Chasing a Future

The candidate is short, boyish despite graying sideburns, and dresses with dash. His hands constantly go to his receding hairline. As he steps away from the pulpit of a synagogue in Queens (because it is "too formal"), in order to address his audience from the aisle, he looks like a misplaced Johnny Carson.

Only rarely does Adam Walinsky publicly display the toughness that won him the sobriquet "Adamant Adam" while he was Robert Kennedy's premier speechwriter. But when a drunk at a construction site baited the dovish Walinsky about his feelings for "the boys in Viet Nam," the questioner got a snarling reply: "They're too damn good to die there!"

Walinsky, 33, is a Yale Law School graduate who joined Kennedy at the Justice Department in 1963 and was traveling with him when he was murdered. He does not flaunt the association, but he uses Kennedy-like gestures and even some phrases--"We can do better." He is the latest of several prominent Kennedy aides--both John's and Robert's--to try to capture elective office. Kenneth O'Donnell, Theodore Sorensen and Pierre Salinger have all been beaten badly at the polls.

Walinsky is running hard against New York State Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz, 66, an incumbent for 14 years and a genial New York Republican institution. The Walinsky campaign is energetic, relevant and heavily financed. He is spending between $400,000 and $500,000, roughly three times his opponent's budget. He spends himself just as lavishly. On one recent campaign day, he made half a dozen stops in the New York City area, flew into Buffalo at midnight and held a three-hour meeting before going to sleep.

Walinsky's staff suits his style and is patterned after the Kennedy retinues of his own days as an aide. Its members are young and idealistic, and dress around his headquarters ranges from vests to dungarees. His press secretary, Roz Mazer, is a 21-year-old senior on leave from Syracuse University. His campaign is being managed by Larry Kurlander, 31, who worked for Eugene McCarthy in 1968. The young staff has even younger helpers: teen-age drivers who do their daredevil best to keep Walinsky on schedule.

In his campaign, Walinsky is walking a political tightrope similar to that of Robert Kennedy in its simultaneous appeal to both liberals and conservative workingmen. In so doing, he is going against the popular political dicta offered by Richard Scammon and Ben J. Wattenberg in their recent book The Real Majority (TIME, Aug. 31). One of their theses holds that American voters will accept only centrist candidates who are willing to acknowledge and condemn violent social unrest. Walinsky dismisses that argument. "This Scammon-Wattenberg middle is a lot of crap," he says. "You can appeal to differing sides of the spectrum."

His television ads, which get most of his campaign money, do, however, reflect an appeal for an end to lawlessness, including white-collar crime. In one he declares: "In New York State tonight, 14-year-old children are going to shoot heroin into their veins . . . some men are going to come home from work, their lungs poisoned by chemicals . . . people are going to sit down and write out checks for padded bills. All of these things are against the law."

Walinsky has little chance of defeating Lefkowitz, who won re-election in 1966 by more than a million votes. But while Walinsky is putting up his money now, he is really betting on the next race. His aim is to create a demand for his style when New York's talent-hungry Democrats again look for a candidate for higher office.

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