Mob Scene in New York

Eight rivals want Abe's job

When it comes to their mayors, New fork City voters usually feel that one good term--or even a mediocre one--deserves another. In general elections since 1917, every incumbent seeking a second four-year term has been returned to power. Unfortunately for incumbent Mayor Abraham Beame, 71, things are not quite so simple as that record might seem to indicate. With six other Democrats seeking the nomination, there is a good chance that Beame will not make it past the first round of the primary next week, much less November's general election.

Last week one poll showed Beame running neck and neck with his most widely known rival, colorful, combative Bella Abzug, 57. The former Congresswoman was actually running slightly ahead according to other surveys, but neither of the two was in a commanding position. Coming up fast were New York Secretary of State Mario Cuomo, 45--the personal choice of Governor Hugh Carey --and Manhattan Congressman Edward Koch, 52.* None of the four front runners appeared likely to win the 40% of primary votes needed to avoid a Sept. 19 runoff. But for Beame supporters, the crucial question was whether their man would be one of the two to make it to that all-important second round.

Beame's plight had quite a bit to do with that of New York City itself. Last week the city's near ruinous finances --and the part that Beame played in their creation--came crashing back in on the mayor. The cause: publication of a damning 731-page report by the Securities and Exchange Commission on the debacle. The report charged Beame, other top municipal officials, some major commercial banks and Wall Street institutions with misleading the public in order to sell about $4 billion in short-term notes between October 1974 and March 1975. City officials, said the SEC, were well aware of the metropolis' financial shakiness. Yet they cooked city books to conceal the danger and issued reports that failed to reveal the true picture. Beame's immediate response was to call the report a "shameless, vicious, political document," deliberately timed to embarrass him and full of "intemperate charges and conclusions." The next day Beame again struck out at the SEC, but added the banks to his hit list. "For more than a year," he said, "the SEC withheld and covered up the fact that the banks secretly dumped city securities from their own portfolios on the market. If verified, the banks' actions constitute a fraud against the city and its people."

The report dealt a devastating and possibly fatal blow to Beame's primary chances. Most of his rivals quickly jumped on the mayor. Said Koch: "Beame was running the city like a second-class candy store." Typically low-keyed, Cuomo called it "sad" that Beame's lengthy civic career should culminate in such charges.

Though Abzug could find some cause for glee in the SEC findings, her own support has been slipping noticeably. Little more than a month ago, some private polls showed her with 30% of the primary vote. Bella still remains anathema, however, to business leaders, civil service unionists, state officials and political middle-readers. Against that, she can match a highly disciplined political organization and the most exhaustive telephone campaign of any candidate, aimed at getting out supporters in a race in which about one-third of New York City's 2 million registered Democrats are expected to vote. She is still considered the likeliest candidate to win a place in the runoff.

Cuomo's fortunes took a decided turn for the better when he was endorsed by the New York Times as "a skillful negotiator, a thoughtful conciliator and a coalition builder who might, with luck, hold this city together." Mediation is indeed Cuomo's hallmark. The son of Italian immigrants, Lawyer Cuomo successfully brokered a series of potentially explosive disputes between local neighborhoods and city hall in the 1960s and '70s. He made his first bid for office in 1974, running unsuccessfully for Lieutenant Governor. Carey named him New York's secretary of state in the same year, but Cuomo balked when the Governor asked him to run for mayor, citing the need to spend time with his family. Finally Cuomo relented--in part because of Carey's promise of endorsement by New York City's small but influential Liberal Party.

With an estimated $1 million in his war chest, Cuomo is spending more money than any other candidate save Beame. He has support among some regular clubhouse Democrats, affluent liberals, residents of the populous boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, and blue-collar Catholics. Cuomo's problem may be that voters see him as too philosophical and conciliatory --`a la Adlai Stevenson--for the job. Even if he does not win the primary, however, Cuomo is expected to be on the ballot in November, on the Liberal line.

Koch, a balding, nine-year congressional veteran with the look of a weary cherub, is accustomed to close elections. In 1963 he upset Carmine De Sapio, the last big-time boss of Tammany Hall, for the seemingly minor but symbolically important party post of Democratic district leader of lower Manhattan, with a margin of 41 votes out of 9,271 cast. Five years later, he became the first Democrat in 30 years to go to Congress from John Lindsay's old Silk Stocking-Greenwich Village district. Koch has won endorsements from Rupert Murdoch's noisy afternoon Post (circ. 600,000) and, more significantly, from the Daily News (circ. 2 million), still widely regarded as the city's working-class bible. Koch calls himself "a liberal with sanity"--meaning that he is a vocal law-and-order man, loudly attacks waste and corruption in local government, and has gone out of his way to assail municipal unions for helping to bring about the city's financial mess. Koch's main problems: a relative lack of campaign funds, a weak organizational network, and little recognition among voters in the city's outlying boroughs.

Whoever ultimately wins the Democratic race will be presumed the favorite in November against Republican State Senator Roy Goodman, 47, or his own long-shot primary rival, Conservative Barry Farber, 47, a former local talk-show host. Between now and then, however, there is plenty of time for the Democratic candidates to carve one another up. That, of course, is New York City's longest-standing political tradition of all.

*Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton, 56, a black, and Bronx Congressman Herman Badillo, 48, a Puerto Rican, are thought to have little chance; both have solid ethnic bases but have been unable to add much support. New York Businessman Joel Harnett, 51, is thought to have no chance at all.

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