Elections 1969: The Moderates Have It

SWEET is the taste of victory, but sweeter still political triumph won against the odds or against long-prevailing winds. There was thus a special savor to the celebrations of many of the winners in last week's spate of off-year elections across the nation. Like the city's Mets, John Lindsay came from ignominy to take the mayoralty of New York, and did it without the endorsement of either major party. In Virginia, moderate Republican Linwood Holton seized the Governor's mansion, occupied for 84 years by Democrats. In Cleveland, Carl Stokes, the nation's first black mayor of a major city, had the aid of white votes in winning a second term against a strong white challenger. In Buffalo, Mayor Frank Sedita, a middle-road Democrat, staved off a black independent challenger and a law-and-order Republican to keep his job--thanks to strong support from the city's blacks.

Nearly everywhere, it was a good day for moderates, as the U.S. voter proved less bigoted and more judiciously pragmatic than the Jeremiahs had predicted. Backlash seems to be losing some of its snap.

It was also a good day for Richard Nixon, who had personally campaigned for Holton in Virginia and for William Cahill, the gubernatorial winner in New Jersey. Both men won bigger than expected, and the G.O.P. will control 32 of the 50 Governors' mansions, an arithmetic not duplicated since the first Eisenhower landslide. The outcome on the principal sites of combat:

NEW YORK CITY

At the outset, they told Lindsay it could not be done. Pilloried for allegedly caring only about blacks and Manhattan's Beautiful People, the handsome, patrician Lindsay lost the June Republican primary to an obscure state senator, John Marchi. The Democrats nominated their most conservative aspirant, Mario Procaccino, who seemed well suited to lead frustrated middle-income voters against Lindsay's ghetto-oriented liberalism.

The Jewish vote, the city's biggest single ethnic bloc, was crucial to his cause. Four years ago, the traditionally Democratic Jews helped elect Lindsay. Now many of them were still enraged over Lindsay's dispute last year with the predominantly Jewish teachers' union.* That acid conflict also lent credence to the allegation that he cared nothing for Marchi's "forgotten New Yorker" and Procaccino's "average man."

Lindsay's counterattack was protean. Forced to run independently of both major parties and thus lacking the usual precinct apparatus, he attracted thousands of volunteers who canvassed the neighborhoods. Accused of arrogance, he went on television to admit mistakes. Charged with being soft on crime, he boasted of his efforts to beef up the police department. To overcome the argument that his policies had encouraged anti-Semitism among black radicals, he went, yarmulke on head, to synagogues to plead his case.

Lindsay was able to outspend and outorganize his opponents. In television debates, he easily outclassed Procaccino, the early favorite in the campaign. The mayor was able to attract the active support of liberal elements of both major parties. In the end, many Jews found that, despite their earlier hostility to Lindsay, they could not vote for either the academically conservative Marchi or the bellicose, volatile Procaccino.

Procaccino and Marchi not only divided the conservative vote; their generally pedestrian campaigns made Lindsay look good by comparison. Still, the result fell far short of a majority for the liberal coalition. Capturing an estimated 80% of the black vote and managing to draw as many Jewish votes as did Procaccino, Lindsay won with just 41.8% of the total. Nonetheless, the fact that he won at all restored him as a man whom both Republicans and Democrats must reckon with in future sweepstakes for the White House.

NEW JERSEY

A swing state, New Jersey is a bellwether coveted by both parties. It was the last big, highly industrialized state with a Democratic Governor. The Democrats, in a ripping primary, nominated Robert Meyner, 61, for Governor; he held the office from 1954 to 1961. The Republicans also fought a tough primary, which was won by William Cahill, 57, a six-term Congressman who was virtually unknown outside of his district. Cahill, an amiable but bland campaigner, overcame his recognition problem in a series of twelve debates with Meyner, some of them televised. Few policy differences emerged between the two moderates, and Election Eve projections indicated the closest of contests. Thus, Cahill's 60% majority astonished the state.

Cahill was acceptable to both liberal and conservative Republicans, and used his support of Nixon as a party rallying point. Meyner simply failed to unite Democrats or ignite independents. He probably had the best explanation for the proportions of his defeat. "I would suspect," he said on Election Night, "that there is a time when one who seeks public office seeks it one too many times. This apparently was the time."

VIRGINIA

Virginia went for Nixon in 1960 and 1968, but the statehouse remained firmly in Democratic hands, as it has for eight decades. Now the old Byrd machine is moribund, and the G.O.P. is respectable in the South. A. (for Abner) Linwood Holton, 46, a close Nixon ally who ran unsuccessfully for the governorship four years ago, was the easy victor over William Battle, 477,900 to 408,300.

Both Holton and Battle are progressives in Virginia terms. They talked a moderate law-and-order line but sounded sympathetic toward the black's problems. They want the U.S. out of Viet Nam but on "honorable" terms. Those, however, were secondary issues compared with the food-tax dispute--Holton favored offsetting the regressive state levy with a rebate--and the Republicans' argument that it was time to make Virginia a two-party state.

While Helton's much-advertised association with Nixon obviously helped, the G.O.P.'s biggest strength was Democratic weakness. Many conservative Democrats could not forgive Battle his ties with the Kennedys. The state A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the Crusade for Voters, a black political-action group, could not abide Battle's support by the lingering vestiges of the Byrd organization. Many liberals with no love for either Nixon or Holton wanted most of all to exercise the old Democratic guard completely and start fresh. The combination handily managed to put Holton over the top.

PITTSBURGH

The old Democratic state machine, forged in Allegheny County and once as strong as the region's main export, has become tinny with the years. Peter Flaherty, a reform-minded Democratic member of Pittsburgh's city council, turned his party's weakness into a personal advantage. Breaking with the faltering organization, he whipped its candidate in a mayoral primary. To dramatize his divorce from the party apparatus, Flaherty refused to accept its support after the primary. The Republicans, sensing a chance to win, put up a strong candidate, John Tabor, and gave him ample financing. Flaherty made capital on that, too. The motto on his literature: "The political bosses couldn't beat him, and the Republican money machine couldn't bury him."

Pittsburgh has been roiled by black demonstrations for high-paying construction jobs. While race did not become an overt issue between Flaherty and Tabor, Tabor used his Czech descent to identify with the city's white working class. Yet Flaherty's conciliatory approach won acceptance in both white and black precincts. He was elected mayor by the handsome margin of 118,600 to 62,500.

DETROIT

The nonpartisan mayoralty runoff contest between two Democrats pitted Wayne County Auditor Richard Austin, a black, against the county sheriff, Roman Gribbs. Racial animosity left over from the 1967 riot and a shoot-out between police and black nationalists last March, together with Austin's color and Gribbs' background in law enforcement, were ingredients for a bitter black-white confrontation. Yet it did not occur.

Both candidates avoided the inflammatory; each concentrated on his own sound record in office and on specific proposals for meeting the city's needs. The record turnout of more than 500,000 was nearly twice the 1965 vote total, and the city split virtually fifty-fifty. Gribbs won with 257,700 v. Austin's 250,700. Said Austin: "The fact that I received nearly 50% of the vote indicates that there is much less racial polarization than was indicated." As the polls closed and the count began, Gribbs and Austin took the unusual step of making a joint statement. "Regardless of the outcome," they said, "we pledge ourselves to work in the interest of unity and brotherhood."

CLEVELAND

When asked how one runs a city in tense times, Carl Stokes often responds at least half-seriously: "You can't." He has nonetheless been trying. While attempting to cool hostility between blacks and the police, Stokes has successfully angled for federal housing funds, put across a bond issue to combat water pollution, enacted a stringent air-pollution law and generally given an energetic tone to what had been a stagnant city government.

Cleveland police--and many lower-middle-class whites--consider Stokes to have been too energetic in behalf of blacks. Two of his civil service commissioners have been indicted on charges of favoring Negro applicants to the police department. The Fraternal Order of Police took full-page newspaper ads to denounce the mayor. Ralph Perk, the Republican county auditor, seemed a candidate well equipped to benefit from Stokes' color and the old-country orientation of Cleveland's working-class population. Of Czech background. Perk is married to an Italian-American and has a daughter-in-law of Slovenian descent. He did not openly court racist sentiment, but did concentrate on white audiences in the ethnic enclaves. Perk, said the Cleveland Plain Dealer, seemed to be campaigning for mayor of Prague or Warsaw. His tactics nearly worked. Stokes' victory was narrow, 3,700 votes out of a total of 239,000, but four years ago his plurality was only 1,700.

* The issue was decentralized control of public schools, favored by Negro leaders. The union viewed it as a threat to teachers' civil service rights, and a ruinous strike took place.

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