Ideas or consequences? - New York, New York mayoral race between David Dinkins, Republican candidate Rudolph Giuliani and Conservative Party candidate George Marlin

National Review, Nov 1, 1993 by Richard Brookhiser

As the New York mayor's race runs to its finish, local conservatives face a question: Is a vote for George Marlin a vote for David Dinkins, or is a vote for Rudy Giuliani a vote for David Dinkins in white-face? Given the political complexion of the locality, the number of people pondering this issue is small. But it may be enough to tip a tight election. Hence the intensity the question provokes.

"In Morrisania in the Bronx, a guy got so heated he was about to throw a punch at me," says Herb London, Conservative Party candidate for governor in 1990, describing the perils of campaigning for Marlin, the Conservative Party candidate for mayor now. "He said, |I've seen the value of my house go down 50 per cent in four years. I don't have the luxury of voting for Marlin. My life is on the line.'"

"It took a long time" for New York City "to get into this mess," replies Mike Long, Chairman of the State Conservative Party. "It's going to take a long time to get out."

The present incarnation of the mess is Mayor Dinkins. When I first met him up close, on a TV sound stage, he did two things that epitomized the bad in his administration. For his mike test, he recited the first stanza of W. E. Henley's "Invictus": "Out of the night that covers me, / Black as the Pit from pole to pole, / I thank whatever gods may be / For my unconquerable soul." As he left, he felt the nap of my jacket, and praised the material. There in one glimpse were the self-dramatizing self-pity, and the attitude of "Don't bother me, I'd rather be changing clothes" that New Yorkers have come to know so well.

If only that had been the extent of it. But there was more. Dinkins is wedded to zero-sum economics, wherein the only way to raise revenue is by raising taxes, fees, or fines. He has been almost equally incapable of visualizing the increases in productivity and budgetary flexibility to be gained from restructuring city government. Worst of all has been his record on race. White liberals who voted for Dinkins as a "healer" discovered that he understood healing to mean never looking cross-eyed at rabble-rousers of color. New York was spared a Rodney King riot, for which Dinkins can take some credit. In its place, the city had a boycott of Korean fruit stands, a riot of Hispanic drug dealers, and the one fatal mob attack on a Jew in the Western world since the Forties.

Rudolph Giuliani, the man Dinkins beat by less than two percentage points in 1989, has spent the last four years awaiting the re-match. Recent polls show him running within the margin of error. If he wins, the two largest cities in America will have Republican mayors.

The Conservative Party did not want him to succeed, for a variety of reasons. Some were political. Giuliani schemed for the Conservative nomination, but would not seek it publicly, though he sought, and got, the nomination of the Liberal Party. His mentor in the GOP is State Senator Roy Goodman, a member in good standing of a Republican establishment in Albany that is too tight with the Democrats. The Conservative Party also distrusted Giuliani ideologically, and personally. In the 1989 race, he flipped on abortion, from semi-anti- to pro-. Last year, though Giuliani allies on the School Board opposed the Rainbow Curriculum, he took no strong public stand himself. This year, he marched in both the Gay Pride Parade and the St. Patrick's Day Parade, swinging both ways in the culture war. In June, he switched positions on luxury rent-control, from being against to lobbying in Albany for its continuation.

The Conservative Party kamikaze against him is George Marlin. On paper, and with the press, Marlin has been a good candidate. He has spent 16 years in municipal finance, and has written a book on the subject. "I would not go to Albany to whine for more money," Marlin says, "because I know it's not there. I would ask for the tools to change the system." He lives in Ridgewood, Queens, in District 24, and Mary Cummins, the woman who slew the Rainbow Curriculum, supports him. He is, as Mario Cuomo told the New York Observer, "bright, co-gent, quick, amusing," and despite Cuomo's saying so, it is true.

Perhaps the best thing about the Marlin campaign has been his avoidance of what The New York Times Magazine called the "race race." The Times hurled the phrase at Giuliani, but the master practitioner in this election has been Dinkins, who is running a classic good cop/bad cop scam. Every month, some Dinkins supporter says that voting for Giuliani "gives power" to KKK types, or that Giuliani is surrounded by "fascistic" elements, or that if Herman Badillo, a Giuliani ally, really cared about Puerto Ricans, he would have married one (Mrs. Badillo is Jewish). With each squawk, Dinkins thanks God that he is not as other men, even as these publicans. When the racist-baiting is more subtle, Dinkins welcomes it, as when President Clinton announced that he would never accuse those voting against the mayor of "overt racism." Giuliani's most controversial contribution to the race race was when he called the Crown Heights riot a pogrom, provoking learned discussions of whether pogroms required state sponsorship. More insidious has been the cold-bloodedness with which he collects the endorsements of Hispanics, as if he were a longshoreman unloading a shipment of bananas. Marlin, blessedly, talks issues.