Nation: NEW YORK: THE REVOLT OF THE AVERAGE MAN

(5 of 10)
to this country as a scenery designer, later went into the wax-fruit business. Young John was educated in Catholic schools and became a moderately successful lawyer. In the state senate, Marchi, 48, heads the influential committee on New York City affairs. While he is a serious student of government, he is more at home discussing theology or philosophy than politicking.

Mario was nine when the Procaccinos arrived, and his first occupation as a boy was straightening nails for re-use in his father's shoe-repair shop. But he and his two brothers overcame the language barrier, poverty and discrimination against "guineas" to gain success. One became a physician, one an engineer, and Mario a struggling young lawyer. He claims today that anti-Italian discrimination denied him jobs with big law firms, despite a creditable record at Fordham Law School. For a while he subsisted by answering court calendar calls for other attorneys for a $1 fee. But virtue and hard work were rewarded, as Procaccino recalls it. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia heard him address a war-bond rally and arranged for an appointment to a $3,500-a-year post in the city's legal department. When La Guardia's administration gave way to the Democrats, Procaccino became a party worker for the new regime and prospered. One administrative job led to another and eventually he was given a minor judgeship. In 1965, needing a Bronx Italian for ethnic symmetry, the party drafted him to run for comptroller.

Lindsay, the son of an investment banker, is Ivy League. While not rich, the mayor is part of what passes for the gentry. Procaccino's wife Marie is a suburban-oriented homebody; Lindsay's wife Mary makes the social scene. The Lindsays are boosters of the lively arts, often appear at opening nights and art exhibits. To promote what are called "happenings" in the parks, Lindsay is not above leading a bicycle brigade. To Procaccino and other sobersides, that typifies the despised Fun City syndrome. Procaccino is striving, however; two years ago, he treated his daughter, Marierose, to a debut at the International Debutantes Ball.

Lindsay's Record

Differences of style and personal background, and even the malaise evident nationally, hardly account for all of Lindsay's current troubles. Rather, he is in part a victim of his own promises and record. He won election pledging "to make our city great again, the Empire City of the world." The new mayor promised leadership and he tried to provide it by taking on challenges that most of his predecessors had shirked. Lindsay accepted the vice-chairmanship of the Kerner Commission and was one of its most active members. He became one of the leaders in the Urban Coalition. In New York City, he walked the ghetto streets in successful search of rapport with blacks and Puerto Ricans; few white politicians can match Lindsay's ability to get through to the disinherited and to the young. He brought in a promising group of urban experts to head his departments and made plans to reorganize the city's bureaucracy-ridden government.

"What went wrong?" asks Mitchell Ginsberg, head of Lindsay's Human Resources Administration. "Our biggest mistake was that we thought we could change things overnight. We were all so committed, so eager. We just thought we could do too much."