More Zig than Zag

"I'm a winner!" shouted Industrialist Howard Samuels, who calls himself "the poor man's millionaire." "I will be nominated on the first ballot," predicted Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., who recalled that his first New World forebear ran for public office in the 1690s. "I think I'm the only man," said New York City Council President Frank O'Connor, who was waiting for his rivals to evacuate Page One before formally announcing his own candidacy.

Each of the three Democrats is convinced that he can defeat New York's Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller ("the rich man's millionaire," in Samuels' phrase) in his bid for a third term in November. One of their problems is that New York has no primary for statewide office. The nominee is picked by party convention--a tidy arrangement if a party is united and well organized, a shambles if it is not. In New York, it is not. The Democrats are still hurting from the feuding and weak tickets that marked their 1958 and 1962 conventions. One difference this year is that the rival candidates are taking part in a series of "forums" around the state proposed by Senator Robert Kennedy. They can thus display their charms to the voters--who will have virtually no say in choosing the nominee anyway.

"Champagne Campaign." So the contenders are out in droves. Eugene Nickerson, 47, chief executive of Nassau County, was the first to enter the race, in February. Samuels, 46, and Roosevelt, 51, joined him last week. Samuels, an articulate campaigner brimming with reformist zeal, is known as "the Baggie king," after one of the products of his plastic-packaging firm. Defeated in the 1962 convention scramble, he has a pretty wife, eight attractive children,* and no reluctance to use them as political assets. Samuels stretched his announcement into a swinging two-day foray by chartered plane to Washington and six New York State cities, freely dispensing food, wine and happy-warrior predictions of victory. Inevitably, reporters christened his effort "the champagne campaign."

Roosevelt, on the strength of that formidable name and familiar grin, is striving to resurrect a once promising political career. After three terms in Congress, he lost a bid for the gubernatorial nomination in 1954, settled for the attorney general's candidacy, and went down to defeat while the rest of the Democratic ticket was elected. He fell into relative obscurity in Washington, first as an automobile dealer, then as Under Secretary of Commerce, and finally as chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, from which he resigned last week.

O'Connor, 56, seemed strong last winter because of his proven ability to win elections in New York City but has since slipped back into the pack. "There is a time to fish," he said cryptically, "and a time to cut bait. There is a time to zig and a time to zag."

The four contenders wound up the week, under Kennedy's chaperonage, at the first of the forums. As to be expected so early in the campaign, their speeches were nothing but polite to one another, uniformly nasty to Rockefeller, and of precious little help to the organization politicians who will have to pick a candidate in September.

*Asked Daughter Barbara 11, "If Daddy gets elected, will we all be Governor?" "No," said Mommy, "only Daddy and me."

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