(2 of 6)
Some examples were dramatic. The Irish Catholics of Massachusetts split wide open, deserting Democrat Edward McCormack by the thousands to re-elect Italian Republican John Volpe, who had been a good and popular Governor. Volpe even took that oldest Irish stronghold of all, Boston, city of "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald and James Curley. In New York, the Democrats followed the ethnic book by put ting an Italian (Frank Sedita) on the ticket as attorney general, but Rockefeller handily carried the Italian vote.
In Texas, many Mexican-Americans deserted their Democratic habits, or simply stayed away from the polls, to help elect Republican Senator John Tower, as a protest against the conservative Democratic candidate, Waggoner Carr. In Michigan, Governor George Romney carried Macomb County, a district full of prosperous second-generation Poles, by an easy 18,000-vote margin over Zolton Ferency, "the man with the ethnic name." Perhaps the most clear-cut demonstration came in Chicago's heavily Polish Eleventh District, which has been represented for years by a professional Pole, Representative Roman Pucinski. Pucinski is part owner of a Polish-language radio station, his mother has her own Polish program on another station, and no one is a more assiduous attender of parades and anniversary celebrations. Two years ago, Pucinski won handily with a 31,500 majority. This year he barely squeaked past a candidate of no particular distinction named John Hoellen, of vaguely German extraction, whose appeal was his all-out opposition to open housing.
No Longer Embattled
Negroes, because they have made less economic and social progress than other minorities, still tend to bloc voting in the classic pattern. But even among Negroes, the racial lines did not always hold, and Stokely Carmichael's retrograde, black-power appeal clearly upset nearly as many Negroes as whites. In Baltimore, 83% of the Negro vote went to Republican (and "ethnic" Greek) Spiro Agnew for Governor—though only two years ago it had gone equally heavily along its traditional Democratic lines for Lyndon Johnson. And though Edward Brooke drew the small Negro vote in his race for Massachusetts Senator, he won with white votes and was careful not to present himself as a Negro candidate. The Minneapolis Spokesman, a Negro newspaper, supported a white candidate running for Congress against a Negro (the white man won). "That newspaper would have committed suicide to endorse a white man over a Negro only a few short years ago," said Louis Martin, the Democratic National Committee's expert on ethnic voting and a Negro himself.
The changes have not come overnight. A striking example was the election of John Lindsay as mayor of New York in 1965. White Anglo-Saxon Protestants such as Lindsay make up probably no more than 5% of the city's population. His opponent, Abraham Beame, was a Jew, and as has often been said, New York is the biggest Jewish city in the world. But Lindsay won. Says Michigan's George Romney: "The bloc vote has disintegrated. In 1962, I got only 11% of the Negro vote. In 1965, it was up to 19%. This year I got 30% to 40%."