Down with Corruption

The industrial Northeast has long been a pillar of the Democrats' national strength. The party maintained that stronghold in last week's election, despite some important Republican victories. One issue that tilted a number of races was resentment of widespread statehouse corruption.

Outgoing Pennsylvania Governor Milton Shapp's administration Grasso victorious has been riddled by indictments and resignations. So when fellow Democrat and former Pittsburgh Mayor Pete Flaherty, 54, decided to run, he made a show of his independence of the Governor and of the entire state Democratic organization. That wasn't enough. A former U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh, Richard Thornburgh, 46, an underdog in the gubernatorial race, staged a comeback in the final weeks to defeat Flaherty by more than 200,000 votes.

In Philadelphia, the campaign to amend the city charter to permit Mayor Frank Rizzo to seek a third term also rebounded against Flaherty. Democrat Rizzo, whose campaign had strong anti-black overtones, angered many Philadelphians. They voted 2-to-l against the mayor and in the process failed to give Flaherty the necessary margin to offset Thornburgh's advantage elsewhere. The Republican victory in the gubernatorial race is important, since it gives control of a populous Eastern state.

As if to prove the wisdom of Philadelphia's refusal to give Rizzo a chance at another term, a federal grand jury last week heard charges that his administration was responsible for the failure of perhaps hundreds of voting machines, most of them concentrated in anti-Rizzo wards. One of the city's election commissioners, Margaret Tartagalione, a Rizzo supporter, was arrested for having ordered voting machines in other anti-Rizzo districts moved away from regular polling places.

In neighboring Maryland, the state Democratic administration had also been scarred by corruption. The Governor himself-Marvin Mandel, was found guilty and forced out of office. One of his cabinet members, Transportation Secretary Harry Hughes, 51, quit in May 1977 in protest against an attempt to meddle with Baltimore subway contracts. Hughes, once so obscure that he was described as "a lost ball in long grass," in September upset Mandel's successor, Acting Governor Blair Lee III. Last week, Hughes' fresh face was too much for for mer Republican Senator J. Glenn Beall Jr., who had difficulty explaining why he had accepted campaign funds in 1970 from an illegal fund-raising operation organized by the Nixon White House. Hughes buried Beall 71% to 29%.

New York's incumbent Governor Hugh Carey, 59, with a scandal-free and creditable record as the state's chief executive, trailed his silver-haired Republican opponent, Perry Duryea, 57, until the final weeks of the campaign. Duryea then refused to disclose fully his personal finances and to make public his tax returns. While no improprieties were charged, Carey hit hard on the issue and found the electorate in no mood to tolerate secrecy in such matters.

Even though Carey was perceived by many voters as remote and cranky, he piled up a quarter-million vote plurality over Duryea. After the results were in, Carey vowed to do something about his personality problem: "I announce that I will not be aloof, alone, remote, inaccessible and grouchy, or any of those things. Tonight I shall embark on a new campaign." He quickly left for a vacation in the Bahamas with Anne Ford Uzielli, the 35-year-old daughter of Henry Ford II, amid speculation the two would marry.

Ella Grasso, 59, also had some problems with her prickly personality. But her record of fiscal austerity prevented Republican Congressman Ronald Sarasin from making a believable antispending pitch to Connecticut voters. She defeated Sarasin easily and will remain one of the country's two women Governors. (The other is Washington's Dixy Lee Ray.)

While Massachusetts Senator Edward Brooke's personal and legal problems were dooming him to defeat, voters installed another new face, Democrat Edward J. King, 53, as Governor. One of the most conservative Democrats elected anywhere outside the South, King had trouble getting support from Bay State liberals, and received only the most lukewarm endorsements from Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter. But King had the advantage of running with Thomas P. O'Neill III, 34, who was seeking the lieutenant governorship and who happens to be the son of Tip O'Neill, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. With the Speaker's help and with heavy support from blue-collar voters, King beat Republican blueblood Francis W. Hatch Jr., by more than 100,000 votes.

Ultraconservative Governor Meldrim Thomson Jr., 66, has dominated New Hampshire politics for three successive terms. In league with powerful right-wing Publisher William Loeb, Thomson has kept the Granite State free of both a sales tax and a personal income tax, the only place in the nation where neither levy is imposed. But this year, shortly before the election, 80,000 utility bills were mailed out across the state with a special surtax to pay for the controversial Seabrook nuclear power plant. Thomson had refused to veto a bill prohibiting that special charge and was suddenly cast as a less vigilant opponent of added taxation than his opponent, Democrat Hugh Gallen. An independent candidate, former Republican Governor Wesley Powell, drained some 12,000 Republican votes away from the Governor, contributing to Gallen's 10,400-vote victory margin and helping to end Thomson's rule.

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