New York: How Long Are the Coattails?

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U.S. of Kennedy. Still, Bobby pursued the mirage, until Lyndon finally scratched Kennedy from the sweepstakes in late July in that strange and impulsive performance in which he simultaneously ruled out all Cabinet members and officials who met regularly with the Cabinet. Crestfallen, Bobby declared: "I don't think there is much future for me in this city now." Three weeks later, he thought he glimpsed a bearable future in New York, and he jumped into the Senate race. "If the Democratic Party could have agreed on any other candidate," said he, "I wouldn't have come in. But there wasn't any agreement."

Bobby's move provoked inevitable cries of "carpetbagger." Despite his protests that he had spent more time in New York than anywhere else, Bobby was Massachusetts-born and -oriented, and a resident of Virginia besides. But he knew where the power was, quickly lined up New York's Democratic bosses behind him, notably Buffalo's Peter Crotty, Brooklyn's Stanley Steingut, and Charlie Buckley of The Bronx. New York's Mayor Robert Wagner, reluctantly, also fell into line.

Many Democrats recoiled. "The political arm twisting has been the worst I've ever seen," said Utica's Richard H. Balch, onetime Democratic state chairman. Noting that Bobby's allies were running in three other states-Pierre Salinger in California, Teddy Kennedy in Massachusetts, and Joseph Tydings, who was a U.S. Attorney under Kennedy, in Maryland-with a total of 64 electoral votes among them on top of New York's 43, one Democrat cried: "It will be a United States of Kennedy." In a meeting with Mayor Wagner, a group of reformers protested: "Bobby Kennedy is a ruthless, unprincipled, frighteningly ambitious young man who intends to use the New York State Democratic Party to launch his presidential ambitions." Later, 120 reformers, including Playwright Gore (The Best Man) Vidal, Niagara Falls Mayor E. Dent Lackey and Actor Paul Newman, established a noisy Democrats for Keating Committee. Bobby viewed the reformers with the professional's habitual scorn for the idealistic amateur. "These people hate everything and everybody, even each other," he snapped.

Screamers & Jumpers. In early September, at a sweaty, tumultuous Democratic convention in the musty 71st Regiment Armory on Manhattan's lower Park Avenue, Kennedy steamrollered Upstate Congressman Sam Stratton, his only rival, 968 to 153. He won the Liberal Party's endorsement the same day. Aware that the Liberals delivered 406,000 votes to Jack Kennedy in 1960 -more than J.F.K.'s 3 80,000-vote statewide margin of victory-Bobby welcomed their support.