Tough Off-Year Voters Say No

Americans are in a skeptical, disgruntled mood--determined to cut back government spending, turning tough on law and order, unconvinced that women need more legal rights than they already have. In different locales and to different degrees, those were the main themes that emerged last week as voters went to the polls to take part in an off-year election that produced few surprises and no major power shifts.

Although President Ford said the results showed that the G.O.P. is "alive and well," Connecticut's Republican Senator Lowell Weicker, no loyalist, said more pessimistically that the party had "taken it on the chops again." The G.O.P. lost both gubernatorial races (Kentucky and Mississippi) and fared badly in a number of mayoralty duels. Ford did have one solid reason to take heart: the voters turned down $5.87 billion of the $6.33 billion in bond proposals that were on ballots across the nation.. The White House interpreted the results as clear evidence that Americans were taking heed of the President's warning--and key campaign issue --that big spending could be as disastrous for their states and localities as it already has been for New York City. The election results:

The Statehouses

Until Kentucky's schools opened this fall, Democratic Governor Julian Carroll, 44, seemed a clear favorite to be returned to the statehouse. A down-home lawyer from West Paducah, the silver-haired Carroll is a tireless campaigner and an evangelistic orator who sounds, in the words of one state politician, "like Gomer Pyle at the Second Coming." Then, under federal court order, the yellow school buses began to integrate schools in Louisville and the rest of Jefferson County, and suddenly Carroll was sharply challenged by Republican Robert E. Gable, 41, a coal and lumber millionaire.

Like Gable, Carroll proclaimed that he was against forced busing, but the Governor did maintain that the court's decree had to be obeyed. That stand appeared to hurt Carroll when resentment against integration rose to such a pitch that mobs burned buses on Sept. 5. On election eve, police had to use tear gas to disperse another mob of 3,500 demonstrators who were throwing bricks and bottles and chanting "Get the buses!" As it turned out, the resulting backlash against the violence helped the Governor, who also closed fast with an aggressive and well-financed campaign. Carroll not only took 63% of the vote but won by a record margin of nearly 192,290 votes.

In Mississippi, where only 10% of the voters are Republicans and the G.O.P. has not won a gubernatorial contest since 1873, Democrat Cliff Finch, 48, came on with the glad hand and confident smile of a winner (TIME, Nov. 3). Although he earned $150,000 last year as a lawyer, Finch campaigned as the "workingman's candidate," toting around a lunch pail and spending one day each week laboring on such blue-collar jobs as driving bulldozers and repairing automobiles.

In contrast, G.O.P. Candidate Gil Carmichael, 48, a millionaire auto dealer, ran an issue-oriented campaign, urging the reform of the state's creaking constitution (encumbered with 65 amendments) and making education mandatory through the eighth grade (children can now quit school whenever they want to). In conservative Mississippi, Carmichael even advocated reducing penalties for the use of marijuana and requiring the licensing of handguns. In a stunning showing, Carmichael carried all of the urban areas. But the countryside and piney woods belonged to Finch, who won a surprisingly narrow victory with only 52% of the vote. Vowing to fight on for his ideas, Carmichael said: "We reached for a miracle and missed it by just an inch."

Together with Edwin Edwards' re-election to the Louisiana governorship ten days ago, the Finch and Carroll victories maintain the almost embarrassing edge that the Democrats have over the G.O.P. in the nation's statehouses, 36 to 13, with one independent (Maine's James B. Longley). Both Finch and Carroll won with female running mates. Evelyn Gandy, 53, Mississippi's insurance commissioner, was elected Lieutenant Governor. Thelma Stovall, 56, a three-term secretary of state, won the same office in Kentucky. When they take office, Gandy and Stovall, who both favor the Equal Rights Amendment, will give the U.S. a current total of three women Lieutenant Governors. The other: New York's Mary Anne Krupsak, 43, who won in 1974.

The City Halls

After a tumultuous season of busing crises and financial crunches, 1975 looked like a tough year for incumbent mayors. Still most managed to hang on, although no clear pattern emerged.

In Boston, Democratic Mayor Kevin H. White, 46, highly regarded in the '60s as one of the nation's bright young urban leaders, won a third term but lost ground in his bid for a vice-presidential nomination--or better--because his victory was so narrow. Running against little-known State Senator Joseph F. Timilty, 36, also a Democrat, White squeaked through by a scant 5% margin. Although he outspent Timilty by more than 2 to 1, he was hard-pressed by his opponent on alleged campaign contribution abuses. The mayor was also hurt by his identification with the city's busing turmoil, although both candidates claimed they would uphold court orders even though they opposed busing. White's emphasis on his own longtime experience in government and his support of the neighborhoods helped him retain black and Italian support, but he slipped a bit among his traditional liberal constituency in Back Bay and Beacon Hill because of accusations of dishonest fund raising. Timilty, a handsome ex-Marine with little formal education, was unable to overcome White's efficient organization, even though he had the backing of many antibusing working-class whites. Meanwhile, sentiment against busing swept into office allwhite, antibusing majorities on the city council and the school committee.

Cleveland's Mayor Ralph J. Perk, 61, had an easier time than did Boston's White--and gave the G.O.P. one of its few victories. Challenged by a black Democrat, Arnold Pinkney, 44, Perk, considered the "do-nothing" mayor of a financially troubled metropolis, emphasized the city's deep racial divisions rather than down-playing them. So, for that matter, did Pinkney, president of the city's school board and a former aide to Carl Stokes, Cleveland's first black mayor. But Perk, in gaining his third consecutive two-year term with 55% of the vote, was helped by the fact that Cleveland's white voters still outnumber black voters 6 to 4.

The most stunning upset was engineered in Minneapolis, where Independent Charles Stenvig, 47, defeated the easygoing, unexciting Democratic-Farmer-Labor mayor, Albert Hofstede, 35, by 503 votes. A recount is set for this week. A city police lieutenant, Stenvig won his first two-year term in 1969 on a right-wing, law-and-order platform, but was upset by Hofstede in 1973. Working out of a basement office in his home, Stenvig parlayed a low voter turnout (39.9%) and Hofstede's incredible overconfidence (he bought no TV or newspaper advertising) into his cliff-hanging win. Stenvig said that his victory came about because "the Lord let it happen. God doesn't sponsor flops."

Philadelphia's burly ex-Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo, 55, another law-and-order candidate who once boasted that he was so tough he would make "Attila the Hun look like a faggot," won more convincingly in his bid for re-election as the Democratic mayor. He garnered 25% more votes than his two lackluster opponents combined. Rizzo's victory came about despite some well-publicized embarrassments: the allegation that he had built a $400,000 house on a $40,000-a-year salary; his establishment of a political gumshoe squad that spied on political opponents; his flunking a lie-detector test in 1973 when he was questioned about involvement in local graft. Having displayed solid strength among labor, the white middle class and even the black community, Rizzo is now expected to begin plotting a run for Pennsylvania's governorship.

The Issues

Almost everywhere that voters were asked to authorize new spending or added governmental authority, the nays had it. A stunning 93% of the bond proposals offered across the country were thumbed down. In New York State a $250 million bond proposal that would have financed housing for the elderly was defeated by a 2-to-l margin. New Jersey residents scuttled $922 million in four bond proposals, involving aid for transportation, state institutions, water resources, housing and tax abatements. The most thunderous "No!" to added spending was delivered in Ohio, where a $4.5 billion package of bonds for transportation, housing, tax incentives and public works--the largest such proposal ever offered in any state--failed to carry a single county and lost by margins of as much as 4 to 1.

Most observers blamed New York's financial melodrama for stirring up panic over new spending. New Yorkers, for that matter, seemed pretty testy themselves. They voted heavily to curtail the mayor's powers--particularly in money matters--by approving several major changes in the city charter. They turned down a state equal rights amendment, as did New Jersey's voters (see THE SEXES). One of the most emotional battles in the U.S. was staged in San Francisco, whose citizens were furious over last summer's strikes by police and firemen (who were rewarded by outgoing Mayor Joseph Alioto with sizable raises). Voters overwhelmingly approved propositions limiting the pay of city employees and providing for their dismissal in the event of strikes.

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