THE ELECTIONS: Four Key Contests Revisited

Among the nation's political races, some, by reason of the stakes involved, or the personalities engaged, are particularly significant. Four of these critical contests are revisited by TIME on election eve, following an assessment earlier in the campaign (Oct. 21).

New York

JAVITS v. CLARK The politics of antipolitics has reached a kind of perfection in the New York senatorial race. Democratic Candidate Ramsey Clark, 46, is doing everything a candidate is not supposed to do. Whenever possible he does not avoid a stand on a controversial issue—he takes it. Instead of giving a long-winded, inconclusive answer to a provocative question he offers a resolute "Yup" or "Nope." In fashion-conscious Manhattan, he would make anybody's list of worst-dressed candidates of the year. Often he wears a jacket that is either worn or torn and rarely matches his denim trousers, a threadbare tie that he bought for $1 in 1967 and Hush Puppies. His campaign style is in keeping with his dress. He is not surrounded by pollsters and media consultants. From all conventional appearances, Clark is scarcely running for office.

Yet he must be doing something right, for he is giving Republican Incumbent Jacob K. Javits, 70, the toughest contest of his 18 years in the Senate.

Javits admits he is running "scared" and he might add "bewildered." Always taking a moderate-to-liberal position, Javits has knit together a far-flung constituency of largely Jewish voters in New York City and upstate conservatives who have found him safe on economic issues. As the ranking Republican on the Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee, he has played a key role in shepherding some of the major legislation of recent years through Congress.

With consistent skill and forcefulness, but with a knack for compromising at the right moment, he has led the fight for bills for aid to education, consumer protection, liberal trade policies, pension reform and restriction of the President's warmaking powers. Legislative aides have voted him the second most effective Senator (after Democrat Henry M. Jackson) and the most intelligent. But in the aftermath of Watergate, his virtues have the appearance of vices to some outraged citizens. A cautious, scrupulous politician, he rarely speaks out on an issue until he has absorbed all the facts. He was not a perfervid critic of Nixon during Watergate, and on occasion defended the beleaguered President. For this reason, he is sometimes portrayed as a political trimmer without sufficient principle at a time when ethical purity seems to be valued above everything else.

Into this void has stepped, Hush Puppies and all, Ramsey Clark. Ever since he resigned as U.S. Attorney General in the Johnson Administration, Clark has sought out one liberal cause after another. He has championed Eskimos and Indians, the Berrigan brothers and the Attica rebels, New York Detective Frank Serpico and vanishing wildlife. There is a joke on the liberal cocktail circuit that if Clark were told that the "nauga" was an endangered species, he would demand a ban on the sale of Naugahyde furniture. He seemed to be too much of a causemonger for even cause-prone New Yorkers, and his candidacy was laughed off. Then he handily won the Democratic primary, and the laughing stopped.