Spirit of '76

How Do We Get

Better Leaders?

Today is the fifth day of fall in the year 2011. The political calendar has however raced ahead. We are in the midst of the 2012 Presidential campaign, and the 2013 Mayoral race is already under way.

This acceleration of political competition is due in part to campaign finance laws, which require reporting of contributions far in advance of the election. Candidates are judged by the media and the public by the amount of money they have raised. It is therefore in the interest to collect as much as they can as soon as they can.

A political action committee supporting women candidates calls itself "Emily's List", the acronym standing for 'early money is like yeast', which means that it helps the cake rise, hopefully so people will donate when campaigns begin and encourage others to do the same. Gender-based organizations may encounter problems when two candidates with the same reproductive system seek the same office, but Emily's List makes the selection process less burdensome by limiting its support to pro-choice Democrats.

Under current law, there are political action committees for both major parties and for independents. Their ability to raise funds and donate to candidates may ultimately be determined by the Supreme Court of the Unite States. At present, there is some uncertainty as to the effect of the Citizens United decision of December 2010, which overturned nearly a century of precedents by ruling that corporate spending on elections could not be limited, based on the court's expansive reading of the First Amendment. Precedents seem less important where there is a political agenda. See Bush v. Gore (2000).

Individuals have the right to contribute as much as they wish to candidates under the Supreme Court decision in Buckley v. Valeo (1976). Today we will discuss other events in that memorable year in our history, the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence.

POLITICAL EVENTS IN NEW YORK STATE IN 1976

BTW, the Buckley in the Valeo case is not the author William F. Buckley, who ran for Mayor in 1965, but his brother James, who was a United States Senator from New York at the time of the High Court's decision. James had been elected on the Conservative Party line in 1970, when the liberal vote was divided between Democrat Richard Ottinger, a Congressman, and Republican-Liberal Charles Goodell, who had been appointed to the Senate in 1968 by Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller to fill the vacancy caused by the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Senator Goodell had five sons, one of whom is Roger Goodell, commissioner of the National Football League.

After one six-year term, Senator Buckley was defeated for re-election by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Democratic-Liberal candidate. After leaving the Senate, Buckley was appointed by President Reagan as Undersecretary of State for International Security Affairs (where he succeeded Matthew Nimetz) and Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (where he was succeeded by John G. Roberts, Jr.).

Moynihan had narrowly won the Democratic primary in a race which featured three candidates from the party's left wing: Congresswoman Bella Abzug, former City Council President Paul O'Dwyer and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark. Abe Hirschfeld, a garage magnate later imprisoned for the criminal solicitation of a hit man to kill his former business partner, ran fifth. After his release from prison, he ran again for the Senate.

Under the New York State Election Law, political parties are required to nominate candidates before Primary Day. The minor parties, therefore, must make their choices before the major parties. The Liberal Party could not foresee who would win the Democratic primary for the Senate. The identity and philosophy of the Democratic nominee would be a major factor in determining whom the Liberals would choose. It was therefore necessary to select a candidate who could withdraw after the primary. The law provided only three paths to withdrawal: death of the candidate, moving out of the State of New York, or nomination for a judicial office. It was therefore desirable to nominate a lawyer, who would be able to depart from the race honorably and safely if circumstances warranted a substitution.

At that time, I was City Councilmember at Large from Manhattan, and the only elected Liberal in the state. I was asked to be the Senate candidate and, of course, accepted. When Pat Moynihan won the Senate primary, the Liberal Party found a candidate it could proudly support, and I was nominated by the party for the New York State Supreme Court, an office that had always been filled by major party nominees. What would have happened if Bella Abzug had defeated Moynihan is a question that will never be answered. Alex Rose, leader of the Liberal Party, died in December 1976. However, even if Ms. Abzug had received the Liberal nomination, she might have lost to Senator Buckley. Moynihan defeated Buckley by about 585,000 votes. He was considered a moderate liberal and appealed to a broader range of voters than Ms. Abzug. Of course, no one can be certain with regard to hypothetical contests.

The determining event in that primary was the New York Times' last-minute support for Moynihan, a decision made by publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger (not the present publisher, but his father) to over-rule the editorial board, which had supported Ms. Abzug. That was an extremely important choice, because Senator Moynihan, who had been U.S. Representative to the United Nations and had advised four Presidents (two Democrats and two Republicans) was re-elected three times and enjoyed an extraordinary reputation. Moynihan retired in 2000 and was succeeded by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who served until she resigned in 2009 to become Secretary of State.

Return with us now to the thrilling days of yesteryear. The other New York Senate seat was occupied successively by Jacob K. Javits, four terms, 1957-81; Alfonse D'Amato, three terms, 1981-99; and Charles E. Schumer, 1999 to the present. The seat Moynihan held was held, as we have noted by, James Buckley, Charles Goodell and Robert F. Kennedy, who defeated Kenneth Keating, a Rochester Republican congressman. FYI, years ago, New York was considered a Republican state.

The governor in 1976 was the late Hugh Carey (Rockefeller had become Vice President under Ford). The state comptroller was Arthur Levitt, a Democrat who served from 1955 to 1978 (six four-year terms), longer than anyone else in the history of the office. The attorney general was Louis J. Lefkowitz, a Republican, who also had the longest tenure in that position, 1957 to 1979 (five and one half terms). Lefkowitz succeeded Jacob Javits, also born on the Lower East Side, who resigned as AG when he was elected to the Senate in 1956.

Do public officials today measure up to the standards of those of a generation or two ago? I think probably not. It is altogether possible that the bosses did a better job of choosing candidates for high office than the consultants and sloganeers who now manage political campaigns for hire. After all, Alfred E. Smith and the first Robert F. Wagner were plucked by Tammany Hall from the mediocracy of the state legislature. And are any boss-chosen governors comparable to Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson?

We close with a memorable couplet by the satirical poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744), who wrote in "An Essay on Man" in 1734:

"For Forms of Government let fools contest;
Whate'er is best administer'd is best.

A Good Governor

Carey Was Indispensable

In City's '70s Fiscal Crisis

The obituaries for Governor Hugh L. Carey stress a major achievement, bringing fiscal responsibility to New York City government after the financial crisis of 1974 and 1975. Here are some facts about the situation at that time and Governor Carey's critical role.

Mayor Koch, who knew Governor Carey since they served in Congress thirty years ago, has written about Carey's achievements. Click here to read his commentary.

This article is a worm's eye view of the fiscal crisis and political events that surrounded and followed it. Back then, I was a City Councilmember at large, elected from the Borough of Manhattan. The City Council, at the time less powerful than it is today, had little to do with creating or resolving the city's near-bankruptcy. We offer some background and political history of the 1970's. Thirty-five years later, it is remarkable how many of these events have been forgotten, while the new generation of New Yorkers never knew them.

In Governor Carey's inaugural on January 1, 1975, he said that "the days of wine and roses were over." This was a sage prediction of the fiscal storms ahead. In response to the city's inability to borrow money to meet its obligations, Carey secured state legislation creating the Municipal Assistance Corporation (also known as Big Mac) and the Financial Control Board for New York City. MAC had the authority to borrow money on behalf of the city, and city tax revenue streams were required to give priority to MAC bonds over any other municipal obligations. The interest rate on some MAC bonds was set as high as 11 per cent, and that income was tax-free. The FCB had authority over the city budget, its approval was required before a budget could be adopted.

The city's fiscal crisis was different and more immediate than the one the Federal government is now enduring. For years, starting at the end of the mayoral term of Robert F. Wagner in 1965, and increasingly during the eight years of the Lindsay administration and the first year under Mayor Abe Beame, the city had consistently spent more than it received in revenues. The gap was filled by borrowing, and city officials devised a number of instrumentalities for short-term borrowing, which was in addition to regular long-term borrowing through the issuance of bonds. In addition, current expenses, which should have been paid for by current revenues, were allocated to the capital budget, which made them eligible for bonding.

To meet its cash needs, the city began to issue new instruments, called RANs, TANs and BANs. These were respectively Revenue Anticipation Notes, Tax Anticipation Notes, and Bond Anticipation Notes. When they came due, the city rolled them over, renewing them for a short period of time. The sum of money borrowed in this way steadily rose, and there came a time in 1975 when the banks, fearful of default as the city's debt increased, stopped buying the freshly issued notes. This caused an immediate cash crisis, as the city did not have the money to pay its employees, having become dependent on the proceeds of the short-term notes which had been rolled over.

The Emergency Financial Control Board (as it was called at the time) had effective control of the city government, since it controlled the cash flow. Its seven-man board consisted of the governor, the mayor, the state and city comptrollers, and three private citizens chosen by the governor and confirmed by the state senate. Other elected officials were allowed to appoint non-voting representatives to the Board.

Governor Carey, who had become proconsul for the city, first secured the retirement of Deputy Mayor James Cavanagh, a longtime civil servant and the appointee of Mayor Beame. Cavanagh, an honorable man who came to symbolize the old way, was replaced by John E. Zuccotti, a 38-year-old who had been chairman of the City Planning Commission. The city reduced its expenditures sharply, mainly by laying off 50,000 employees on June 30, 1975, the end of the fiscal year.

Politically, Carey concluded that Beame was indecisive and not competent to manage the city. He and former Mayor Wagner set about finding a challenger for the 1977 Democratic primary. The usual partner of Wagner and Carey was Alex Rose, the Liberal Party leader who had brought about Mayor Lindsay's re-election in 1969 after Lindsay, at the time a Republican, lost the primary in his own party. Lindsay was re-elected on the Liberal Party line.

Sadly, Alex Rose had passed away on December 28, 1976 and Wagner and Carey were left on their own. They settled on Mario Cuomo, at the time New York's secretary of state under Governor Carey. Cuomo came in second in the seven-person primary race (Bella Abzug, who had just left Congress after narrowly losing a Senate primary to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, came in fourth). The top two, Congressman Ed Koch and Cuomo, made the runoff. Beame had been eliminated because he came in third, Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton ran fifth and Bronx Congressman Herman Badillo was sixth. Joel Harnett, a civic reformer, was a distant seventh. The results were so close that the top six candidates each received more than 10 per cent of the vote, but none of them won 20 per cent. Koch was barely one per cent above Cuomo in the initial voting.

The law provided for a runoff between the top two candidates if no one received 40 per cent of the ballots. Koch defeated Cuomo in the primary runoff by ten points, and in the general election when Cuomo ran a strong race on the Liberal line. On winning, Koch declared peace with Carey, and the two men became political allies and friends. In 1982, when Mayor Koch ran against Carey's Lieutenant Governor, Mario Cuomo, for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, Carey endorsed Koch, who ended up losing to Cuomo.

The breakthrough in Hugh Carey's political career came in 1974, when he defeated the better-known Howard J. Samuels by a 3-2 margin to become the Democratic and Liberal Party candidate for governor. Carey had been a Congressman from Brooklyn for seven terms. Samuels, known affectionately as "Howie the Horse", had been the first chairman of the Off-Track Betting Corporation. He had the support of Democratic Party leaders and was personally wealthy due to the success of Kordite, a plastic product used in baggies, wax paper, plastic wrap, disposable kitchenware, and sturdy trash bags, which he invented and developed. Samuels came from upstate Canandaigua, and was widely referred to as "the upstate industrialist". Carey was the downstate politician.

As governor, Carey made first-rate appointments to his staff, including David Burke and Robert Morgado as successive Secretaries to the Governor, Judah Gribetz as counsel and Michael Del Giudice as policy director. After he left office, Carey led a relatively private life with his family.

In addition to the extensive obituary by Richard Perez-Pena which began on A1 of the Times, the Carey family placed a lengthy and detailed notice on pA17, the obituary page of the newspaper. Mayor Koch wrote a tribute to the former governor, titled HUGH CAREY: NEW YORK'S GREATEST GOVERNOR OF THE MODERN ERA. Click here to find the column, republished on New York Civic's website. It is well worth reading.

BTW, many years ago, Governor Carey received the park name "Leonine". It was a reference to his middle name, Leo, and his stately appearance. In New York State, he was, at an important time in history, the king of beasts.



StarQuest #773 8.8.2011 1247 words