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The TV Expert. With the Democrats at each-other's throats, it seemed a golden opportunity for New York's modest but comfortable Republican organization, normally outnumbered by more than two to one at the polls, to win itself an election if it could find a colorful, aggressive candidate. Instead, the G.O.P. bosses picked Acting New York City Postmaster Harold Riegelman, 60, a competent and colorless New York lawyer, active in civic affairs, who has been chief counsel of the Citizens' Budget Commission for the last 21 years. Riegelman, a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, did not immediately accept the nomination, but he declared earlier, "There is nothing a New Yorker should not drop to serve in the city's highest office." Determinedly hopeful G.O.P. campaign leaders wondered whether he could drop his excess dignity on television.
The other party in the race was the Liberals, and their candidate was a child of TV, whose owl-like face and lisping voice became known to millions during the Kefauver hearings. In 1951, running as a Liberal. Rudolph Halley beat both Democratic and Republican candidates for his job as president of New York's City Council. A month ago, according to a New York Daily News poll, he was the most popular of 16 possible candidates (22% of those polled said they would vote for him).
The Also-Rans. Behind the announced candidates, there were several interesting also-rans. Democrat Averell Harriman, still active in New York politics, was scratched on a technicality—he lives outside the city. Manhattan District Attorney Frank Hogan is a Democrat who finds favor with Republicans, especially with his old boss Governor Thomas E. Dewey. Congressman Jacob K. Javits is a Republican well-liked by Liberals and Democrats, but apparently out of step with leaders of his own party, especially with Tom Dewey.
On their records, none of the surviving candidates looks remotely like the combination of executive, spokesman and man-in-the-public-eye which a mayor of New York should resemble. Prospect for the petrified forest: little or no change.
*The $1,528,814,950 New York City budget is topped only by that of the Federal Government.