Elections: A Bigger Club

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Though every election has its purely parochial aspects, there were clear signs last week that American politics in off-year 1965 was being conducted in a far tougher and more sophisticated context at state and city levels. Put simply, the voter seemed more concerned than ever with practical results rather than partisan victories, with the contents of the package rather than the label. In races vital to the welfare of their own communities, voters not only crossed party lines but also freely ignored ethnic, religious and economic distinctions to support appealing and constructive candidates.

Minus a Tentacle. 1965's biggest winners were those who capitalized on this hardheaded attitude. "There is no vote in this city which can be taken for granted," concluded Republican Congressman John V. Lindsay after New York's overwhelmingly Democratic voters elected him mayor (see cover story). His comment could have been echoed by politicians in scores of cities and counties where the electorate refused to buy a pig in a poke.

In predominantly urban New Jersey, taken-for-granted Republicans went heavily Democratic because the G.O.P. gubernatorial candidate seemed more interested in getting a Marxist history professor fired than in facing up to pressing statewide problems. Long-docile Democrats in Philadelphia chopped a tentacle off the "Octopus of Walnut Street," as their tired machine is unlovingly known, by electing a District Attorney on the Republican ticket. A Democrat surprised everybody by getting himself elected mayor of Scranton, Pa., and Republicans did the same in Binghamton, N.Y., Waterbury and New Britain, Conn., and Akron, Ohio.

Not even the biggest-name politicians could shake the voters' "show-me" spirit. Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Pennsylvania's Governor William Scranton all campaigned for the Republican candidate in New Jersey's gubernatorial election—yet the Democratic incumbent piled up the biggest plurality in the state's history. Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey and New York's Senator Robert Kennedy lined up behind Democrat Abe Beanie in New York City—yet in Lindsay's shadow their en comiums sounded as if they had come from the party manual. "Look at Hubert Humphrey," chortled House Republican Leader Gerry Ford. "He campaigned in three places—in New York, in Philadelphia and in Ohio. His batting average was zero. Even the Twins won three out of seven."

Boomerang. To many of 1965's successful candidates, the name of the game was consensus politics. Yet in several contests, Negroes lodged powerful protest votes by mobilizing as a monolithic bloc—which is the very opposite of consensus.

Conservatives also showed that they can throw a punch—or in some cases, a boomerang. In New York, sardonic William Buckley led the fledgling Conservative Party into third place in total votes, but there is a strong possibility that he lured away more Democrats (because of his Catholicism) than Republicans (because of his ideology) and helped elect, rather than defeat, John Lindsay. In Virginia, a Conservative Party candidate garnered nearly 70,000 votes—enough to thwart G.O.P. hopes of upsetting Harry Byrd's not-so-purring machine.