New York: Incitement to Excellence

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Lindsay covered every corner of the city, usually perching on a sound truck to shout his messaees. He came me ticulously briefed for each neighborhood, referred familiarly to its specific problems—the need for a playground, a subway stop, new school facilities. Always Lindsay damned the Wagner administration for its isolation from the people. "The mayor ought to be in intimate touch with the blood and guts of the city," he cried. "There won't be a person hurt or frightened but we'll know it at city hall." He promised a batch of neighborhood mayor's offices (one for every 250,000 people) throughout the city to receive grievances.

J.V.L Y. J.F.K. Lindsay attacked Wagner for failing to get $15 million in federal aid because he had filed the papers either too late or not at all. And he made it eminently clear that as mayor he would get as friendly an ear in the White House as any Democrat. Whenever he was heckled about his Republicanism, he brandished a pair of pens, noting that they were bill-signing bestowals from Lyndon Johnson in gratitude for Lindsay's help in pushing through medicare and the Voting Rights Act this year.

Lindsay ran scared all the way—and properly so. In contrast, the Beame team's campaign was a study in machine-made overconfidence. Abe Beame made little effort to woo undecided voters, seemed happy only among people that he knew were on his side. One evening in late October, while Beame was beaming at a $100-a-plate banquet for Democrats (menu: brandy-flavored bisque of Mississippi crawfish, filet mignon perigourdine, string beans saute amandine, bombe glacee Americana, petits fours), John Lindsay's dinner was a gulped ham sandwich between one curbstone speech and the next.

To help the "amiable bookkeeper," as Jacob Javits called Beame, Hubert Humphrey contributed kind words and one full day's campaigning. Bobby Kennedy turned up in New York now and then, sardonically informed one gathering that the Democrats are "the party of Roosevelt, Truman, John F. Kennedy . . . and Huey Long!"

President Johnson came up with a strong endorsement, weakly delivered. It didn't help. The voters gave Lindsay 46% of their ballots, Beame 40.6% and Buckley 13.4%. Buckley had hoped to demonstrate a resurgence of conservative Republicanism, but he drew his most potent support from normally Democratic Irish, Polish, Italian (and Catholic) areas. Though Abe Beame held out the promise of becoming New York's first Jewish mayor, the usually Democratic Jewish vote went heavily for Lindsay—particularly in upper-income neighborhoods.

Though Beame lost, both of his ticket partners came through. Popular Queens District Attorney Frank O'Connor, 55, who is aiming to run for Governor next year, was elected city council president. And Mario A. Procaccino, 53, Italian-born son of a shoemaker, was elected controller.

Lindsay's win was not the only post-Goldwater revival triumph in New York last week. The G.O.P. recaptured the state senate, won six upstate mayoralties, and elected Kenneth Keating, who had been dumped from his U.S. Senate seat last fall by Bobby Kennedy, to a Superior Court judgeship by 2,000,000 votes.