From: Donahue, John
To: Henry J. Stern
Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2005 5:23 PM
Subject: RE: The Real Election

I must say I am somewhat taken aback by the omission in your analysis of the City’s Mayors over the last seventy years beginning with LaGuardia in 1934 that somehow the Mayoralty of Robert Wagner (1954-1965), which spanned some 12 years of this 70 year period (1934-2004), or almost a fifth of this time, does not even merit a mention.

However, I am willing to assign this omission to the fact that your focus was on that of ‘persona‘, which may have not been the old Basset Hound’s strongest suit. But, then how can you mention the accountant like persona of Abe Beame, who while in the midst of the Fiscal Crisis I, was afforded the benefit of incumbency and two little known opponents on a City-wide basis (Koch & Cuomo ) and still placed out of the money for a run-off. Bob Wagner may not have been glamorous, but he resonated with the people

While Bob Wagner did have the benefit of name recognition in 1954, his winning of the Democratic nomination was considered that of a political upstart which helped The Bishop, the late Carmine DeSapio, achieve his ascendancy. So there must have been something there albeit persona or dog-like tenacity. This lesson was to realized all too well and to their dismay by The Bishop and the Democratic leadership in 1961 Primary when the supposedly nondescript Wagner beat the highly popular, and only State-wide Democratic office holder, Comptroller Arthur Leavitt, and then went on to beat Republican Louis Lefkowitz, the NYS Attorney General and the greatest vote-getter in New York State.

If the vox populi is the measure of persona, then Bob Wagner surely had it. Moreover, unlike two of his successors, Lindsay and Koch, who were driven from office by popular sentiment and/or the polls, Robert Wagner walked away from office on his own terms when he declined to run in 1965 under the burden of the personal loss of his beloved Susan and the toll of years of public service.

If measured alone by the political upheaval the surprise announcement of his retirement caused, there is little doubt that he would have been returned by the people to City Hall for an unprecedented fourth term.

Politically, Mayor Wagner had the support and ear of President Lyndon Johnson who had just been swept into office, a good deal support and gratitude within the still fledgling Democratic Reform Movement and outer borough independents both of whom who had established themselves via his 1961 victory. This support guaranteed his “unbossed” and independent status as an incumbent candidate in1965. As such, he didn’t need the organization, they needed him if only to keep the Reformers at bay. Horses which could have only been traded by an incumbent Mayor and Administration, would have been traded here surely to the long term benefit of the Reformers and independents, e.g. a Judgeship for the regular for an unopposed candidacy for a reformer or independent. 

From the City perspective, the economy was relatively sound, the City had just hosted the 1964-65 World’s Fair and opened a brand new major park, Flushing Meadow, National League Baseball had been restored to the City and a spanking new Shea Stadium had been opened in Queens. Mayor Wagner would have been hard to beat in both the Primary and General Election in 1965.

Instead, when he withdrew, what did we get? A Democratic Primary resulting in the favorite, a French Cuff wearing Sanitation Man ( Paul Screvane ), being beaten by life-long Civil Servant Organization Democrat from Brooklyn with an assist from William Fitts-Ryan standing in the Central Park Reservoir proclaiming drought to be a political issue  only after he realized in August that it had not snowed sufficiently in February and March.

The only saving grace of the 1965 Democratic Primary was that it spared Pat Moynihan from the City Council Presidency and allowed him to be available for his great Senate tenure years later. Testimony to this fact and the sage wisdom of himself and his widow is that little or no mention of this electoral loss could be found in the late Senator’s obituaries,

This Democratic disaster of a Primary then resulted in an even more eclectic General Election consisting of an organization dominated Democratic slate led by Abe Beame, the Republican fusion ticket made up of a sitting Republican Congressman ( Lindsay ), a Liberal Party academic ( Tim Costello) and an independent Brooklyn Democratic attorney ( Milt Mollen ) and a Conservative Party candidate for Mayor who lived in Connecticut ( William F. Buckley, Jr. ).

This election, however, was dominated by the three Mayoral candidates. And what persona we had here? Who can forget the Wire Service photo of the tall, strikingly handsome Patrician John Lindsay, the tall, dour looking Ivy League Bill Buckley and the vertically challenged Brooklyn Bookkeeper, Abe Beame, standing side by side. As they say in Gaelic, Oyve!  So it was no contest, Lindsay, the winner, straddled with the two lesser Democratic City-wide candidates, one of whom (Frank O’Connor) soon traded off his City-wide victory for the Queens DA job and the Democratic nomination for Governor.

And all of this came about by the decision of a man with not enough (?) pesrsona, who if he wanted to run, could have precluded all of this from happening. So while it can be said that the results of Bob Wagner’s decision not to run in 1965 was all a matter of ‘que sera, sera’ , it can also be said that this decision by a unique, complex and well liked public official and politician inalterably changed the course of Mayoral politics THEN and NOW.