Nation: NEW YORK: THE REVOLT OF THE AVERAGE MAN

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with a law-and-order veneer to beat four rivals in last June's Democratic primary. Now he is given a good chance to win the general election on Nov. 4.

There is an almost epic symbolism in the match of Procaccino against John Lindsay, who early in his four-year term was perhaps the most celebrated and promising mayor in the U.S. Tall, handsome, flat-bellied, articulate with tongue and pen, popular with academics, big businessmen and show people as well as students and black slum residents, Lindsay represents the aristocratic remnant in local politics. As the liberal Republican who broke the Democratic hold on New York City, he was once touted as a future opponent to Robert Kennedy for the presidency. Only 47, he may yet have a national future, if as a prophet of innovative politics he regains honor in his own house.

So far has Lindsay fallen that he lost the Republican primary this year to a quiet, unassertive, almost unknown state senator, John Marchi; as a result, the mayor is running for re-election as an independent. Marchi's victory last June makes the current campaign a three-cornered race, though the contest is primarily between Mario and the mayor. Procaccino started off far ahead, but his lead seems to be diminishing. Marchi is a bit off to one side in the contest, saying some of the same things as Procaccino, with more thought and less vehemence, and with a more traditionally conservative cast. His presence underscores the fact that the main issues in the campaign have almost erased party lines. The Democratic and Republican candidates have far more in common with each other than with the independent Lindsay, who in turn seeks votes from both parties.

Though the contest involves factors unique to New York, the city's election is very much a frame in the national newsreel. Lindsay is the impatient man, the activist and agitator that Robert Kennedy became in his last year, the self-righteous, abrasive enemy of the way things are, who will make blunders and enemies but who will not placidly accept society's faults. He wants to prove the very problematical thesis that big cities are governable, given enough cash and imagination. It is a bad time for such men because many whites feel that there have been too many concessions to blacks already—concessions that whites must pay for. The American middle feels it is a victim of excessively rapid change. Richard Nixon saw that last year. City politicians are not missing the point either.

The Manhattan Arrangement

The law-abiding American, in Nixon's phrase, is "fed up to here" with violence. Procaccino also knows that large segments of the working class and middle class are weary of idealistic reformers who somehow manage to cast the ordinary white man in the fall guy's role. Even politicians who are not racist—as Procaccino and Marchi are not—can capitalize on this sentiment. Candidates can be swept into office solely on its strength. Circumstances vary from region to region, but some of the same factors appear. Thus Detective Charles Stenvig finds himself the mayor of Minneapolis, and Sam Yorty was re-elected in Los Angeles for no other discernible reason than that his opponent was black and his constituents frightened.

Discontent has weakened traditional political institutions and alliances. Unions and intellectual liberals are no