THE LAST OF THE LIBERALS

AS THE NEW YORK MAYOR'S RACE PROVES, EVEN IN THE BIG CITIES, FISCAL CONSERVATISM HAS WON THE DAY

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In Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, conservative Democrats Richard Daley and Ed Rendell and Republican Richard Riordan took the other route. They found new sources of money by aggressively reducing costs, primarily by forcing municipal unions to compete with private firms for the delivery of services. Just as Giuliani's strategy was unavailable to New York liberals because it angered minority activists, liberal mayors of Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles never insisted on this kind of competition because it meant taking on public-employee unions, probably the most powerful single interest group on the urban left. By accepting, and winning, that fight, Daley, Rendell and Riordan did what Giuliani has done in New York. They created a new governing coalition and pushed liberalism to the political periphery. Deeply controversial when elected, all three were re-elected in landslides.

What Ronald Reagan set in motion has borne political fruit beyond what his supporters could have imagined. But might he have succeeded too well? Over the coming years, the vanquishing of urban liberalism may start trickling back up to the national level in ways that will cause conservatives fits. Politicians like Giuliani and Riordan, while slaying liberal sacred cows, have simultaneously breathed new life into a species once thought extinct: socially liberal Republicans. In the year 2001, both will have to retire from city hall, and there are rumors of Riordan's running for Governor of California and Giuliani's taking on Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Both candidacies would cause crises in their state parties. Look at New Jersey: many conservatives there have abandoned Governor Christine Todd Whitman for being too liberal. Imagine how they would react to Giuliani, who praises illegal immigrants, or Riordan, who backs affirmative action. In the ultimate nightmare for G.O.P. unity, the highly ambitious Giuliani one day seeks his party's presidential nomination. Maybe the commuters weepily consoling Messinger on her impending destruction were really Republicans.

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