A Mayor for All Seasons

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response to a complaint from the audience about graffiti on the subway cars]. It is a true story. You know graffiti is not put on as the trains are in the train stations. It is put on in the yards. And the way you prevent the graffiti and the vandalizing of those subway cars is to protect them when they are in the yards. I said to Dick Ravitch [chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority], I said to Dick, 'Look. Why don't you build a fence around the yards at night and put a dog in there to protect those cars? And that will stop the vandals.' And he said, 'No.' And I said, 'Why?' He said. The dogs might step on the third rail.' I said, 'Dogs generally don't step on third rails. But if they do you will replace them. However,' said I, 'if you are worried about that, then build two fences, and have the dogs run between the two fences.' He said, 'No.' I said, 'Why?' He said: 'Because somebody might climb over the fences, and the dog would bite him.' I said, 'I thought that is what dogs were for. But if you are afraid a dog will bite somebody, then use a wolf.' I said, There is no recorded case of a wolf attacking a human being, except if it were rabid.'

"Well I said that, a reporter heard it, and checked it out, and he said: 'Mr. Mayor, you are only partly right. There is no recorded case of a wolf in the wild ever attacking a human being. But there are cases of wolves in captivity attacking human beings.' I said: 'Of course I was talking about wolves in the wild. I would never use a tame wolf. Take a wild wolf, put it in there, and when the wolf becomes tame, you replace it. [The Greater Jamaica Chamber of Commerce is in stitches.] "Now what I am telling is a true story.

We are building the fence. But with the MTA, do you know what they have to do before they build the fence? They have to have an R.F.P.—Request for Proposal.

Any place else you go out and buy a fence.

Not in the City of New' York. This fence, before it will be built, I will be in my third term. Do you follow what I am saying?"

[Who could miss it?] The man who brought down the house is Edward Irving Koch, 56, the 105th mayor of New York, who this week will announce, to the surprise of no one, that he hopes to remain the 105th mayor of New York for four more years (read eight). He is endorsed by his own Democrats and has already gained most of the Republican organization's endorsements as well. What the Greater Jamaica Chamber of Commerce told him in the afternoon, the Yale Club would tell him that night—that he is a sure thing. Nor did Koch tell the Yale Club anything different than he told the Greater Jamaica Chamber of Commerce, except for talking more about financial issues. Otherwise it was pure, consistent Koch, goading his listeners, giggling with malice ("heh, heh, heh"), shining among the crossed oars and dead dignitaries on the walls, as he shone everywhere else he went that day (in appearances at City Hall; Washington Square Park; Gracie Mansion, the official residence; at Shea; in Queens; at the Yale Club) moving right along, touting his achievements the way politicians do, but more openly, aggressively than most, the insistent nasal voice assuring all audiences equally that the city was in the very