New York: How Long Are the Coattails?

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Kennedy's troubles with the Jews stemmed from the days when his father, Joseph Kennedy, while Ambassador to Britain, delivered too-vigorous warnings against going to war with Nazi Germany and a too-gentle appraisal of Hitler. Jack overcame their distrust, but Bobby seemed more like his father's son. And Bobby's onetime association with Senator Joseph McCarthy's investigating committee and his seeming indifference to the fine points of civil liberties roused further suspicions.

Playing on these suspicions, Keating charged that Kennedy, while Attorney General, had made a "deal" to sell off part of the Government-held General Aniline & Film Corp.'s assets to a Swiss holding company that was once run by Germany's I. G. Farben, a notorious exploiter of Jewish slave labor. Keating had proposed selling the assets-some $200 million worth-exclusively to private U.S. interests, but made no protest when the deal was announced in 1963.

Lurid Tales. Jewish liberals began channeling their contributions to the Johnson-Humphrey campaign and the Keating campaign, shutting Bobby out. To finance his $1,500,000 campaign, Bobby is probably dipping deep into his personal $10 million fortune.

Among the Italian-Americans, Keating made inroads by playing on their resentment of the Justice Department's Valachi hearings, in which lurid ta'.es of hoodlums with Italian names were told to the American public. Keating also nailed down the Greek vote by condemning Turkey's actions in Cyprus. There are only 31,000 Turks in New York, but there are 77,000 Greeks.

Still, Bobby stands high with other ethnic groups: the Germans (675,000 strong in New York), the Irish (492,000) and the Poles (685,000). He has paid particular attention to the state's 2,000,000 Negroes and Puerto Ricans, traditionally Democratic and overwhelmingly anti-Goldwater. At the urging of Kennedy headquarters, New York City Democrats mailed out nearly 4,000,000 pieces of mail, made thousands of phone calls to encourage new voters to register. The result: a city registration record of 3,636,634. For a Democrat, who normally needs a cushion of up to 700,000 votes in the city if he is to have a prayer of winning the state, that was good news. Said one Kennedy aide: "These new Negro and Puerto Rican votes were expected to be the frosting. But now they're turning into the whole cake."

Each candidate righteously deplored the other's exploitation of the ethnic vote, then went right on cultivating it himself. "I do not campaign in search of a Jewish vote or a Catholic vote or a Negro vote," said Bobby. But there he was, wearing a yamilke (skullcap) for a chat with a rabbi. And there he was at Grossinger's, assuring an audience that his father, in his Hollywood days, was so impressed at how Jewish moviemakers like the Warner brothers and Sam Goldwyn raised their children that "he decided to bring his own up that way." In turn, Keating complained about Bobby's "constant talk about the Jewish vote, the Italian vote, the this-that-or-the-other vote. I don't believe there is such a thing as bloc voting in this state." Not much. Keating has a 50-acre forest in Israel named after him, and he is the darling of the Italian-Americans for proposing to make Columbus Day a national holiday.