Abzug: Rage and Asphalt Glamor

For Bella Savitzky Abzug, there are two New Yorks. Her mayoral candidacy evokes responses from cool to hostile among those most influential and sophisticated in city affairs. Businessmen feather, and so do civil service union leaders. The three daily newspapers will support one or another of her six opponents for the Democratic nomination. Most party sachems are lining up behind either Incumbent Abraham Beame or Governor Hugh Carey's choice, New York Secretary of State Mario Cuomo. Yet if the vote were held now, the other New York would choose Bella. TIME Bureau Chief Laurence I. Barrett reports:

It is a sultry night in Queens, thirsty for a thunderstorm that will come too late, but 250 middle-class homeowners stay dutifully in their hard little folding chairs. They are at the Bell Park Jewish Center to inspect mayoral candidates. Congressman Ed Koch leads off--witty, whimsical, wise--and he suggests that Abzug is a demagogue for promising that she would wrest more federal help for the beleaguered city. He gets polite applause.

Then it is Abzug's turn. A year or two ago, "Battling Bella" might have hollered some rib-cracking ripostes. Instead, she manages to look dainty in her white straw hat. Despite the heat and her bulk, she gives her most benign smile, a cultivated mannerism that accentuates the Oriental cast of her eyes. Sweetly, she says: "I disagree with Mr. Koch. I think that I am magnificent." The crowd exhales delight.

There are a few more grace notes --she talks about her Depression girlhood in New York, the Live and Let Live Meat Market that her father ran on Ninth Avenue--and then she is back into her real number. Her delivery takes on the timbre and pace of a pneumatic hammer. "This is a city that can attract and hold business, that can make its subways and its buses fit for human beings and can give us cleaner streets and air and can reduce crime and restore learning in our schools and ..."

The litany goes on. Bella, Cuomo and others say the same thing--that the city's weak managerial system must be reformed to,save many millions. She would sack incompetent hacks and hire professional administrators. She would tidy up the sloppy procedures that keep New York from getting the maximum out of federal subsidies. Hundreds of millions in real estate and sales taxes now go uncollected each year; Abzug pledges to go after them: "I know where the money is and how to get it."

Now she is perspiring. Her left fist kayoes phantom adversaries in the air. Candidate Carter promised a federal takeover of welfare, and Candidate Abzug would hold him to it. "The city of New York has to organize and seek coalitions of the people, and mayors, and Governors and members of Congress and labor and the banks to insist that there is a national movement, and we in the city of New York need a billion dollars to take care of our streets, our teachers, our sanitation, our housing, our hospitals, our senior centers, our child-care centers..."

Abruptly, Abzug changes tempo, modulates to a reassuring croon. "That's why you're going to elect me mayor." There is electricity in the synagogue sanctuary now, and Abzug delights in every watt. "I may break my neck in the process, but I'm going to do it!" Somewhere in the back, a middle-aged housewife shouts: "Right on!"

Her show, repeated tirelessly before different audiences, underscores both her strengths and weaknesses. She has instant recognition and a kind of asphalt glamour unmatched by any of her male adversaries in the race. She is also highly credible to ordinary voters, many of whom seem ready for a tough voice. That same message, however, makes her suspect among those who fear a return to the city's bad old days of openhanded spending on social services, consider her leftish, and point to her lack of administrative experience. And, just below the surface of her current relatively controlled persona, lurks the shadow of the old Bellicose Bella, for whom rage is the staff of life.

In a city that used to be a citadel of New Dealish plenty, today's rising taxes and costs and reduced municipal services make for an unusual campaign. It has become politic to be probusiness. Though Abe Beame insists that "we've weathered the storm," his own Temporary Commission on City Finances reported last month that the city is still in peril. The commission urged greater austerity and more enticing tax reductions for business, and told the city it must invest whatever funds it can spare in economic development rather than traditional services.

Most of the candidates accept this argument. But Abzug seems emotionally unable to settle for that. Though she pledges administrative reform, and acknowledges the need to keep business and attract new firms through partial tax exemptions and expansion of industrial parks, she also argues that New York must restore such services as free undergraduate tuition at City University when resources permit.

According to most experts, the city's hospital system must be scaled back and better meshed with private institutions, which also get public money. Abzug says she is uncertain whether a large reduction in hospital beds is necessary.

She implies strongly that she would somehow find the funds to hire more firemen, improve the mediocre criminal justice system, and otherwise "improve the quality of life." She repeatedly emphasizes the need to modernize and upgrade the rapid transit system. To do that she would abandon the $1 billion Westway road project, a controversial plan favored by the business community and many political leaders because it would promote development in Lower Manhattan. Most of the money would come from Washington, but under legislation pushed by Abzug while she was in Congress, such highway funds can be "traded in" for mass-transit money.

All this jars businessmen, professionals, state officials and political middle-roaders. They grow nervous when she stresses restoration of New York City's grandeur as a place of generous opportunity for those in need ("It's only people who are not willing to fight for the city who want to shrink it. What is life all about if your reach does not exceed your grasp?"). Says Clifford Goldsmith, president of Philip Morris U.S.A.. 'I think her priorities are skewed. You have to have a sound fiscal situation to ensure a good quality of life." Stephen Berger, executive director of the State Emergency Financial Board, says that "talking about bringing back free tuition is terribly unfortunate because it raises false expectations."

Throughout the city's establishment, Abzug is still perceived vaguely (and, at least by her present line, unfairly) as an erratic radical. Long before she got to Congress in 1971, she vehemently op posed the Viet Nam War and was prominent in the dump-Johnson and feminist movements. Defending the rights of homosexuals, participating in street demonstrations and otherwise disturbing the peace over many years, she mingled with and took on some of the patina of the loony left. Yet many of her causes have since become fashionable. Abzug's supporters feel that different standards are applied when the agitator is an abrasive Jewish mother (she has two grown daughters) from The Bronx who refuses to act the lady.

Though gigged for being unable to get along with other politicians, she did, during her three terms, become respected as a highly effective House member and an ally of the party hierarchy. Tip O'Neill, now the House Speaker, visited New York last year to bless her Senate candidacy against Pat Moynihan.

In that primary campaign, Abzug dissipated an early lead and lost by 1%. One large factor in her defeat was that she allowed exhaustion to make her testy and querulous in public. This time she is trying to pace herself and keep her temper--and her ample figure--in check. She will be 57 this month and her retainers are attempting to hold her to a high-protein diet. Still, she is capable of gobbling handfuls of peanuts during an interview that makes her nervous, while demanding of an aide, "Who put these damn nuts on my desk?"

TV Blitz. She strives to defang criticism of her foibles with her peculiar brand of humor. She has always been hard on aides and in unguarded moments still snaps at them brusquely, even in public. But occasionally she will introduce a staffer like Press Secretary Harold Holzer and say: "Harold, take off your shirt. Show the people the lash marks." In fact, Holzer resigned from Beame's staff to rejoin Abzug when she tossed in her big hat, and other aides remain fanatically loyal.

Her sometimes crude manners--she has been known privately to cuss out adversaries and reporters whom she thinks hostile--have been smoothed lately. As proof that she knows how to bargain, she gestures toward her husband of 33 years, a stockbroker, and says: "Look at Martin; he's a perfect example that I'm a good negotiator and conciliator."

For the past six months, polls have shown her leading in the crowded race. Lately she has been getting more than 30% among Democrats, while Beame (at about 15%) has been losing ground, and Cuomo has been picking up support. But there can be important shifts before the primary on Sept. 8. If no candidate gets 40%, a runoff will be held just eleven days later. In November the winner will face Republican Roy Goodman, a highly able state senator who will be an underdog in the Democratic city.

While it seems likely that Abzug will finish first on Sept. 8, she may be unable to muster 40%, and the runoff is impossible to handicap. Taking no chances, Abzug is preparing a TV ad blitz for use later in the summer. "You do early TV when you're not known, when you have to become a person," she says. "I'm already a person." Through a capable campaign staff, she is setting up a detailed district-targeting system for a get-out-the-vote effort where she is strongest. Rivals hope she will wound herself by playing the brash tartar; Congressman Koch and Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton try to goad her with cracks about self-discipline and lack of administrative ability. So far she has left the bait dangling.

"My opponents are getting desperate," she says. "They began attacking me in June instead of waiting till August." Being the front runner does not displease her. "Look at it this way. I'm the underdog who happens to be ahead." And she smiles, not at all sweetly.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.