Debates, street campaigning, door-to-door

Some of the Democratic clubs hosted debates among the candidates. Some civic groups did as well. I remember a debate in the gym at St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic church, on 129^th  Street in Belle Harbor, down the block and across Neponsit Avenue from where I lived until I was nine years old. Pauline Emanuel, my fourth-grade teacher at P.S. 114 on Beach 135^th Street, showed up to cheer me on. An old regular Democratic clubhouse in Woodhaven hosted another debate; as did Rockaway Independent Democrats, the reform club my mother helped to found in the 1950s and that had supported me in my 1970s City Council races; and a few reform Democratic clubs in Brooklyn hosted others. Usually, the moderator would ask questions, and the three of us would take turns answering, rather than debating each other directly. I don’t remember whether Noach Dear ever participated. I don’t think he did, and if he did, it could not have been more than once.

I noticed something about the way the audiences responded to Katz and Weiner. Of course, I thought I responded with far more intelligence and substance than either, but Katz clearly gave much more relevant and substantive answers than Weiner. However, the audiences responded much more enthusiastically to Weiner, whose comments were “cute” in the attractive sense of that word, or self-deprecating, or funny. I persuaded myself that I got a good audience response too – probably wishful thinking. In retrospect, my responses must have been substantially more substantive, and substantially less effective, than Katz’s.

Knowing what the nation later learned about Weiner’s personal behavior, it may seem odd for me to attribute his success to “emotional intelligence.” Some might prefer to characterize his behavior as reflective of emotional idiocy. But the ability to charm, persuade, and mislead requires empathy, a close relative, if not the equivalent, of emotional intelligence. Studies have found that fraud perpetrators not only score higher on empathy than do other property offenders, they even score higher than a comparison group of college students. So Weiner’s odd personal proclivities could very easily coexist with an empathic understanding that underlay his ability to win over voters.

Democratic politics in the Rockaways had so deteriorated that an unstable and generally bizarre person from the reform club, Lou Simon, had defeated Sy Sheldon after the latter’s long and unimpressive tenure as male district leader (and Simon remains the district leader there). But I won the endorsements of the other reform Democratic clubs after debates at the forums they provided. Wishful thinking notwithstanding, the more intellectual audiences clearly gave me better responses than they gave Katz or Weiner. Of course, when told that he had “the support of all thinking Americans,” Adlai Stevenson quite correctly noted “That’s not enough. I’m going to need a majority.” It wasn’t enough for me either.

If Weiner out-campaigned me in debates, he did even better on the street. He gave short, brief, confident answers to questions. He joked and charmed and endeared himself. Preternaturally thin, his appearance and appeal regularly impelled older women – the largest voting bloc – to pinch his cheeks and urge him to eat more. His poise and charm coexisted with his patently urgent plea for voters’ support.

In contrast, while I did not actually say “if you want to be an idiot, vote for someone else,” I probably made it clear enough that that’s what I thought. On countless occasions I urged voters to “look at the record and make a rational choice.” Voters do not ordinarily do that, and my campaign was no exception.

While Weiner raised about as much money as I did, I believed he needed less time to do so, since Schumer was not actively opposing his fund-raising efforts, as he opposed mine, and may have helped him. Therefore, Weiner had more door-to-door time than I did. I think I rang all the doorbells in Trump Towers, a huge set of middle-income housing projects in Coney Island (built by Donald Trump’s father), and in the Dayton Towers apartment buildings along Shorefront Parkway in Rockaway, another such rich mine of middle-income voters. But Weiner rang them all several times, according to reports I received. Whatever Katz was doing, it did not win her a large percentage of the vote outside her own district. But as the final tally would ultimately reveal, that was almost enough for her to win.

 

The “Go” Game

In 1982, a scholarly journal called Political Methodology had published an article of mine, “Games of Skill: Wei-ch’i and a Democratic Primary in Brooklyn,” in which I explained the political strategy with which I won my 1980 Assembly race in terms of the game called “go” in Japan and “wei-ch’i” in China. In go, unlike chess, players best dominate by building strength at the various corners and edges of the board. In the article, I applied the theory literally, showing my techniques of building support in the various geographical reaches of the district.

As noted in a previous post, I contemplated the theory more metaphorically in the congressional race, thinking that my accomplishments for drivers, subway riders, tenants and homeowners would build support in those demographic cohorts of the district. Even in ideological terms, I thought I had put down the right “markers”: in late 1997, as I was gearing up for the race, I asked for and received a letter of endorsement from the New York City Police Benevolent Association, a generally conservative group; and based on my work with women’s groups combating domestic violence, I expected and received the endorsement of the New York City chapter of the National Organization of Women, a generally liberal group.

However, I thought I could apply the theory geographically as well. After all, historically the big Democratic votes in the 9^th congressional district came from my own 45^th Assembly district, where I would surely do well, and the 39^th and 41^st, respectively Tony Genovesi’s, based in Canarsie and Mill Basin, and Helene Weinstein’s, based in the half of Sheepshead Bay east of my half, where I thought I also had reason to do fairly well, all in Brooklyn. Since I had supported Genovesi in his brief and abortive effort to depose Silver as Assembly Speaker, I thought I would have Genovesi’s support. On a personal basis, I had pestered the very overweight Genovesi into joining Artie Malkin and myself for racketball games, thinking it would benefit his health. In fact, for his size, Tony gave us a decent game, since he used to be a good handball player and still had some moves. On the Queens side, the 22^nd covered most of Rockaway, where I grew up, and Howard Beach, where I had lost my City Council races to Walter Ward, but where I thought I still had friends, like Betty Braton, the district manager who had supported me in those races. Of course, Melinda Katz would be strong in the 28^th, the Forest Hills district she represented, but otherwise, I thought I could be the Queens candidate as well as the Brooklyn candidate.  

Beyond such calculations, I simply did not think I could lose to any of these opponents. Indeed, early on in the race, probably in March, 1998, my pollster, Global Strategies, called me and Louis in for a celebratory meeting. Their polls had me beating my opponents by comfortable margins. Jeff Plaut, one of the principals of the group, offered me a congratulatory cigar. This made perfect sense to me. My work, over all those years, benefitting so many key constituencies, I thought, had brought me widespread support.

I really didn’t think I could lose to my opponents, all of whom I considered lightweights. Somehow, after all my years in politics, I still had the notion that substance and merit would prevail. Congressman Jerry Nadler half-joked, at one point, that I had written more books than my opponents had read. My qualifications so clearly outclassed theirs that I could not imagine, for example, that the New York Times would fail to endorse me, even with Schumer’s Luca Brasi on the editorial board (see post #73). I even imagined that the Post and News would feel compelled to endorse me.  I should have taken more of a lesson from the Saturday Night Live skit when Jon Lovitz, playing Michael Dukakis in his debate with Dana Carvey’s George H.W. Bush, finally said what every Democratic intellectual must have thought the real Michael Dukakis was thinking that year: “I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy!”

My “bundlers”

I had a few “bundlers,” or people who raised money from their friends for me. Greg Milmoe, a partner at the Skadden Arps law firm, raised about thirty thousand dollars from some wealthy clients and friends. Lenny Cecere, a real estate man, Adam Rowen, a physician and pneumo-thoracic specialist, and the late Wilbur “Bill” Levin, former president of Independence Bank and then Kings County Clerk, each raised about five thousand dollars from business associates and friends with whom they were close. None of them had any vested interest in my election. They raised money because they were my friends, believed in me personally, and thought my election would serve the public interest.

Jerry Nadler and Eliot Engel, two members of Congress, each raised a few thousand dollars for me – Jerry from business people involved in the effort to revitalize shipping in New York, an effort which I had tried to assist; and Eliot from Kosovo Albanians, since Engel’s efforts on their behalf, strenuous at that time, eventually made him the member of Congress most responsible for the American intervention that helped protect them from further genocidal efforts in the former Yugoslavia. Like the four mentioned previously, their personal relationships with me motivated their efforts, although I’m also sure they knew that I would happily have joined in pursuit of the policies they wanted to advance.

One last bundler may have had less pure ambitions. Rabbi Milton Balkany had asked me, in the late 1980s or early 1990s, to intervene with the Department of Correction on behalf inmates he claimed had been unfairly penalized in one way or another. Before I did so, I carefully researched each case. His claims, the first few times, proved accurate. His claims on behalf of another inmate did not. I confronted him with his errors, and he immediately apologized and withdrew his request. After a year or so had passed since my last intervention at his request, he sent me a sizeable contribution to my Assembly campaign account; it might have been as much as a thousand dollars.

He had me as his lunch guest at the Bais Yaakov girls yeshiva he ran in Borough Park, and once for dinner at his elegant home a few blocks away. A Hassidic rabbi with a flowing white beard, Balkany exuded warmth and graciousness, along with extremely sophisticated and articulate presentations.  His political sympathies and campaign contributions generally flowed toward Republicans, including raising over $300,000 for Senator Robert Dole in the 1980s, a $25,000 check for George Pataki’s first gubernatorial campaign in 1994, and a $19,000 check for Rudy Giuliani’s reelection campaign in 1997. He gave the invocations opening both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives in 2003.

What I did not know was the Balkany got paid for his interventions on behalf of these inmates. Such donations to his non-profit school would find their way back to him, by way of salary or other means. In 2004, as part of an agreement to defer prosecution on an unrelated matter, federal prosecutors required Balkany to stop lobbying federal prison officials. In 2011, federal judge Denise Cole sentenced Balkany to four years in prison for still another unrelated matter, this time a shakedown scheme.

Balkany raised about $30,000 for me. I did not doubt his integrity until well after the congressional race, and indeed stayed in touch with him until about 2002, when I began to learn about his record of less-than-pure activities.

Fund-raising for Congress

Raising money, as always, tormented me. To this day I feel bad about old friends I hadn’t spoken with in years who responded generously when I called to beg for money, and with whom I quickly lost touch again thereafter. For example, Nathan Abramowitz played chess with me on our high school chess team, went to Fordham, served as a platoon leader in the Vietnam War, and became a partner at the Mudge, Rose law firm. Some of my fellow members of Columbia’s heavyweight freshman crew team are in that category too. Another is Ira McCown, a couple of years ahead of me in college and my squash partner at Harvard Law School. Holly Hendrix, a fellow member of Columbia’s Van Am service society who became president of Union Theological Seminary, similarly responded with his characteristic warmth and generosity. These very good people, and others like them, probably feel that like a typical politician, I only reached out to use them. I suppose I did, but without personal wealth or substantial vested interests committed to my success, I had no choice but to beg everyone I ever knew. Now, having reverted to being a normal person, i.e. not a politician, I cannot keep in touch with the hundreds of wonderful people who contributed.

Federal law limits contributions to congressional campaigns to one thousand dollars per person. Someone could contribute a thousand dollars each for a candidate’s primary and general election campaigns, but in my case, since I had lost the primary and had no general election, I had to return the money contributed for the latter campaign. Since I had to raise several hundred thousand dollars, and most contribute less than a thousand, this would require a lot of telephone calls even if everyone said yes, and most people say no.

Joe McLean, from the McLain Clark political group, somehow found me. His organization would take a percentage of the money they helped me raise. Joe seemed like an honest guy, and I think he is. He placed a young woman named Tammy Shake in my campaign. She did, essentially, what Louis Bochette did in the District Attorney race, but with computer-assisted lists. After exhausting my personal lists, Tammy made me call unending lists of donors identified as sympathetic to Democratic candidates. I don’t remember the real percentage, but distant memory tells me something like one out of a hundred would actually contribute. That seems wrong, because out of a hundred calls, which might take an hour, I would only reach ten or fifteen people – most of whom, again, would decline. Yet, under Tammy’s direction I raised perhaps three hundred thousand dollars. Combined with the contributions from my personal lists, about $75,000 from my “bundlers” (see below) and about the same from unions, I raised a total of about $600,000 – the same as Katz and Weiner. Dear raised as much as the three of us put together.

I had compiled a strong pro-labor record in Albany, and a number of unions each contributed at the five thousand dollar maximum they were permitted by federal law. I assume they were counting on me to continue to support the labor movement, and indeed I would have. However, I lost an important range of support from labor because at the urging of certain respectable clergy members, I had publicly asked the FBI to investigate allegations of correction officer misbehavior at a prison in western New York. Council 82, the union then representing New York State correction officers, which had strongly supported me in the past, regarded this as a betrayal. They told the leadership of AFSCME District Council 37, the powerful umbrella group for New York public employee union locals, that if DC 37 supported me, Council 82 would leave DC 37. This made it impossible AFSCME’s national to support me, which in turn prevented me from presenting myself as the “labor” candidate. (Ironically, a year later, in 1999, Council 82 lost the right to represent New York State’s correction officers.)

Other than from labor, I did not raise much money from Washington-based “PACs” – political action committees, created for the purpose of collecting donations from people or entities with common political interests and then contributing to candidates.  I had been the New York State Legislature’s leading proponent of gun control, earning an F-minus from the National Rifle Association for my efforts. Anthony Weiner had actually opposed the major gun control effort to come before the New York City Council, and Katz and Dear played no significant role on the issue. But the gun control PACs refused to support me.  I suspected, and later confirmed, that Schumer had actively discouraged individuals and organizations from supporting me. Since he played a leading role in gun control efforts in Congress (although the NRA gave him a slightly higher grade – a plain F – than the F-minus it gave me) the gun control PACs, I suppose, must have been especially responsive to his influence. Still, this experience helped me share the general skepticism of politicians toward “holier-than-thou” civic groups.

Thinking About Congress

Sometime in late 1993 or early 1994, Schumer included a lunch meeting with me in his schedule for an Albany visit. At that time it seemed quite possible that Mario Cuomo would not run for reelection, given his weak poll numbers. More New Yorkers thought Cuomo should not run for reelection than thought he should, according to an April 1993 Marist poll.

Only five years after my primary run for Brooklyn District Attorney, voters would likely remember my name in large swaths of Brooklyn. If Schumer ran for Governor, I would run to fill the congressional seat he would have to abandon. Noach Dear, an Orthodox Jewish member of the New York City Council, seemed to be the most logical threat to my candidacy, should such a campaign come to pass. The burgeoning religious community in Brooklyn’s Borough Park included many of rapidly expanding wealth; Dear could raise tremendous sums of money from that group. Indeed, the New York Times noted his role as one of a small group of key fundraisers for Vice President Al Gore.  But Schumer assured me that despite his “fund-raising prowess,” in the Times’s words, Dear’s appeal was too limited for him to pose a serious threat to my candidacy; Dear could not get more than a fifth or a quarter of a Democratic primary vote in that congressional district.

Schumer’s interest in running for governor surprised me. I told him that I doubted that Moynihan, who had served as New York’s Senator since 1977, would run again in 2000, and that I thought Schumer would be the clear front-runner for that seat. Furthermore, Schumer had built a national reputation and power base in Washington. Why would he want to come back to Albany? He had a clear answer: “I don’t want to be one of 100 Senators shouting up. I would rather be the one in charge,” or words to that effect.

But when Cuomo decided to run, Schumer declined to fight him in a primary for the Democratic nomination. However, he did not wait for Moynihan to retire; he took on an uphill fight against Al D’Amato in 1998, thus opening his congressional seat to a successor that year.  Not only did Schumer win that fight, he did not become merely “one of 100 Senators shouting up.” He quickly rose to leadership, and within his second term became the second or third most powerful member of the Senate.

In some ways, Schumer’s decision not to run in 1994 gave me a sense of relief. Still-fresh memories of my 1989 campaign for District Attorney still pained me, so I had some reluctance to jump into another battle. But I did not want to end my days as the 80-year-old Assemblyman from Sheepshead Bay. Congress would offer fascinating new vistas. I salivated at the prospect of learning foreign affairs and the politics of Washington D.C. from that vantage point. When Schumer announce his candidacy in 1998, I had to run, or be forced to torture myself with “what if?s” forever after.

A very successful congressional campaign

George McGovern won the Wisconsin primary with thirty percent of the vote, beginning the momentum that would lead to his nomination as the Democratic candidate for president in 1972. Lindsay got seven percent, and dropped out of the race.

Back at law school, I got two telephone calls asking for my help in Brooklyn Democratic congressional primaries to be decided that June 20th. Al Lowenstein called to ask for my help in his race in the downtown Brooklyn/ Brooklyn Heights district against John Rooney, a conservative pro-Vietnam War hawk who had served since 1944 and was friends with J. Edgar Hoover.   Liz Holtzman called to ask me to help her run in the Flatbush-Midwood-Sheepshead Bay district against Emanuel Celler, the “dean” of the House, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, a liberal icon instrumental in enacting the Civil Rights Act of 1964, who had served since 1922. I calculated thusly: Al would get volunteers and financial support from all over the country. Further, he was running against an outright conservative Democratic in a year when anti-war votes were propelling the McGovern forces to victory in Democratic primaries, so he would surely defeat Rooney. Poor Liz, running against the legendary Emanuel Celler, would definitely face massive defeat. At least if I helped her, she might get twenty percent of the vote, and avoid some degree of humiliation. So I went with Liz.

Liz assigned me the 43^rd Assembly District, covering the Flatbush section, north of Brooklyn College, in the heart of Brooklyn. I had to recruit the volunteers to canvass the buildings, persuading voters first to sign designating petitions to get her on the ballot, and then persuading them to commit to voting for her. Telephone canvassers would call those voters the “foot” canvassers missed, working to get as complete a list of possible of those voters likely to support Liz. On primary day, volunteers would “pull” those favorable voters, again in person if possible and otherwise by vote, to get them out to vote. Other volunteers would stand outside the polling places leafleting approaching voters. Still others would drive to the polls favorable voters who were elderly or disabled.

Liz herself campaigned tirelessly, meeting voters at every subway stop, movie theatre line, supermarket, and bingo hall. Soon I saw that Liz would do better than I had expected, although (I thought) still nowhere near well enough to win. Celler had fought against the Equal Rights Amendment, and Liz, an obviously brilliant and hard-working woman, perfectly embodied the argument for the ERA. Also, Celler was 88 years old.  One of the telephone canvassers in the campaign office on Flatbush Avenue, after telling the voter on the other end of the line that Celler was 84, swallowed hard when the voter said, “I’m 84 years old!” The canvasser felt much better when the voter continued, “and if Celler feels like I do, he shouldn’t be in Congress.” We all felt much better after hearing the story.

The race included a third candidate, Bob O’Donnell. Led by Mike Churchill, Liz’s campaign manager, we undertook the massive effort necessary to try to knock him off the ballot, by showing that too many of his petition signatures failed to meet the legal requirements. If we succeeded, we thought, Liz would get the anti-Celler votes that O’Donnell would otherwise draw.  We failed. Post-election analysis showed that O’Donnell’s few thousand votes, had he been off the ballot, would have gone to Celler, not Holtzman. Holtzman beat Celler by about six hundred votes.

With all of Holtzman’s talent and drive, three factors beyond her control or our control enabled her to win. Our failure in the O’Donnell effort was one. Another was the Lowenstein campaign: the Democratic machine figured the odds just as I had. Assuming Holtzman had no chance, they put all their effort into Rooney’s campaign. Any support they could provide, such as “volunteers” from the Brooklyn Local 1814 of the International Longshoremen’s Association, all helped Rooney.  Celler himself called Holtzman “a toothpick trying to topple the Washington Monument,” so neither he nor the Brooklyn machine headed by Meade Esposito thought he needed any help.

Third, with Ed Muskie’s weakness, the regular organization knew better than to have him head up their slate, because voters rejecting Muskie might reject the organization candidates listed on the same palm cards (brief “cheat sheets” the local captains would hand their usually loyal voters) or other pieces of campaign literature jointly issued by the presidential and local candidates. But the regulars could not stomach McGovern, because his political support came from all the people usually opposed to the regulars. Also, at this point they still had hopes of defeating McGovern at the Democratic national convention. So their candidates running to be delegates to the convention listed themselves as “uncommitted.” The top of Holtzman’s slate of candidates, the delegate candidates associated with the reform movement, listed their choice for president as George McGovern. The record shows that while McGovern lost overwhelmingly to Richard Nixon in November 1972, he did quite well in the Democratic primaries.

I am proud to say that although Celler beat Holtzman in all the other Assembly districts in her congressional race, she won by a big enough margin in the 43^rd – my responsibility – to overcome the deficits elsewhere. I had been working every day for Liz in Brooklyn, but many nights back in my own Queens neighborhood for McGovern (about which more later). Late at night on June 20^th, driving back from polling places in Queens, I heard the radio announcement that Liz had beaten Celler. I almost jumped through the roof of my car in joy and amazement. I still could hardly believe it.

[PS -- Thank you, Howard Graubard, for a factual correction from an earlier version.]

Registering Indiana college students

Craig and Sherry Sparks picked me up at the airport. Craig had played basketball for Purdue University in Indianapolis, where he had gone to school from Seymour, his very small Indiana hometown, and had just finished law school at Indiana University. He would later work for the SEC in Washington, and then for the very prominent Arent Fox D.C. law firm, before creating his own very successful law practice in Louisville, Kentucky. Sherry was a lovely local girl as well. They would put me up at their house for the next month, as their contribution to Lowenstein’s cause. How was it possible for Al Lowenstein to have attracted followers like me, and Craig and Sherry, all over the United States? Years later, when we met people our own demographic – college-educated boomers – we reacted only half-jokingly when we asked in surprise, “You mean you never worked for Al?”

Gordon St. Angelo, the chair of the Indiana State Democratic party, gave me a desk at his headquarters in downtown Indianapolis. This was my first journey to the Midwest. The only previous time I’d seen a state beyond those in the Boston-to-Washington corridor, my family had gone to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1962. I had read about the “whites only” and “colored only” signs on the restrooms and water fountains, but actually seeing them had shocked me deeply. We were there to hop a Greek freighter on which we had free passage to Amsterdam, through my father’s connections. I worked full-time as a member of the deck crew, mostly painting the ship, and learning a little Greek from the sailors I worked with.

But the Midwest was something different. Not everyone who worked for Al had a brilliant personality. After I’d spent a few days making telephone connections with key student leaders at all the key college campuses (Indiana University – I.U. – and Purdue in Indianapolis, I.U. at Bloomington, Notre Dame at South Bend, I.U. at Evansville, and many others), one of the national coordinators of Registration Summer swooped in one day. This brilliant Marshall Scholar commanded one of the local Indiana young ladies to “get me” So-and-So at some phone number. The immediate response: “you got ten fingers, lady? Dial it yourself!”  I liked these Indiana people. The Marshall Scholar didn’t stay in Indiana long.

Indiana politics struck me as a little different from what I knew. While back in New York, David Trager, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, was investigating the Republican County Chair, Joseph Margiotta,  for taking kickbacks in return for government jobs, a violation of state law, Indiana had only in the past few years repealed a state statute requiring each office holder to contribute two percent of the annual salary to the official’s political party. Craig had told me about this; I later verified it, but I can no longer find the source.

The other difference impressed me more favorably. At least among white Christians, Indiana seemed less ethnicity-conscious than New York. Italian-Americans made up a very small percentage of the electorate in Indiana, but Craig also told me that no one gave a thought to the fact that the State Democratic party chair had an Italian surname.

I don’t remember whether Registration Summer or the Indiana Democratic party paid for my visits to the campuses, where the student leaders and I planned the voter registration drives. Sometimes I went with my second-in-command, Keith Love, a black student several years younger than myself. One weekend Craig and Sherry took us to visit his parents in Seymour. Craig told us, and I’ve never had reason to doubt, that Keith and I were, respectively, the first black and the first Jew to set foot in Seymour. Of course, Craig’s parents treated us with generous hospitality.

Craig and Sherry, of course, treated us like family. They included us in their epic Scrabble games, although considering they each regularly scored in the 300s, we could hardly compete. We develop a strong friendship with their enormous St. Bernard, Candy, whose name signified the nature of her personality. Her only flaw was copious drooling (unless you count against her the fact that she needed about thirty pounds of meat to eat every day).

By the end of July, we had pretty much finished setting up the student voter registration structure, so Al called me back to New York. The Craig-and-Sherry marriage didn’t last, but the Craig-and-Dan friendship continues to this day.

A talk at the Kennedy Institute of Politics, and Its Consequences: Allard K. Lowenstein

I did not go into law school with my eyes open. Somehow I had gotten the idea that I was supposed to go to law school if I wanted to go into politics. Besides, I loved the wonderful Professor Henry Abraham’s constitutional law class in college (he visited Columbia from Penn that year, prior to his permanent appointment at Virginia). But especially after the Urban Fellowship Program year, I found it painful to focus on first year classes at law school – contracts, property, civil procedure; torts and criminal law weren’t quite as bad – so I rarely did. Instead, I played squash, practiced Tae Kwan Do, joined Lincoln’s Inn (a dining-and-social club affiliated with the Law School), taught a course at the Cambridge Adult Education Center on New York City politics and economics, and served as pre-law adviser to one of the Harvard College undergraduate “houses,” Dudley House. I also hung out, when I could, at the Kennedy Institute of Politics.

My mother, ordinarily a very tough critic, had on some occasion given a rave review to a talk she had heard on the radio by a fellow named Allard K. Lowenstein. As I later learned, Al had played a central role in the civil rights movement, as Hendrik Hertzberg noted, “the only white board member of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference,” and led much of the student movement against the Vietnam War, tried to draft RFK and did draft Eugene McCarthy as the anti-war candidate for president against Lyndon Johnson (RFK subsequently entered the race).

I went to hear him speak at the Institute of Politics with no special expectations. President Kennedy’s death seemed to have given me some kind of immunization. Much as I liked John Lindsay, virtually nothing said by subsequent politicians ever really moved me. Naturally I shared none of the response to that so-called “great communicator,” Ronald Reagan; but Bill Clinton’s famous charm, even in a one-on-one setting, also completely failed to impress me, although a thought he was a good president. There has only been one exception. Lowenstein spoke for almost an hour, non-stop. When he finished, I walked from the very back of the room up to the podium and said to him “I will be working for you this summer.”

If he had been unable or unwilling to pay me, I would have survived by eating grass off people’s lawns. Come hell or high water, I was going to work for that man.

In fact, Al was perfectly happy to hire me at some tiny salary, for which I was very grateful. He had raised the funds for Registration Summer 1971, which would pay me and other student leaders to organize registration drives for the nation’s 18, 19 and 20-year olds. They had newly won the right to vote under the 26^th Amendment to the Constitution, which was then well under way to its ratification on July 1, 1971. We all thought these new young voters would help an anti-war candidate to defeat Nixon in 1972.   Come June, I helped organize a giant anti-war rally for Al in Mineola, Long Island, where I met an impressive young Smith College activist named Cecilia Gardner. Al’s friends from the civil rights movement had come on board for his anti-war efforts as well. When I found myself among thousands of people singing “We Shall Overcome,” as I had as an eleven or twelve year-old at the (northern) civil rights marches my parents had taken us to, I knew I was in the right place. Shortly thereafter, Al gave me my major assignment: I was now the statewide Registration Summer coordinator for Indiana. I was on a plane to Indianapolis two days later.

Democratic Politics in the Rockaways, 1950s and 1960s

When the Regular Democratic Club of the Rockaways refused Rennie Feldman’s plea to join actively in the 1956 Adlai Stevenson presidential campaign, she and her allies, including Renee Schlitten, Jean Larkin, Florence Kaplan, and Seymour “Sy” Sheldon, became Stevenson’s volunteer force, and recruited others – including me, 7-year old Danny Feldman. On Election Day 1956, I stood at the corner of Cronston Avenue and 134^th Street handing out Stevenson campaign flyers to neighbors on their way to vote at P.S. 114, the very same fine elementary school, P.S. 114, that had played a key role in inducing my parents to move to Rockaway, in which I was now enrolled in fourth grade, having skipped third grade.

Stevenson lost. But the local Stevenson volunteers became part of a larger movement. Starting in the late 1940s, Eleanor Roosevelt and Herbert Lehman led the effort to wrest control of the Democratic party in New York City away from Tammany Hall and the other old regular machines.  People like Rennie and her Stevenson volunteers deeply admired Eleanor Roosevelt and Lehman, so in 1956 the ranks of the reform movement swelled substantially. Thus was born Rockaway Independent Democrats, the reform Democratic club of the Rockaways.

At the beginning of the 1960 presidential race, Rennie and most of her friends remained fiercely loyal to Stevenson, as did Eleanor Roosevelt, whom she greatly admired.  Also, she was very aware that John Kennedy’s father, Joseph Kennedy, had opposed American entry into the war against Hitler,  and was thought in many quarters to have been a Nazi sympathizer. Nonetheless, her support for Stevenson ended immediately upon her first encounter with John F. Kennedy. She went to a political rally for John Kennedy because she wanted to hear what he had to say, but it was fairly clear to me, even at age 11, that it was not merely what he said that inspired her. She was not the only woman in the United States upon whom he had this effect. The press reported “jumpers,” woman who kept jumping at his rallies to get a better look at him. .  When she came home that night, she announced, “We’re supporting Kennedy for President.”

So in 1960, I was back at my old stand at Cronston and 134^th Street, this time handing out leaflets for JFK. Kennedy would overcome substantial anti-Catholic prejudice in that campaign. Roughly half my neighbors at the time were Irish Catholic (the other half were Jewish) and I remember telling the Irish Catholics kids campaigning alongside me to remember and to support a Jewish candidate when one finally would run for President. (My mother – then, in 1960 – told me that the United States would have a black president before it had a Jewish president.) But JFK’s victory felt like a victory for us.

The local political scene, however, remained less than inspiring. From 1949 through 1966, J. Lewis Fox, a Democrat, represented the Rockaways in the New York State Assembly. He was one of the stalwarts disdained by Rennie and her allies whose incumbency the regular Democratic club feared to risk by supporting Stevenson. But in 1966, as the Merkel meat scandal unfolded, Fox’s involvement emerged, and he was indicted. District Leader Milton Jacobowitz did not rally to Fox’s side, announcing instead his candidacy against Fox for the Democratic nomination. Seeing the regular Democrats split, a reformer from the Bronx moved in.  Rockaway Independent Democrats supported him, I stuffed envelopes with campaign materials to be mailed to voters after school, and the reform Democrats won a rare victory in local Rockaway politics.

At about this time, Sy Sheldon, a former Borsht Belt saxophone player and one of Rennie’s original crew of reformers, won election as district leader. Sy’s commitment to reform seemed to end upon his election, and for most of the next three decades he led the regular Democratic organization in Rockaway. One of my Belle Harbor neighbors, Max Galfunt, a Sy Sheldon acolyte, would patrol the voting booths at P.S. 114 during each election, cajoling or bullying each voter to support the “regular” slate of candidates. This was quite illegal, of course, as the law prohibited electioneering within fifty feet of the polls, much less inside the voting booths. But Sy rewarded Max, who became a New York State Supreme Court judge.

In those days, New York held its primaries in June. Of course, whoever won the Democratic primary was assured of victory in November. So when Herb Posner won his primary in June, 1966, the same month I graduated from high school, my political involvement in Rockaway was over, I thought. Off I went to Columbia College to begin a new chapter.

Where Reform Democrats Came From: Warm Hearts and Idealistic Minds, 1930-1950

I really liked the history of political party clubs in New York City in Francis Barry’s 2009 book The Scandal of Reform (Rutgers University Press, N.J.), especially how they weren’t divorced from saloons until 1893, and gradually became “official” organizations subject to state law, rather than clubs in the usual, private sense. The title of Barry’s book makes it obvious that he does not admire the reform movement. Although I cannot dispute some of the criticism he leveled, I also cannot think of myself as other than a loyal product of that movement. In general defense of its role, I am reminded of FDR’s rendition of Dante’s adage, also quote by JFK, that “divine justice weights the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales.”

Barry, and I, can point to examples of warm-hearted “regulars” and cold-blooded “reformers.” Barry might even argue that on balance, “people-oriented” regulars show more warmth than “ideal-oriented” reformers, but that’s not really the point. Reformers come to the game, at least, with the notion of imbuing it with higher ideals. I think the intention deserves credit, even if some who call themselves reformers only pursue selfish interests, and if others eventually do so. “Regulars” pledge fealty to the established powers, presumably in return for the satisfaction of their personal interests. The establishment can always be improved, but the regulars do not assign themselves the goal of improving it. Therefore, by my lights, the reform orientation should prevail, notwithstanding the fact that Tales from the Sausage Factory clearly reflects my deep admiration for regular Democrat Stanley Fink and later editions of this blog may well include kind words about some other regulars. I do not write these comments to persuade you but only so you will understand the perspective from which the forthcoming stories are written.

Barry did not describe the evolution that many idealistic New Yorkers experienced personally between the 1930s and the 1950s. He did describe how Fiorello LaGuardia beat the Democratic mayoral candidate in 1933, after Tammany’s domination of “a city government awash in corruption, as he put it. He also noted how FDR, with the help of organized labor, created the American Labor Party, for people who wanted to vote for FDR but were repelled by Tammany Hall’s control of the Democratic party, and how LaGuardia won again in 1937 with votes from the ALP.  I knew people who typified supporters of the ALP in those years.

The Depression was a period of intense suffering by the common people, brought on by the excesses of unregulated capitalism. American constitutional understandings had followed a design from a period prior to great concentrations of economic power capable of vast oppression. FDR’s New Deal, and the new course adopted by the Supreme Court starting in 1937 upholding New Deal protections, revised those constitutional understandings to enable government to counterbalance those great economic powers in order to protect individuals.

All this unleashed the imaginations of intelligent and idealist Americans, who identified with “the working class,” whether or not they were themselves. What was good for the working class was good for America, in their view, and that surely meant increasing the power of workers as opposed to the power of bankers and other capitalists. Failing to see the danger of untrammeled power when exercised by bureaucrats, some became Communists. The Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939, however, opened the eyes of many in that category, who then joined the larger numbers who, more astutely, pushed the boundaries of New Deal reform. By the end of the Second World War, the ALP’s continued ties to some Communists repulsed many of its former members. Barry correctly noted that the ALP’s “anti-Communist labor leaders” left to create the New York’s Liberal party, but failed to note that many of its members now joined the Democratic party, the party of Roosevelt, still motivated by the idealism of their youth.

These were the people that I’m talking about. In years to come, they and their actual as well as philosophical descendents would populate the reform movement in the Democratic party.