A Mayor for All Seasons

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Koch would argue that he acts toward everybody equally, but as a former aide says, "Ed treats everyone the same— badly." Nor does it help matters when Koch works himself into a state and starts hurling words at his critics like "wacko" and "ideologue."

Yet Koch's feelings about nonwhites, about blacks especially, are mixed and volatile. In 1979 Journalist Ken Auletta was researching a two-part profile of the mayor for The New Yorker. Koch gave Auletta permission to go through a series of oral memoirs that he had recorded for Columbia University in 1975 and 1976. Among Koch's statements on race was this: "I find the black community very antiSemitic. I don't care what the American Jewish Congress or the B'nai B'rith will issue by way of polls showing that the black community is not. I think that's pure bull . . . Now, I want to be fair about it. I think whites are basically antiblack ... But the difference is: it is recognized as morally reprehensible, something you have to control."

Today Koch is sore at Auletta for printing those remarks because they showed Koch in a bad light, one that his enemies like the Village Voice enjoy switching on. But Koch does not deny having those feelings then, nor does he recant them now. On the other hand, he has frequently spoken out against injustice to blacks. He has appointed a higher percentage of blacks (18%) to top administrative positions than did any one of the three mayors who preceded him. He took the patronage out of the procedure for choosing young people for summer jobs, and raised the percentage of blacks employed for summers from about 60% to over 90% simply by making the system equitable. He has treated poverty programs evenhandedly, getting rid of ones that benefit whites as well as blacks. As for playing favorites, he took heat for removing a full-time police car protecting the leader of the Lubavitcher Hasidic sect in Brooklyn, because Koch was convinced such protection was not necessary. Still, he is regarded by many as a divisive force in the city.

Given Koch's reputation on the race issue, it would seem that he has changed a lot since the summer of 1964, when he spent eight days (his vacation) in Laurel, Miss., defending civil rights workers. He likes to talk about that time. The event was a sit-in at Kresge's to win equal service at the luncheonette counter. Black and white protesters were assaulted by people at the counter. Then the assailants brought charges against the protesters. Koch tells the story with helpless humor (the "heh, heh, heh") about the pixilated justice of the peace; the redneck mob; the unhelpful FBI officer named Robert E. Lee, to whom Koch offered to send his intended route to Jackson, "to make it easier for you to find the bodies." And the inevitable verdict:

"All my people were convicted."

The interesting thing about the story, apart from recalling Koch the liberal (as opposed to the "liberal with sanity," as he describes himself now) is that it reveals an essential part of his makeup. Civil rights was not a lost cause in 1964, but in Laurel it could appear like one. During the period Koch spent in Mississippi, the bodies of three murdered civil rights workers, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, were discovered. Koch himself was in