Unity, of Sorts

Overstressing the "unity" theme at their separate state conventions, New York Democrats and Republicans last week chose their candidates to run for the U.S. Senate. The Republicans renominated snow-thatched Incumbent Kenneth Barnard Keating, 64, and the Democrats named U.S. Attorney General Robert Francis Kennedy, 38.

For all the talk about party unity, both conventions were marked by a certain dissidence.

Friendly Fishmongers. At the Democrats' raucous caucus in Manhattan's 71st Regiment Armory, Bobby Kennedy won hands down over upstate New York Congressman Samuel Stratton. The 968,153 vote failed to reflect the resentment of many convention delegates that Bobby is by no stretch of the imagination a New Yorker. On hand to help Bobby, who has yet to win any elective office, were Wife Ethel and seven of their eight children. Daughter Kathleen, 13, promised to campaign for Daddy "if he asks me." Daughter Courtney, 7, was looking forward to residence in New York because she was tired of rainy weather on Cape Cod. "Here," she chirped, "it's sunny." Ethel, talking to reporters about her newly rented, 25-room house on Long Island, allowed as how there would be swimming-pool parties--but "just for the children." What she liked best about the house, she said, was that "it is in New York."

The "carpetbagger" charge was Bobby's biggest problem. To prove that he really cares about New York, he arose at 5:15 a.m. on the morning after his nomination, made his way to the famed and redolent Fulton Fish Market, where he shook hands with friendly fishmongers. Next day, he took time out for a quick trip to Washington to resign formally from his Cabinet job (his successor, at least temporarily, will be Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach). With that out of the way, Kennedy returned once more to New York and to the pursuit of a vast number of voters who still regard him as a power-playing outsider. So much an outsider is Bobby that he won't be able to cast a ballot in New York this fall, therefore has decided not to vote at all. "I could vote in Massachusetts," he said, "but as a resident of New York I wouldn't want to do that." Scratch one vote for Senator Teddy Kennedy, another for Lyndon Johnson.

Withheld Endorsement. On the Republican side, carpetbagging was not the issue, but there was plenty of dissidence nonetheless. Incumbent Keating, with big convention send-offs from Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Senator Jacob Javits, Dick Nixon and Tom Dewey, received his party's nomination by acclamation. Only the day before, Mrs. Clare Boothe Luce had declined the New York Conservative Party's invitation to run as a third Senate candidate --one who might easily draw enough votes away from Keating to cause his defeat.

Now, under urging from Rocky, Javits, Nixon and Dewey (but not from Barry Goldwater or any of his aides, who advised her to do as she thought best), Mrs. Luce appeared before the G.O.P. convention with a plea for party unity. "All Republicans should be for one, and one for all," she said. "In a common cause, confronted with an enemy, what men of common sense do is close ranks, as I am doing today."

Still, Mrs. Luce carefully withheld her support from Keating--not even mentioning him by name--because he has yet to indicate that he himself will support Republican Presidential Nominee Goldwater.

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