Battle of the Clones

OVERHEAD, the graffiti-bedecked subway trains clatter onward, dragging the sardined hordes of humanity away, in towards Manhattan. Down below, on the street--a saloon-infested, neon-gaudy strip called Roosevelt Ave., deep in the heart of Elmwood, Queens--the people muddle on, oblivious to the noise and to everything else. On the side streets beckon the bars, little Irish holes-in-the-wall where the Hugheses and McAfees gather to put away their beers and spill their guts, and flashy dives where the Puerto Ricans and Blacks, so new to the neighborhood, huddle in self-protection. This may be Queens, but it is really New York, a microcosm of the entire city. It is a place where the races are realizing that they are going to live together, like it or not, and where no one likes the idea enough to talk about it. But most of all, it is a place where no one really cares about anything, except maybe their daily beer and their Yankees. And, not surprisingly, it is a place where no one much cares who will be their next mayor.

It is now a commonplace to note that New York, once one of the most intensely political towns in the country, is now in the midst of a perverse political lull. Gone are the flashy pretty-boys like John Lindsay, the debonair playboys like Jimmy Walker, the fiery sidewalk-thumpers like Fiorello LaGuardia and the mediocre but endearing swindlers like Bill O'Dwyer. The city that could once churn out Roosevelts and Wagners now contents itself with failed accountants like Abe Beame, who chased political shadows in the dark of a summer blackout. Mediocrity on an unprecedented scale. Yet even those ciphers seem awesome compared to the choice New Yorkers face at the polls this November.

The luck of the primary has left The Big Apple with a quartet of Little Names in the running for the mayorality. At least there is some color--Barry Farber, a radio talk-show host with a Carolina drawl and a neat knack for hyperbole, has been busily stumping the ethnic street corners, tarring his Republican opponent, State Sen. Roy M. Goodman '51, in at least eight different languages. For his part, Goodman--whom Farber describes as "a Lindsay clone"--has waged a yeomanlike battle against the Conservative nominee's barbs on one side, and massive desertions from his campaign staff on the other. It is an interesting fight: the sharp country boy matching phrases with the cool, statistic-laden Harvard grad. It is, however, strictly a battle for third place.

ON CENTER COURT, the match is between the so-called "liberals." Rep. Edward I. Koch, the Democratic nominee who currently represents Lindsay's old Congressional district, again faces his opponent from last September's primary run-off, Secretary of State Mario M. Cuomo, now running on the Liberal line. Like so many New York mayoralty races, it is a contest of strange political bedfellows. Koch, the liberal, anti-war, gay-rights activitist, has assumed the status of favorite, riding the Democratic machine to a commanding lead in the most recent Daily News straw poll. Meanwhile, Cuomo, the centrist candidate who entered the race with the blessings of Gov. Hugh L. Carey's new-formed political apparatus, has watched his support dwindle to the lone endorsement of the Liberal Party--a maverick label that, in light of Cuomo's close association with old-line politicos, is at best incongruous. On the surface, it would seem an interesting race.

The problem, of course, is that the race appeared to be over before it even started. No sooner had Koch dispatched Cuomo in the runoff--a sequel to his startling victory in the seven-person general primary early in the month--than the press had dubbed him heir apparent to that shaky framework of bureaucratic cobwebs and dubious city bonds that is the New York municipal government. New Yorkers had rebuked the Beame administration, the papers asserted, and wanted to move on to the brand of humane but firm fiscal conservatism that Koch promised. The Congressman, not one to decline a crown so generously offered, immediately began acting mayoral, going so far as to name a transition team to take over the government only two days after the run-off. And although Cuomo, uncooperative fellow that he is, refused to step into his freshly-dug grave, he still seemed more like a punched-out sparring partner than a live contender. The clear choice, it was obvious, was Koch.

And so it has stayed, with Koch holding a 20-percentage-point lead in most polls, while Goodman and Farber muddle around in the single-digit range. But if most New Yorkers believe Koch is the answer, they seem to have failed to ask the question: Who is Koch, and why is he going to run Gotham? What makes him different from Cuomo, Beame, or the rest of the lifeless pack?

The answer most given is that he is the liberal, the compassionate but pragmatic leader of the city's Roosevelt-liberal coalition. The pundits snicker at the credentials of Cuomo, who carries the endorsement of the official party but whose political past renders him more than suspect. Cuomo is a political harple, the experts say, an unconscionably ambitious man with no political scruples. They chuckle at his fate: When he was no longer of use to Carey, who propped him up as a straw man to draw away Beame's support in the primary, the governor dumped him. Now Cuomo draws most of his support from nervous Republicans, who have abandoned Goodman's foundering ship but are still holding out for a last chance to torpedo Koch.

The Republicans, however, need not worry. The Democratic front-runner is no threat to their comfortable middle-class lives; he can't afford to be. For all their burnt-out slums and depreciating bank notes, New Yorkers are a singularly immovable lot--and no political reformer, no matter how irresistable, can do anything about it. Koch sees this; anyone who saw the agony of the last few years of John Lindsay's administration has to know it. Of course, there are the minority groups: anyone who lives in Bedford Stuyvesant or the South Bronx cannot fail to want change. But most of the city is not the South Bronx--it is Flatbush and Canarsie, where the people like their Yankees hot and their politicians quiet. And most of all, it is places like Elmwood, where the people don't want anything out of politicians as long as the bars open on time.

And so Koch has run a quiet campaign. Back home in Manhattan, he has been the same cheery liberal he has always been, fervently flailing away at the establishment. Then before he ventures out into the wilds of forgotten Long Island, Koch steps into a phone booth to emerge a new man, a super-Cuomo. Outflanking the opposition, he has come out in favor of the death penalty, thus cutting into the rich vein of blue-collar Catholic votes--a vein Cuomo, by right of birth, should be tapping. With the Jewish vote comfortably in his pocket (thanks to such stunts as his celebrated letter of protest to President Carter after the Administration's declaration of support for Palestinian rights), he then goes after the business vote, tilting with the powerful municipal unions--a group, oddly enough, that opposed him bitterly in the primary. Then comes the pitch for business incentives, hints of tax reductions, and the obligatory attack on the wasteful social programs of the Lindsay administration. It is an interesting litany for the knight of New York's liberal reformers, a pitch that might be heard coming from a Republican. A pitch, in fact, that is coming from the Republican--and from everyone else in the race.

THE SIMPLE FACT is that Koch's difference from his opponents is only a matter of degree. Less bizarre than Farber, better financed than Goodman, more politically subtle than Cuomo, he is the best actor for the only script that New York voters will accept. The past decade of failed idealism, followed by near-bankruptcy, has provided a political mood in the city that will accept nothing but an energetic, well-connected centrist politico, one with an aura of reform but a mind for conformity. And Koch is such a man. Clearly, anyone with the gall to mount a massive campaign against the "charisma" of the Lindsay years and the "clubhouse atmosphere" of the Beame administration--with scripts written by Lindsay's media coordinator and a drive organized by the Beame machine--has the proper air of ambitious cynicism for the job.

So down in Elmwood, where the barflies have greeted the campaign with the same enthusiasm as they would a delegation from a leper colony, no one even bothers debating. November will come--and then December, when the posters fall off the telephone poles, but the beer continues to flow. Nothing will change; these people know their man.