Caution Reigns in New York

IN ITS 104TH try, the city with the greatest concentration of Jews in the world has elected its first Jewish mayor. And, more importantly, for the first time in the last three tries. New York has elected a man who came up through the ranks of one of the city's established Democratic organizations: Abe Beame, a 67-year old Brooklyn man, now the city's Comptroller.

Beame's election is a return to machine-type politics in a city which had been dominated by the Democratic machine for nearly 100 years. Although from most indications, Watergate had little impact on the race, Beame is the type of candidate who is likely to be popular in a post-Watergate electorate. He is staid, cautious, has a reputation for scrupulous honesty, and is too old to be ambitious. Beame is the classic civil servant, the man who once taught accounting in one of New York's high schools. He is an official of overarching caution, awed by risk, frightened by intuition.

A reporter from the New York Times observed that after speaking from notes written on file cards, the Mayor-to-be rips the cards into shreds and tosses the unreadable remains into a nearby wastebasket, guarding, one supposes, against unseen enemies who are eager to embarrass him

At the moment, it doesn't seem as if Beame has many enemies in the city. He won election with a resounding 57 per cent of the vote in a field of four, and carried every borough. Finishing behind him, nearly tied in the balloting, were John Marchi and Albert Blumenthal. Marchi is a Republican, Blumenthal a Democrat running on the Liberal party line, and Mario Biaggi, a scandal-ridden Democrat running with the endorsement of the Conservative Party finished last. Except for three liberal Assembly Districts in Manhattan that went for Blumenthal, Beame carried every A.D. in New York.

Throughout the city, his election was greeted with a certain relief. There was no excitement over the election--the real outcome was decided on June 26, when Beame assured his victory by defeating Herman Badilio, a Puerto Rican congressman from the Bronx in the Democratic Party primary runoff. The conflict between a Puerto Rican and a Jew was a bitter one, stirring up charges or racism coming from both camps. By November, most New Yorkers seemed glad that their choice had been made over the summer, when not too many people were watching, and when many voters were away on vacation, avoiding a more intense racial confrontation like the Detroit election. Only 47 per cent of New York's eligible voters turned out.

People are calmed by Beame's very nature, and the stability and familiarity of his background. Beame is a modest version of the self-made man. Like thousands of other New Yorkers, he is a product of the Depression who has pulled himself up into a secure position in the middle class. Running on the platform of old-line liberalism and fiscal responsibility and frugality, with a fine record of saving money during his tenure in the comptroller's office to back it up, his pitch was hard to get excited about or refute. Conservatives found him inoffensive, and liberals who disliked his interpertation of the New Deal voted for Blumenthal, or went for Beame, perhaps calculating that if he died in office Paul O'Dwyer, a liberal hero, the new President of the City Council, would get the job. Since the election, Beame has lived up to his image. His statements have been cautions and non-committal ("he'll never give you an answer the first time around," remarked an aide), and the five en he has named to a commission to guide the transfer of power from Lindsay's administration to his own are all old-line civil servants, usually 30-40 years older than Lindsay's aides.

HIDDEN behind Beame's election is a factor which is denied by his campaign aides--the resurgence of the boss-controlled Democratic organization. New York's Democratic leaders are an odd lot, and they don't agree ideologically--most of the district organizations are composed of moderate or conservative Democrats, although Matt Troy, the powerful Queens leader, was one of George McGovern's first backers in 1972--but they did unite on the Beame candidacy.

They are profiting from the resurgence of faith in the old party organization. The eight flashy years of the Lindsay administration are regarded as a failure and the myth that a tight Democratic organization can run things well--the false philosophy that mayors like Richard Daley of Chicago provide better city services than "reformers" like Lindsay--has turned and electorate toward the leaders and their unexciting candidate.

So far, tight party organization has borne some fruit: Beame went into the election with the backing of Badillo, and Percy Sutton, the black bourough President of Manhattan, preserving at least the appearance of racial harmony. Both are mayoral contenders, and don't want to alienate party leaders and followers.

It looks now like the new mayor's first few months in office will be placid. Two potentially bitter strikes, involving firemen and hospital workers, have been settled, and Beame will not inherit the bitterness left over from the conflict, which will trail Lindsay out of the office. The schools seem to be in better shape than they have been in a number of years, and local politicians have already convinced the public that the state is the cause of an imminent increase in subway fares. The subway crisis provides Beame with a popular position on a vital issue which he can pursue at no cost to himself: begging money from the Governor for the subways costs the city no unpopular tax increases.

Beame's greatest public relations asset now is that he was elected to be himself rather than the personification of some Kennedy or Lindsay myth. He will have an easier time coping with the slow and incremental nature of urban problems because he is not expected to come up with dramatic solutions.

Still it is unclear whether Abe Beame will do much to help New York. He was elected as a caretaker, a man to try to keep politics off the TV news, with a face that won't interfere with the commercials when he fails. A city like New York, seemingly lurching in every direction at once without an apparent plan, needs more than a caretaker. Beame's combination of cautious administration and the meticulous pluralism called for by his organizational base will lock his administration into the same types of solutions that failed in the past, the blind him to many of the innovations in areas like land use and open-space planning would go for towards improving the urban environment.

Abe Beame has adopted the world view of the machine politician; he is the reflection of the political organization's view of the electorate. He is conservative and frugal, hopefully competent and hard-working. This is the view that convinced McGovern that he had to turn to the right in the midst of his 1972 campaign, and this is the view that induced Herman Badillo to make a television commercial in the middle of his run-off battle with Beame showing him proudly parading in front of his expensive home in Riverdale (an exclusive section of the Bronx), trying to convince Jewish voters in Brooklyn that he was a middle class as they.

This is, in large measure, a self-perpetuating philosophy. Conservative, cautious politicians are created by their perception of an electorate that will buy security, peace and quiet every time. Men like Beame actively spread the doctrine of caution among voters, creating more of their species in the process. For this reason, it is a philosophy which win elections on the national as well as local level. But for cities like New York, it may make the subways cleaner for a time, but it is, in the long run, a doctrine of slow strangulation.