visited Robert Kennedy in Washington and had pushed hardest for his Senatorial nomination, has already proposed a method for Kennedy to take over. In 1966 the Democrats will need a gubernatorial candidate, and English has one--Nassau's able, attractive County Executive Eugene Nickerson. If Nickerson became Kennedy's man and won both nomination and election, Kennedy would demonstrate that he, and not Mayor Wagner, controlled political power. At the same time his man, Nickerson, would gain the vital patronage a governor possesses.

Of course, this theory depends on many hypotheses: that Nickerson could possibly be elected; that Kennedy's and Wagner's political aims will not coincide; that Kennedy genuinely wants the Presidency; that he will be able to perform the political miracle of dominating a state convention without the patronage of New York's City Hall and the White House.

Robert Kennedy has much working for him. His name alone commands enthusiasm and awe, and like his late brother he is young, handsome, and articulate. In addition, lest anyone forget, he came to New York, where he had not lived for almost twenty years, and defeated a man who had served New York in Congress for eightteen.

But chances for a Kennedy takeover, however plausible they may seem now, are not probable. Wagner enjoys extremely amicable relations with President Johnson, and they, not a junior Senator, control the jobs upon which organization thrive. Furthermore, while Nickerson is a Democratic hope, he will encounter strong opposition from better-known gubernatorial possibilities including Wagner himself and upstate Congressman Samuel Stratton.

And Kennedy's plurality, although more impressive than many predicted, hardly represents a mandate for dominance; for he ran 1,700,000 votes behind Johnson and behind most Senate and Assembly candidates. In addition, he received only tepid support from labor and less than that from New York City's reform movement.

The Kennedys are a resourceful clan; they faced West Virginia and Wisconsin and won. But New York may well prove different. Already reporters follow Robert Kennedy everywhere, attempting to unearth secret meetings with English, Buckley, and other party bossses. An overt Kennedy move will be news, and New Yorkers may well defeat in 1966 any obvious attempt to use their state to gain the presidency.