WHATEVER his mistakes, Marchi will do well on November 4th-when you consider that he is a conservative Republican running in an overwhelmingly Democratic, and usually liberal, town. He has nearly all Procaccino's positive points except the party label. He has a certain impressive quality all his own. But the polls suggest Marchi cannot avoid the role of spoiler, however much he might like to. Every vote he acquires is a vote acquired from Procaccino, and only brings the necessary Lindsay total down that much further.
The Daily News straw poll, which has never missed a mayoralty race, seems to attest to this fact in giving Lindsay 44 per cent, Procaccino 33 per cent and Marchi 20 per cent-with a startlingly small 3 per cent undecided. Observers have occasionally faulted the News polling techniques, but all agree that the straw poll has been and will continue to be pretty accurate. If it isn't the perfect measure of existing public opinion, at least it does such a good job of convincing its readers as to constitute a self-fulfilling prophesy. The News is that much revered and trusted (its news coverage, that is, not its editorials), and the straw poll has long served as the climax of New York's election battles.
Lindsay, then, has come from an apparent long shot in June to become a favorite at the end of October. If he wins, it will probably not surprise too many Americans casually versed in politics. Why, after all, should the country's largest metropolis trade in its Rolls Royce of a mayor for a back-model Chevrolet? John Lindsay's national reputation alone would be a formidable asset in any other city. Add his good looks and an opposition party torn to ribbons, and it seems fair to venture Lindsay could win a walloping victory at the polls of any town north of the Mason-Dixon Line-and a few to the south as well.
In many American cities, however, Lindsay would have to face a run-off. New York, which has retained partisan municipal elections in the face of a trend away from them, requires only a plurality at all stages of the event. The Lindsay camp has made much of the fact that Procaccino could not have won a run-off within his own Democratic Party-former Mayor Robert Wagner would have been a strong favorite in such a contest.
Now the Lindsay people must face up to the fact that this same anachronism has become an essential ele-
ment to Lindsay's come-from-behind shot at re-election. In other words, the Lindsay victory could be a Pyrrhic victory, squeezing Manhattan, the poor, the rich, the social scientists and the beautiful people to the bone.
If Marchi were to do now what Vito Batista did for him at primary's end-mainly stand aside in the interests of unseating Lindsay-the Mayor would again become the underdog against Procaccino.
Lindsay himself seems aware of this. He has acknowledged his failure to keep the lower middle class at even a low threshold of good humor, and he has declared his intention to do something about it should a second administration come his way. The danger is that Lindsay's supporters, exhilarated by their triumph. may not want to let him.
PERHAPS the most effective and most fruitful way for Lindsay to solve this problem would be to lay stress on those ills that affect all New Yorkers equally. Waste-solid, liquid and gaseous-emerges as the least romantic and most desperate of all. Next on the line is the automobile, and the assorted crises it engenders. The steady onslaught of pollution and congestion, and lurking behind them the fact that the United States virtually alone among industrialized nations continues to support a leaping population must be confronted now or not at all.
For an urban leader who prides himself, not without justification, on having helped to educate national thinking about cities. Lindsay has not done nearly enough in these areas. He now has enough political breathing space to mention the subject of population control; to avoid it is surely no less devious than to avoid Vietnam, even if New York City's population growth has long since left its political borders behind.
More immediately important, cities must begin to reclaim some of the ground and air space now dominated by the automobile. Theodore Kheel, with Mayor Lindsay's backing, has proposed lifting bridge and tunnel tolls to finance a continued 20-cent subway fare. Mario Procaccino has opposed the Kheel plan, asserting that drivers should not be asked to subsidize mass transit more than they are already doing. With this argument, Procaccino completely fails to realize that mass transit riders already pay a tremendous, almost incalculable subsidy to drivers: they travel in a crowded, dirty, sightless underground, while conceding the open air to their generally richer brethren. Similarly, pedestrians pay tribute to the automobile by gauging the erratic pace of their journeys to the cause of eased car travel.
The Welfare Island new-town project, with its emphasis on relatively low buildings, its extensive parklands, its constraints on automobile use, and its considerable freedom for the pedestrian, represents the kind of venture that might save New York City. But why should such techniques be employed only in "new" towns and not in the old ones where most Americans live? Mayor Lindsay should now think about giving the pedestrians of New York more room and the drivers less, about turning clogged streets into park-lined walk ways open at certain hours to commercial and emergency auto traffic.
The integrity of pedestrian arteries-now called "sidewalks"-should be protected over substantial lengths as is the integrity of an expressway. If the use of private automobiles is to continue within high-density urban areas, there is at least no reason why those who reject cars under such circumstances should not be granted some measure of isolation from their harmful effects. Devices aimed toward that end might at the same time serve to encourage the automobile's proper function: medium-distance travel, commercial transport, and travel in low-density areas. Incentives and deterrents, wisely employed, may still be capable of effecting such a shift; before long, however, the situation maybe beyond curing except through disagreeable and politically doubtful prohibitive legislation.
The success or failure of America's efforts to combat the apocalyptic cycle of waste and congestion appears to depend on the willingness of imaginative and enlightened public figures to lend their time to such banalities as sanitation, pollution, congestion, and conservation-and finally population growth.
Mayor Lindsay has been extraordinary for his good sense and courage under fire, but he has remained essentially within the bounds of conventional liberal politics-preoccupied with the problems of social equity in the welfare state.
A new frontier lies before him. As if with all his problems, he needed one.