The Petrified Forest

New York, as any visitor can see, is the showplace of change, the city that always sports the latest and shiniest in automobiles, literary movements and ballpoint pens, where perfectly good buildings are torn down every year to make way for newer and better ones. Only its politics have stopped moving. Politically, New York is a kind of petrified forest, where reform candidates roam in solidly institutionalized groups, and the stumps of once-great political growths clutter the landscape.

Last week the forest was a busy place, as party leaders and professed independents got their men ready for the 1953 mayoralty elections. By week's end, six candidates had signed up to run for the $40,000-a-year-job -- generally regarded as the second-roughest executive post in the U.S.-The issues which divided the candidates, and the factions supporting them, were often just barely visible in the forest's dim light.

Wrecking the Party. The most obvious aspirant was Mayor Vincent R. Impellitteri. Democrat Impellitteri, 53, is a likable, cigar-smoking politician who has been in his profession so long that even his casual conversations manage to sound like scraps from political speeches. In the 1950 elections, he bucked his own party machine and won, running as an independent on a ticket titled Experience Party. By now, with three years of distributing City Hall patronage behind him, he has considerable Democratic Party support.

"Impy" is running on his record ("Not just fair; it has been excellent"), and there have been worse ones. All sides agree that he is honest, and that he has appointed some capable administrators to city departments. But he has shown little or no understanding of the city's wretched financial position which is steadily growing worse, and he has made only weak efforts to solve specific problems like New York's huge transit deficit (TIME, Apr. 20), which last week resulted in a 15-c- fare for all the city's subway turnstiles.

Against Impy are the remains of Manhattan's once-powerful Tammany machine, now run by Leader Carmine De Sapio, 44, and the venerable Bronx organization of Boss Edward J. Flynn, an old confidant of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Last week, in a traditional smoke-filled Manhattan hotel room, the opposing Democratic party bosses had it out. Queens Leader James A. Roe, Brooklyn's Kenneth Sutherland and Staten Island's Jeremiah A. Sullivan insisted on nominating Impellitteri. De Sapio and Congressman Charles A. Buckley, representing Flynn, refused to go along with them, then carried the fight into a hotel corridor, where reporters overheard the end. Yelled Leader Buckley, "You are wrecking the Democratic Party!" Snapped Leader Roe, "You might as well go out on 42nd Street. We're going to stop you sabotaging the party."

Two days later, Flynn and De Sapio put up their own candidate, Manhattan Borough President Robert F. Wagner, 43, an amiable party worker whose father, the late Senator, was one of the city's greatest vote getters.

The TV Expert. With the Democrats at each-other's throats, it seemed a golden opportunity for New York's modest but comfortable Republican organization, normally outnumbered by more than two to one at the polls, to win itself an election if it could find a colorful, aggressive candidate. Instead, the G.O.P. bosses picked Acting New York City Postmaster Harold Riegelman, 60, a competent and colorless New York lawyer, active in civic affairs, who has been chief counsel of the Citizens' Budget Commission for the last 21 years. Riegelman, a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, did not immediately accept the nomination, but he declared earlier, "There is nothing a New Yorker should not drop to serve in the city's highest office." Determinedly hopeful G.O.P. campaign leaders wondered whether he could drop his excess dignity on television.

The other party in the race was the Liberals, and their candidate was a child of TV, whose owl-like face and lisping voice became known to millions during the Kefauver hearings. In 1951, running as a Liberal. Rudolph Halley beat both Democratic and Republican candidates for his job as president of New York's City Council. A month ago, according to a New York Daily News poll, he was the most popular of 16 possible candidates (22% of those polled said they would vote for him).

The Also-Rans. Behind the announced candidates, there were several interesting also-rans. Democrat Averell Harriman, still active in New York politics, was scratched on a technicality--he lives outside the city. Manhattan District Attorney Frank Hogan is a Democrat who finds favor with Republicans, especially with his old boss Governor Thomas E. Dewey. Congressman Jacob K. Javits is a Republican well-liked by Liberals and Democrats, but apparently out of step with leaders of his own party, especially with Tom Dewey.

On their records, none of the surviving candidates looks remotely like the combination of executive, spokesman and man-in-the-public-eye which a mayor of New York should resemble. Prospect for the petrified forest: little or no change.

*The $1,528,814,950 New York City budget is topped only by that of the Federal Government.

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