An Urban Quartet

Like oracles reading the entrails of the lamb, politicians of all persuasions will dissect the results of next week's big-city mayoralty races. Some of the elections may produce portents of next year's national politics. Others, because they turn on specific local issues, will more than likely be analyzed and interpreted individually, rather than for any discernible nationwide pattern. Some, too, are notable mainly for refreshingly offbeat candidates. Taken together, four major contests constitute a political pastiche of urban America:

CLEVELAND. No matter what guise it takes--crime, impending bankruptcy, inadequate service--there is only one campaign issue in Cleveland: Carl Stokes. Last April, as Stokes announced that he would retire from city hall, the city was fouled with bitter black-white acrimony. Whites held him responsible for dividing the city along racial lines. Militant blacks charged him with being too moderate; many moderates felt he was too militant. The only point of consensus was that Stokes was already in political rigor mortis.

But Stokes was determined to choose his successor and, in doing so, prove that blacks could serve as a major force in Democratic Party politics. The first test was the Democratic primary, which matched City Council President Anthony J. Garofoli, a virulent Stokes antagonist, against James Carney, a moderate with little elective experience. During the primary, Stokes announced that he was supporting Arnold Pinkney, an independent and one of two blacks on the Cleveland board of education. Pinkney opted to bypass the primary and run in the Nov. 2 general election with Stokes' support. But the important thing, Stokes told blacks, was first to defeat Garofoli. Stokes made his appeal by mail, by radio, by television and telephone. The blitz got Carney an estimated 53,000 black votes in the primary--the majority of his 74,000 winning total.

Observers now predict that Carney and the third candidate in the race, conservative Republican Ralph Perk, who lost to Stokes in 1969 by 3,500 votes, will split the white vote. Thus, if Pinkney can win between 90% and 95% of the black voters--as Stokes predicts--he is a virtual shoo-in. In that case, the real winner will be Carl Stokes.

PHILADELPHIA. "I am the toughest cop in America," former Philadelphia Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo often boasted, a thick finger stabbing the air. Now, as the city's Democratic candidate for mayor, Rizzo puts out much the same message. Billboards and taxis all over the city carry his beefy face and the slogan RIZZO MEANS BUSINESS.

The contest in Philadelphia is a study in contrasts: burly ex-Supercop Rizzo against Republican Thacher Longstreth--tall and slender, with Chestnut Hill-Princeton looks and background. Longstreth, a former executive vice president of the city's Chamber of Commerce and an unsuccessful mayoral candidate 16 years ago, was appointed by local G.O.P. Boss William Meehan. Rizzo, who rose through the ranks of the police department, won his party's nomination in a bruising primary battle (TIME, May 31), in which his main pitch was that, as police commissioner, he kept the "radicals" in check, and that he would do the same as mayor.

In Philadelphia, with its one-third black population and the highest incidence of black gang violence in the country, Rizzo's campaign strikes on one level a blatantly racist chord, although on another it appeals to legitimate fears of whites and some blacks as well. His overwhelming strength lies in the white community. Even Longstreth forces predict that up to 25% of the city's Republicans will cross party lines to vote for Rizzo. During the primary, Rizzo did not campaign in the black neighborhoods. He has since altered his strategy only to the point of an occasional stop in a black area.

Longstreth, on the other hand, is running hard to stay even; he begins his day greeting morning commuters and rarely retires before midnight. His only hope of victory is a massive black crossover vote to offset Rizzo's strength among white Republicans. Rizzo, however, should benefit from having nine blacks on his ticket, the most in Philadelphia history. They are candidates for lesser offices, nominated separately by the Democratic city committee. A Rizzo victory is almost assured.

BOSTON. In the beginning, Boston's mayoralty race shaped up as a political donnybrook between archenemies Kevin White and Louise Day Hicks, with Mrs. Hicks, who to many has been the Bella Abzug of the beer and backlash set, expected to be doing most of the punching. In 1967, after having served seven years as Massachusetts secretary of state, White handily defeated Mrs. Hicks for the mayoralty. In 1970, Mrs. Hicks ran for and won ex-Speaker John McCormack's old seat in Congress. By last year White's popularity had slipped so badly that when he challenged Republican Francis Sargent for the governorship, he did not even manage to carry Boston. Before last month's non-partisan primary, White was already being counted out. But he placed a surprising first in the field of seven. The early oddsmakers may have seriously underestimated his power to make a comeback for reelection.

Twice chairman of the Boston school committee, Mrs. Hicks retains her reputation as the staunchest opponent of busing to end de facto segregation, a position that accounted for much of her support in 1967. Now the feeling is that her day--and the era of her particular appeal--may have passed. For the first time in her political career, Mrs. Hicks did not finish first in a Boston primary, and she has lately reversed many of her earlier positions. She supports the antiwar Mansfield amendment, while earlier she had been a raging hawk.

Her presence in Washington and her current campaign have been lackluster. White, by contrast, has not been a bad mayor. From his offices in Boston's massive new city hall, he has supervised a rather energetic works program, built new schools, and instituted summer concerts on the Boston Common. He seems to have survived the worst hand the city could deal him and come up smiling. Trim and handsome, he is a consummate politician and ran his campaign accordingly. His greatest fear now is that, since he is in the lead, his supporters will become apathetic and not show up on election day.

SAN FRANCISCO. Here the mayoral contest has become a mildly comic hodgepodge. J. Tony Serra, one of a field of twelve candidates in the election, is a representative of the Platypus Party; he has promised the city a return to the Renaissance by banning internal combustion engines and ripping up all the sidewalks in town. A more serious candidate, Joseph L. Alioto--a lawyer who is under federal indictment for conspiracy and mail fraud and is co-defendant in a civil suit on charges that he allegedly received more than $2,000,000 in ill-gotten fees from publicly owned facilities in the state of Washington--is running on the platform that, well, he already is the mayor.

Although his opponents have for the most part discreetly avoided public discussion of Alioto's legal difficulties, they are unquestionably a factor in the election. But equally important is the growing conviction that Alioto is more interested in national politics than he is in local government. Still, for lack of serious opposition, he might well have been handed his second term by default were it not for the last-minute entry into the race of an attractive alternative. Along came Mrs. Dianne Feinstein, president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors since 1969 and wife of a prominent San Francisco neurosurgeon. Confident but demure, she is a liberal Democrat who has broad support on a spectrum ranging from conservationists to the city's considerable population of homosexuals. Mrs. Feinstein's own polls indicate that she has pulled within two percentage points of Alioto, and could well overtake him.

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