New York's Quiet Revolution: John Lindsay Builds a Machine To Dethrone City's Democrats

JOHN V. LINDSAY is an athletic, blue-eyed Republican who has no business being mayor of New York City. Before November 2nd, 1965, a politician with any respect for his own judgement would have found it hard to imagine any Republican - much less a WASP-as mayor. But Lindsay, on a platform pledged to good government and an end to partisan politics, wriggled into City Hall on the back of the most massive defection of Democratic and independent voters the Republican party had seen since the days of Fiorello H. LaGuardia.

With evangelistic fervor, Lindsay has carried his campaign rhetoric into office, and refuses to play the game according to New York's traditional rules. He has antagonized organization Republicans by denying them patronage in return for the support he needs to put his plans for good government into effect.

In return the party has made life very difficult for Lindsay. The Mayor does not have any Republican he can rely on to represent his intrests in either the Assembly or the City Council, both of which are overwhelmingly Democratic. This makes it very difficult for him to pass even slightly controversial programs. In several instances the Mayor has had to ask a sympathetic Democrat to introduce his legislation.

It is not an accident that the Democrats have controlled New York City for so many years. In exchange for a certain number of patronage jobs the Republicans have long had a tacit agreement with the Democrats not to seriously challenge their leadership. In the recent brought presidency election in Queens, for example, the Republicans did not even field a candidate.

The Last Republican

The last Republican mayor the city has been was LaGuardia, who, like Lindsay, did not run on a straight Republican ticket, but as a fusion candidate. La Guardia won election by overwhelming majorities, but his victories were personal. He failed to achieve any lasting change in the political structure of the City, which was then and is now 70 per cent Democratic.

The Republican party, which was frankly surprised to see LaGuardia win in the first place, remained only a shadow of a party, happy to pick up patronage from a Republican mayor but unwilling to broaden its base.

This was the situation Congressman Lindsay and campaign manager Bob Price faced May 14, 1965, when Lindsay announced his candidacy for Mayor, It was obvious that Lindsay could not rely on the regular Republican organization to bring in a victory - the party had almost no organization worth mentioning. But the situation was not as grim as appeared. Starting back in 1948, in Manhattan's ninth Assembly District, Lindsay and Price had been recruiting and training a group of young and enthusiastic followers, devoted to Lindsay and disillusioned with the closed and stuffy atmosphere of the regular party. From the ninth AD the people spread into the silk stocking district to win Lindsay a seat in Congress. Over the years Lindsay's people quietly took over the Manhattan Republican leadership. Manhattan was secured with the election of the pro-Lindsay Vincent Albano as Manhattan leader.

For the mayoralty race Lindsay, therefore, had at his disposal a hardcore of workers, experienced and able to move out into the other four boroughs to set up and manage a grassroots campaign. In each neighborhood vacant stores were rented to serve as local headquarters for volunteers, in most cases Democrats or independents. These storefronts were a new campaign concept developed by whizz-politico Price.

AFTER the election Mayor Lindsay had a city to govern; but he also had some 20,000 workers on his hands, now a tight and immensely devoted organization. The Mayor had to make a choice. He could let the group disband and work with a moribund Republican party during his administration, hoping that his charisma would draw his campaign workers back on to the 1969 bandwagon. But this would be a gamble against unfavorable odds. In four years time Lindsay would have made the enemies every incumbent makes and tarnished his shiny white armor. His only alternative was to nurse the organization that had developed around him, draw it into City Hall, and keep the local volunteers active and ready for the next campaign. The decision was easy. The day after the election a letter went out to the store-front managers asking for resumes on their workers. Lindsay likes to say that his appointments are not made on a patronage basis but according to merit. Nonetheless, many of his campaign workers have moved into City Hall as everything from meat inspectors to commissioners amid cries of "Patronage", from organization Republicans who feel short-changed.

Fixing the Pot-holes

But even New York's City Hall cannot employ 20,000. Ideally, the mass of Democrats and independents who worked for Lindsay in '65, could be persuaded to change their registration. Price had a vision of dozens of Lindsay Republican Organizations mushrooming all over the city providing direct lines of communication between the neighborhood and City Hall. A resident could then walk into a neighborhood club and complain about the gaping pot-hole down the block or the broken traffic light. The complaint would immediately be funneled through to the responsible administrator, short-circuiting the normal bureaucratic process, and the pothole would be filled with impressive speed and efficiency. New Yorkers, pointing to the mayor and the clubs, would agree that it is the Republicans who get things done.

There were, however, several hitches in this plan. Many volunteers were not ready to take the final plunge of registering as Republicans. So Price, developed an alternate scheme. Volunteers were encouraged to form CIA's (Civic Improvement Agencies). These were designed to operate much like the neighborhood Republican clubs, but without requiring members to work in partisan politics.

While members of the neighborhood clubs would be tied to Lindsay and to the Republican party, the members of the CIA's would owe their allegiance to the man but not necessarily to the party, Price speculated that these agencies would attract young people into a revitalized Republican party. These new party members would be just as willing to campaign for a Republican district leader as for Mayor Lindsay.

But the CIA's have not lived up to Price's expectations. Some Lindsay aides say that the effort to politicize them did not come early enough. CIA workers in the Bronx and Brooklyn have been unwilling to come out and campaign in district races.

In Queens, Mayor Lindsay's campaign workers from the '65 election decided to form an explicitly Republican organization - the John V. Lindsay Republican Club. George Archinal, Republican leader of Queens, refused to recognize them and grant them a charter. This means the club is not legally a Republican organization and cannot send official delegates to conventions.

Colliding with Regulars

Because of ideological differences collisions with the regulars was probably inevitable. Apart from the Manhattan party, the Republican organization in the City is definitely conservative. In the words William F. Buckley Jr., former Conservative party candidate for mayor, Lindsay's nomination was "a rump affair and no more representative of the body of Republican thought in New York than the Democratic Party in Mississippi is representative of the Democratic Party nationally". The Queens leader recently received the Americanism Award of the Catholic War Veterans of Queens Country for his record of anti-Communism. He claims that the Goldwater debacle of 1964 must be blamed on Rockefeller and Javits because they did not support him. Congressman Paul Fino, the Clark Gable like leader of the Bronx, who annually urges Congress to set up a national lottery ("the urge to gamble is deeply ingrained in most people"), condemned the Demonstration Cities Bill as a tool of Black Power.

But more than just ideology is a issue in the conflict between the regulars and the Lindsay-oriented Republicans. Archinal is not interested in making room for Lindsayites in the Queens party. It is easier for him to control the present sixteen-member committee which meets once a month, than an active club with a large potentially-active membership. "If you can't prove that your family has been Republican for at least two generations, they consider you a Democrat. They would rather see their candidate lose at the polls than see their leadership challenged", one Lindsay aide said.

Last June Al Ungar, a former regular Republican, who had become disillusioned with the arthritic organization, ran in the primaries for Republican district leader against the organization's man. While Lindsay never publicly supported his campaign he did send out experienced workers to help Ungar.

Ungar lost by a very narrow margin, but he still amassed an impressive number of votes. His loss was not a real defeat since in this context the incumbent had an overwhelming advantage. He was a resident of long standing and very well-known in the community. Also, it is primarily people beholden to the incumbent for a job or some other favor who vote in the primaries. This is especially true on a rainy day, and that June day it poured. Finally, the neighborhood was staunchly conservative and unlikely to view Lindsay-flavor Republicanism favorably. Therefore Lindsay workers carefully avoided mentioning the mayor; instead they asked voters to support "a dynamic ticket" which was committed to building a strong party.

But the organization did not begin to consider the Lindsay/Ungar threat a serious one until the Rockfeller campaign for Governor in 1966. All through the summer the polls showed O'Connor comfortably ahead and the situation seemed hopeless for the Republicans. Rockefeller asked Archinal and Fino to get a grass-roots campaign rolling for him on the Price storefront Model which had been so effective in the mayoral race. Storefronts were set up but the organization lacked the man-power to run them. Meanwhile, Lindsay Republicans gleefully sat back and watched the regular organization flounder. Then, five weeks before election day when it had become obvious to all, including the governor, that the regulars were incompetent, the Lindsay forces swung become obvious to all, including the governor, that the regulars were incompetent, the Lindsay forces swung into operation. Young people who had worked in the mayoral campaign and then formed either CIA's or Republican clubs, trooped back into the storefronts. On election day Rockefeller carried Queens, O'Connor's home country, by 2000 votes.

Mr. Ragic

Lindsay's involvement in local Republican politics from district primaries to the gubernatorial election has been kept very hush-hush. In Queens, where Al Ungar played a big part in the Rockefeller campaign, he worked under a pseudonym. Ungar is an inveterate cigar smoker, so during the campaign, he was to be known as Mr. Ragic. The identity of Mr. Ragic became the great mystery of the Queens storefronts. Orders were issued over the phone - by Mr. Ragic. Ragic rented a car and driver to take him from one store-front to the next. The driver would park in a nearby dark alley and go inside to bring the Lindsayite store-manager back to the car for a hurried conference. This masquerade was kept up until election day. Then, with a school boy glee, Ungar walked into a storefront and introduced himself as both Al Ungar and Mr. Ragic.

There are several reasons why Lindsay is keeping his involvement in partisan politics a secret. It would be very embarrassing for the Mayor if there were an outright split in the party and the organization refused to endorse him in 1969. And this may happen if the organization decides that they stand to gain more patron age under a Democratic administration. Lindsay is convinced that he could win an overwhelming victory in a Republican primary even without the endorsement of the party bosses, and that the November election would become a mere formality. But a primary fight could very well hurt his standing as a national candidate.

Another reason why Lindsay has played down his differences with the regulars is pressure from the governor, who must have a united delegation at the national convention in 1968. If the issue blows into the open, Rockfeller will have to support the liberal Lindsayites, but he knows that this would split his delegation.

Irreparable Split

But the split in the party may already be irreparable. Lindsay candidates will be contesting six primaries in the Bronx this June. Fino's reaction has been violent. "It is a cool, calculated attempt to infiltrate every country organization", he said recently. Lindsay has denied this. "There is no such plan that I am aware of", Bob Sweet, the new deputy mayor, answered Fino. "On the other hand, we want to encourage as many good people as possible to become interested and active in the Republican party. I know that Fino and Archinal share that view", But Fino insists "there is nothing the mayor can do to make amends".

The Bronx primaries will therefore be a very decisive mile-stone in Lindsay's career. If the Lindsay-oriented candidates succeed, the mayor will have proved that he can build a Republican party almost from scratch, fundamentally altering the political structure of the City. Lindsay will have succeded where LaGuardia failed, by breaking the Democrats' long and onchallenged hold on New York.