By Henry J. Stern
August 10, 2006
City politics continues to take a back seat as the news focuses on terror,
elections in other states, and the war in Lebanon.
Con Ed appears to have restored service in Queens, and the inquiries will
proceed to determine who was at fault. Usually these studies find a
great deal of shared responsibility; we have not yet found
Mrs. O'Leary's
cow in a barn in Astoria.
The Mayor descended (by elevator) 550 feet under Manhattan's west side to
mark a link-up in the continuing excavation for the Third Water Tunnel.
This massive project, begun in 1970, is scheduled for completion in 2020.
Sewell
Chan describes the work on page B1 of today's Times.
What Paper D' Ya Read?
The political news is that while Senate Democrats have lined up behind Democratic
candidate Ned Lamont in Connecticut, Mayors Bloomberg and Koch have endorsed
Senator Lieberman's independent candidacy. Back in 1990, Connecticut
voters elected
Lowell Weicker
governor as an independent, defeating Republican
John Rowland and Democrat
William O'Neill. Weicker did not seek re-election in 1994, and Rowland
won the first of his two and a half terms. In 2004 he was compelled
to resign for corruption, after which he was convicted and went to jail for
a year. Connecticut mayors have not fared well recently in the halls
of justice; two were removed for graft and one for child molestation - in
his office, no less.
The contrast between New York City's newspapers was shown in the headlines
that the Times and the Sun used for their lead editorials Wednesday on the
Connecticut primary. The Times' head was "
Revenge of the
Irate Moderates.” The Sun described the result as "
The Jihad Against Joe.”
The News, Post and Sun had endorsed Lieberman, while the Times preferred Lamont.
The Post pitched in today with "
Sen.
Joe's Good Fight,” the News edit-head was "
Victory
in Defeat,” Newsday ran "
A
Message for Dems" and the Sun continued its campaign with "
Liberating Lieberman."
The Times and Sun also differed sharply in their page one news coverage
of the reaction to the election. Thursday's Times, A1, top of the column:
"
DEMOCRATS
BACK LAMONT IN RACE IN SHOW OF UNITY," by Adam Nagourney. Today's
Sun had two page one stories on the contest. The two-column lead: "
BLOOMBERG BACKS LIEBERMAN IN SIGN
THAT 2008 IS IN PLAY - Aiding Senator's Independent Bid Could Help the
Mayor's Own Run" was written by Leon Neyfakh. The second Sun story:
pl, c6, "
Go, Joe, Go is the Cry
of Democrats," by Seth Gitell, refers to the desire of national Democrats
to have Senator Lieberman withdraw from the race. Gitell speculates
as to whether political operatives who normally serve Democrats would face
retaliation if they worked for Lieberman.
Since the Republican candidate for the Senate, Alan Schlesinger, is a problem
gambler who plays under a fictitious name, it is highly unlikely that he will
be a strong competitor. This means the spectre of a Republican victory
will not interfere with the race between Lieberman and Lamont. There
will be great pressure to drive Lieberman from the race because it requires
Democrats, especially those professing moderation, to choose between a man
whose views they claim to agree with and a man on the far left. The
Republicans were in a similar situation in 1964 when Arizona Senator Barry
Goldwater won the presidential nomination, and millions crossed party lines
to vote for Lyndon Johnson. At that time Goldwater was viewed as an
extremist, but in fact he was not, as shown by his later career in the Senate.
There's A War On
This morning's news of the arrest of 21 people in the United Kingdom for
terrorism was largely unreported in today's papers. We only found it
on p24 of the Daily News, under the head: "
Brits
say they foiled big plane terror plot,” although it may have appeared
in later editions of other papers. It has received enormous coverage
all day on television. It is likely to be more important than any of
the other interesting items we have discussed.