No Walkaway Now

For a dozen fat years the Democrats have owned Philadelphia. To dispirited Republicans, the prospects for this fall's city election appeared so bleak that party leaders ran through 57 men before finding one to oppose affable, lackluster Democratic Mayor James H. (for Hugh) J. (for Joseph) Tate. They finally settled for Lawyer James Thomas McDermott, 37, who twice before had run for office and been badly beaten.

It ail promised to be rather cut and dried. But that was before the City of Brotherly Love sweated through a long, hot summer of less than brotherly racial strife--and before many white Philadelphians began grumbling that Mayor Tate was playing too hard for the Negro vote.

Under N.A.A.C.P. Leader Cecil Moore, Philadelphia's Negroes have been among the North's most militant. In May, CORE staged an all-night sit-in at the mayor's office, protesting job discrimination by contractors and unions at an $18 million municipal building. Tate hesitated, vacillated, then took the Negroes' side, ordered work stopped on the city project until the situation was investigated. Soon official pressure was being felt by building trades and other unions all over the city to accept more Negroes. Plans were made and executed for speeding up school integration by transferring both white and Negro students from one district to another.

These moves calmed the Negroes, who make up 26% of Philadelphia's voting population and ordinarily deliver 70% to 80% of their support to the Democrats. But Tate infuriated the city's sizable populations of Irish and Italians, who already felt their neighborhoods and ethnic customs were being threatened.

Both Tate and McDermott have avoided outright mention of the touchy race issue, though McDermott's pledge "to restore safety to Philadelphia's crime-ridden streets" by beefing up the police force is taken as an appeal for white votes. In any event, the civil rights issue has turned what figured to be a Democratic walkaway into what most observers now see as something less. But no one seriously doubts that come Nov. 5 the Democrats will renew their lease on Philadelphia for four more years.

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