Six days before the gubernatorial elections, New York City was full with its usual hurly-burly and little more. Signs of political activity were scarce; only a few cars suspended in mid-town traffic sported bumper stickers, and campaign buttons were hard to spot. The most active leafleting in Times Square was being done by two girls distributing pamphlets for a dating service called "Meet a Mate" -- a superfluous effort considering the location.

But if public passions were not aroused it was not from a lack of issues. Nelison A. Rockefeller, the Republican governor seeking a third term, Frank D. O'Connor, the Democratic candidate and president of the New York City Council, and Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., the liberal candidate, have toted out a whole litany of big city, big industry problems. The political disputes now include crime in the streets, taxes, public housing, highway construction corruption, education and state finance.

The average voter just isn't interested. Either the polemics are too complex to entice the reader past the first few paragraphs of newspaper accounts or issues are neatly trimmed to campaign button size. No candidate seems to have connected the issues, to see them as part of a broader problem, and no one has promised sparkling solutions.

The state's ten million voters (six million of whom will show up at the polls today), except for the most stalwart in each party, will face a simple decision: how annoyed to be with Nelson Rockefeller.

The governor, during eight years in office, has been involved in a string of sour incidents. His political record is marred by two scandals with the State Liquor Authority, one in 1962-63 and the other which just broke last week; his divorce and remarriage; his crumpled presidential dreams; his veto of the $1.50 minimum wage bill last year; his absurd fall-out shelter campaign; and, of course, his broken promise not to raise taxes.

Local issues also plague Rockefeller. In Buffalo, for instance, his administration built a badly needed throughway, but put a toll bridge on it and began collecting money from commuters who, unlike their New York City counterparts, are not use to paying out dimes every time they go to work. They hate the governor in some parts of Buffalo.

Voters Won't Forget

Rockefeller has done imaginative things to rehabilitate three bankrupt railroads in the state, to improve the State University, to push medical aid--but he imposed a three per cent state sales tax which the voters won't forget. The tax, which his opponents call regressive, inspired O'Connor's campaign slogan: You Can Believe Frank O'Connor.

Rockefeller retaliated with a public relations machine slicker than a well made cue-ball. What other candidate offers reporters wine as they skip from town to town in plush bus or plusher plane? The refrain is "This is Leadership. Let's Keep it."

Rockefeller has already spent more than $4.5 million on the campaign -- over $100,000 on telephones alone -- and when the final accounts are presented to the state for inspection next year, the total could run twice as high. In the money race the Democrats are second with $1.25 million, about their usual expenditure, and the Liberals are surviving on about a third of that.

The polls, depending on whose you read, show Rockefeller and O'Connor with some 40 per cent of the vote each; Roosevelt has 12 to 18 per cent; and the Conservative candidate, Paul L. Adams, might get five per cent on a sunny day when the older people can get out to vote. But in the time it takes pollsters to canvass the state, opinions often change. Most experts currently give Rockefeller a slight lead.

Part II

FDR Jr. excels when it comes to the great American ritual of the universal arm squeeze and the indiscriminate smile. Thursday for instance he took his campaign to the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, a few blocks from the spot where Barnum and Bailey's pitched tent when they made a special stop in that borough years ago. FDR Jr. pulled over on Eastern Parkway in front of a brightly lit cafeteria. Facing the building he looked out at Crown Heights proper, an old neighborhood of Italians and orthodox Jews. Behind him was Bedford-Stuyvesant, the most salvageable of the city's Negro slums. Looking toward the slum he could see sheets of paper propelled higgly-piggly by the cold wind until the trash caught in one of the low, rusted fences in front of the brick houses. The hard neon light from the cluster of stores on the cafeteria side seemed to draw people hurrying home for the week-end.

A large flat-bed truck with sound equipment moved into position, and the advance man got to work. "Meet and greet the next governor of the state of New York"--it came out like W.C. Fields doing the Annunciation.

Then his failing voice, which had that day seared nearly the entire borough, squeaked piteously and died. A young Negro took over. "Come on you people over on the other side of Eastern Parkway, come see Franklin Roosevelt. He's in the cafeteria, come on now."