1994 Ad

The atmosphere of the New York Republican Party in the homestretch of the election campaign resembles that of a Renaissance court, with assorted would-be favorites, all carrying copies of The Prince in their doublets, countermining and dissing each other.

The most spectacular maneuver was executed by New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani when he crossed party lines to endorse Mario Cuomo over George Pataki - "giving artificial respiration," as Bill Buckley put it, "to a political corpse far gone in decomposition" - on the grounds that the corpse would aid the city more generously. In so doing, Mayor Giuliani jettisoned one of the chief rationales for his own campaign last year. By pinning the city's hopes on government largesse rather than on reformist tax policies, he embraced the timid, static analysis of former Mayor David Dinkins. If Giuliani is right now, Dinkins was right then; so why should Giuliani be mayor? Mr. Giuliani also dimmed his future in Republican politics at the state or national level. Instead of urging conservative Democrats to join the Republican coalition - the strategy of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan - he broke Republican ranks to bolster a liberal Democrat. If Giuliani ever addresses a national convention, it will be at three o'clock on a Monday afternoon.

While Rudy Giuliani wielded his stiletto, Herb London, candidate for comptroller, attacked the Republican standard-bearer with a rusty pike. London publicly blamed Pataki for running an issueless campaign, and called on him to show some leadership. London, whom NR has supported in several previous runs for office, rightly resented the manner in which Pataki's nomination was rammed through this year's state convention. Moreover, his diagnosis of the Pataki campaign is substantially correct. But running on a party ticket is like entering a bourgeois marriage: one doesn't say certain things in front of the children or the servants. Mr. London should make his complaints in campaign pow-wows, or leak them to friendly journalists - not issue them as press releases.

Conservatives have several bones to pick with George Pataki: his switch from a pro-life to a pro-abortion stance; his nerveless campaign; his relationship with Senator Alfonse D'Amato, which has recalled Trilby's with Svengali. But the choice for voters is clear. Mario Cuomo is a retread of a retread. an echo of his mid-eighties persona, which was itself an echo of the New Deal. Mr. Pataki is at least aware of the importance of cutting taxes. As a state legislator, he was one of the few who bucked the bipartisan establishment on spending. As governor, he would become his own man, rather than Senator D'Amato's, if for no other reason than self-interest.

Vote for Pataki; annoy Giuliani.