"Me & Screvane"

Of New York City's 2,378,000 registered Democrats, only three, as of last weekend, had officially declared themselves as candidates to succeed retiring Mayor Robert Wagner. Of these, only one could be considered a truly serious possibility: City Council President Paul R. (for Rogers) Screvane, 50, a professional public servant who knows the city right down to the bottom of its garbage cans.

A Bronx boy, Screvane is of Italian and Irish parentage, went to Mississippi State University on an athletic scholarship. He is still a physical culturist, enjoys performing deep knee-bends while standing on one foot. He left school after one year, became a city garbage-truck driver at $30 a week. He worked his way up to the $25,000-a-year job of sanitation commissioner. It was from that post that Bob Wagner, in 1961, appointed him deputy mayor, then picked him as a running mate. In New York, the city council president is something like a vice president. What Wagner mainly wanted was a No. 2 man who would take on some of the unpleasant chores that the mayor himself was either unwilling, or politically unable, to undertake.

Screvane filled that bill, made himself a good many enemies by, among other things, acting as the city's tough guy against civil rights demonstrators who were, however righteous their cause, violating city ordinances.

A Matter of Heart. Starting his campaign for the September primary, Screvane moved into Manhattan's heavily Jewish garment district, accompanied by Humorist Harry Hershfield. O.K., cried Hershfield, so maybe Screvane is of Italian-Irish descent and married to Limerick-born Bridie McKessy--but "he has a Jewish heart." Although by no means assured of his own party's nomination, Screvane went on the offensive against Republican Nominee John Lindsay, attacking him as a "socialite, silk-stocking Congressman" and as "the boss-backed candidate of the Republicans, who masquerades as an independent."

Screvane's most formidable opposition seems to be Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr., 50, until last month the U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce, and since then Chairman of the Equal Opportunity Commission, created under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. No sooner had Wagner announced his decision not to run again than Roosevelt eagerly announced his availability. But he also declared himself loath to participate in an untidy party primary, and he was obviously waiting to be coaxed into the scramble.

Memory Lane. So far, the coaxers consist largely of Harlem's Democratic Representative Adam Clayton Powell. Other New Yorkers recall Franklin's five years in Congress, where his absenteeism was to become a campaign issue in 1954. Republican Jacob Javits flattened him in their contest for state attorney general, which prompted Columnist Murray Kempton to write last week: "Roosevelt and his sponsors must hope that enough people remember his father and mother, and have forgotten him." Paul Screvane was much milder. Said he of Frank Jr.: "He is a very decent fellow, but I don't know how much he knows about the city of New York." As for Frank Jr., his public appraisal of the situation was: "I think it narrows down to me and Screvane."

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