Bella Abzug: He's Nixon's favorite Democrat.
Pat Moynihan: She stands for the politics of ruin.
Abzug: He's a political opportunist, an intellectual mercenary.
Moynihan: No one is good enough for her, unless it's her.
New York's Democrats are doing what comes naturally: cutting one another up in the U.S. Senate primary, ensuring that it will be a tattered, exhausted survivor who faces the G.O.P. nominee (almost certain to be Incumbent James Buckley) in November. With the primary vote set for next week, the two flamboyant front runners—former United Nations Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 49, and Manhattan Congresswoman Bella Abzug, 56—are providing most of the bite and bile. The three candidates who appear to be lagging—former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, 50, New York City Council President Paul O'Dwyer, 69, and Builder Abraham Hirschfeld, 58—are running less cantankerous campaigns. Moynihan and Abzug, complains O'Dwyer, are leaving "scar tissue all over the place."
More Jobs. Like a jeweler who inspects a gem for the subtlest flaw, New York Democrats quickly spot the slightest deviation from accepted liberal doctrine. For the most part, the candidates give the purists little to worry about. All five call for more jobs in the public sector, passage of the Humphrey-Hawkins full-employment bill, national health insurance, a U.S. takeover of welfare, and federal assistance to New York City—all multibillion-dollar programs that would sharply increase budget deficits or taxes or both. In heavily Jewish New York City, moreover, the candidates cannot do enough for Israel.
On other issues, the candidates—especially Moynihan—part company. Though a committed liberal on domestic matters, he believes in a strong and assertive America. He accuses his opponents of hypocrisy because they demand all-out aid for Israel at the same time they insist on trimming the Pentagon budget. "Bella has never voted a dollar for American defense," he claims. "Never one single dollar. It is against this kind of demagoguery that I'm running."
Moynihan's combination of scholarly pursuits and public service is almost without parallel in America today. Along with ground-breaking books on ethnicity (Beyond the Melting Pot, co-authored by Nathan Glazer) and the Great Society (Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding), he served as a White House Counsellor to Richard Nixon and persuaded him to support an income-maintenance program. Later, Moynihan was named Ambassador to India by Nixon and Ambassador to the U.N. by Ford. He was expected to be no great shakes as a campaigner, but he seems to be catching on. With his polka-dot bow tie, his artfully rumpled look, appearing a mite donnish and inevitably puckish, he cuts a rare figure on the campaign trail. But then, no one ever accused him of being conventional. Bubbling over with ideas, he sometimes lets his thoughts race ahead of his prudence. But so far he has not made another gaffe on the order of "benign neglect," the phrase taken from one of his memos to Nixon and gleefully misinterpreted by his enemies. Moynihan was urging a moratorium on harsh racial rhetoric, but his words were twisted to make it appear he was recommending the neglect of blacks. For this and other dubious reasons, most black leaders in New York oppose his candidacy.