Beating the Odds

Millionaire John Dyson, 43, brought a $6 million war chest to New York's Democratic Senate primary, as well as the encouragement of Governor Mario Cuomo and New York City Mayor Ed Koch. Dyson's opponent Mark Green, 41, a former consumer advocate with Ralph Nader's Congress Watch, had just $800,000, most of it raised from small contributions through what Green called his "Mark of Dimes" campaign. Just before the election, Dyson blanketed the airwaves with commercials, while Green managed to get only a couple of short spots onto the TV screen. Yet when the polls closed last week, Green had beaten Dyson convincingly, 54% to 46%.

In the wake of his victory Green was exultant. "Message beat money," he crowed. Until recently the received wisdom has been that money talks, especially in TV advertising. Indeed, Dyson's media consultant, Phil Friedman, who pocketed a handsome $450,000 for the job, confidently predicted victory in the days leading up to the voting. But to Randy Daniels, Green's press secretary, the upset "shows the limitations" of political commercials. "We were able to defeat Dyson and Dyson's money because we outworked him and outresearched him."

To most observers, however, the Green-Dyson race indicated more about New York's Democratic political scene than it did about the power of money. New York liberals not only follow primary campaigns closely but turn up at the polls in greater numbers than most other groups. This time around they certainly provided most of Green's strength. In a low turnout that attracted just 13% of New York's 3.8 million Democratic voters, Green won by 34,000 votes. Says Washington Media Consultant Carter Eskew: "One lesson is that paid media in a primary is less effective than it would be in a general election. It's pretty clear that when you make a big advertising buy in a primary, you can waste millions of dollars on people who just aren't going to vote."

Green's low-budget tactics face a far tougher test in the general election, when he will have to outhustle both Dyson, who is running on the Liberal Party line, and Republican Alfonse D'Amato, the popular incumbent whom Koch last week called a "superb Senator." D'Amato, who won a three-way Senate race in 1980, has raised nearly $7 million for this year's campaign.