God May Be a Democrat: But the Vote Is for Nixon

RARE is the wedding, funeral, confirmation, ordination, commencement or polka party that is not attended by Cleveland's Republican Mayor Ralph Perk, a third-generation Czech. He presides over a city of some 65 different nationalities, and he is deferential, in turn, to every one. His finance director is a second-generation Slovak, his utilities director a naturalized Lithuanian. The city properties director is of Polish stock, and the head of human resources happens to have a family tree rooted firmly in the Ukraine. At a recent Serbian picnic, Perk appealed to the pick-nickers' keen sense of loyalty. "You adopted me as a son of the Serbs," he told them, "and when you took me in you adopted my whole family. Some of my sons are running for office. Please don't forget them. They're good people."

Switch. Perk is teaching a generation of office seekers how to play ethnic politics. It was supposed to be an old-fashioned game snubbed by practitioners of the New Politics. But this election year it is more in style--and more necessary for candidates--than ever. The ethnics, hitherto relatively quiet and complacent and predictably Democratic, are now organizing and rebelling and preparing to vote for Nixon in massive numbers. The switch in the ethnic vote is among the most striking phenomena of the campaign and is, of course, an important element in labor's defection from the Democrats, since much of the trade union movement is still the preserve of ethnic workers.

Though the definition of ethnics varies, they can be roughly identified as Roman Catholic immigrants and the descendants of immigrants, largely from Eastern Europe and Italy (the Irish have been assimilated enough so that most other ethnics would tend to exclude them from the classification). The symptom of today's ethnicity is a display of pride and belligerence along with a sense of grievance and loss: ethnics are just not as happy as they used to be. They came full of hope to their adopted land; without forfeiting their heritage or giving up all their lifestyles, they wanted to assimilate, the sooner the better. Says Geno Baroni, director of the Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs in Washington, D.C.: "We thought the way to become real Americans was to be more patriotic--be better Americans than anyone else. We flocked to American Legion oratorical contests and gave speeches on the flag and the Constitution. And we had to prove something. We had to march, [like] the Italians on Columbus Day. We never realized that the WASPs never marched. Every day was their day."

Now the values of the ethnics are under assault, the institutions they cherish--church, family, labor union --under a cloud. They have watched helplessly as the more affluent whites have fled the cities and the poor blacks have taken their place. They feel squeezed between a group that is deserting them and making them bear the brunt of social change and a group that is threatening their schools, neighborhoods and jobs. The combined recession and inflation has hit them hard. Says Baroni: "The ethnic worries how he is going to get the money to send his kid to Penn State and pay for his mother's cortisone shots and keep up the payments on the house and car." The ethnics feel left out and looked down upon, confused and angry. In undergoing their own particular brand of consciousness raising, they are rediscovering their roots.

Suddenly it has become respectable --in fact desirable--to display an ethnic background. It offers an escape from current insecurity and uncertainty, a return to something fixed and firm. It is also part of the contemporary retreat from the notion of the American melting pot. The phenomenon poses--as it does in the case of blacks, Chicanos and Jews--the question of whether the proliferation of a lot of selfabsorbed, self-contained communities is any improvement over the concept of a common citizenry. Along with the release of pride and energy, the ethnic movement has given rise to a certain insularity and intolerance.

Cares. No one has been more attentive to this trend than Richard Nixon, who has played on the ethnics' discontent. In speech after speech, he has extolled their place in U.S. society--most recently at the base of the Statue of Liberty, where he told ethnics, holding placards and flags to make original national identities known to TV audiences, that they built America with their spirit and enterprise. By championing the work ethic and denouncing welfare, by opposing abortion and supporting aid to parochial schools, the President has reaffirmed their values. In smaller ways, too, he has shown that he cares. On his way back from the Moscow summit, he stopped off in Warsaw--a gesture that endeared him to American Poles. At an Italian-American festival in Maryland in September, he declared: "Every time I'm at an Italian-American picnic, I think I have some Italian blood."

The Republican campaign for the ethnic vote never sleeps. At the Heritage Groups division in Washington, dedicated ethnics keep in contact with 32 nationalities round the country. A G.O.P. nationalities newsletter reports on all ethnic activities, applauds their accomplishments and notes the appointment of every ethnic to a federal post, however obscure. Regional offices are equipped with computer print-outs that list the name of every voter in a national group. The voter is called by a fellow ethnic who first tries the native tongue. If the voter responds, fine. If not, the caller switches to English. The voter is asked if he favors Nixon. If he says no, he is not called again. If he says yes or maybe, he is the target of more attention. He is asked what issues concern him. That information is then fed into a computer and a letter is sent to the voter explaining how Nixon stands on the issues.

Nothing so elaborate has been undertaken by the Democrats. The ethnic division of the Democratic National Committee was even disbanded after the convention, then hastily put together again when it became apparent what the Republicans were doing. With a budget of only $50,000, another ethnic operation at McGovern headquarters sends out periodic mailings and leaves the main canvassing job to the state coordinators. Nor is the candidate as sure-footed among ethnics as Nixon. McGovern blundered when he failed to control his supporters at the Columbus Day Parade in New York City. Chanting "We want George!" they held up the festivities for 15 minutes, not realizing what the parade meant to its Italian-American participants.

Power. Sometimes McGovern has said too little to the ethnics, sometimes too much. After criticizing quotas as unfair to ethnics, he pledged that he would provide jobs for nationalities in reasonable proportion to their numbers in the population. "You've got to remember that never have we had a Polish American on the U.S. Supreme Court," he declared. "Never have we had an Italo-American on the Supreme Court. We've never had a Greek American." Last week at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner in Manhattan, McGovern pointed up his problem with ethnics to his largely Catholic audience: "I feel a little like Al Smith addressing the Baptist league of Eastern Texas."

His running mate Sargent Shriver is more at home with ethnics. They, in fact, constitute a significant part of his overall job in this campaign, which is to lure home the prodigal Democrats. Last week in a Catholic high school in Union County, N.J., he was greeted with cheers and whistles, though the student body prefers Nixon. Shriver's hyperbolic rhetoric goes over well in union halls: "Nixon is a man obsessed with power. What he cares about is money and military power, bucks and bombs." But it is an uphill battle. At the Polish-American Congress convention in Detroit this month, Shriver offered what he called a seven-point "Ethnic Magna Carta," but he received much less applause than Spiro Agnew, who simply reminded the audience how close the President felt to them. Agnew and Nixon received another kind of ethnic compliment in Chicago when Frank Sinatra once again emerged from retirement. Changing the lyrics of The Lady Is a Tramp, Sinatra crooned to a crowd of 4,900:

They're both unique--the Quaker, the Greek They make this Italian want to whistle and stamp, Because each gentleman is a champ.

Ethnics are leaving the Democrats this election because they feel the party does not want them, and for a while that seemed to be the case. Those who seized command of the party in Miami

Beach believed that McGovern could win with a combination of youth, minorities and aroused liberals and suburbanites. But the mathematics were faulty. If the Irish are not counted, there are only 14 million first-and second-generation ethnics in America. But the number swells to around 40 million if all the descendants of ethnics are included--and indeed, many of these continue to think of themselves as hyphenated Americans. They feel they are treated with condescension or disdain by people who happen to be better off than they are. Observes Tom Foran, prosecutor of the Chicago Seven: "They watched the Democratic Convention and saw all those people running it who never had a callus in their life."

The ethnics particularly resent their role with regard to blacks. Though the affluent liberals who lecture them have moved out to the safety of the suburbs, the ethnics are expected to accept integration of their schools and neighborhoods without a murmur. As a liberal Democrat who supports McGovern puts it: "We're kind of limousine liberals in a way, and Agnew's charge is valid. We say to the blacks, 'We want you to be with us on the basis of your self-interest,' and we say to the white working people, 'We want you to vote for us on the basis of morality. You ought to do more to help poor people.' "

Darlings. Chicago's Father Paul Asciolla agrees: "The blacks became the darlings of the '60s, and the ethnics the niggers of the North. They learned the Puritan work ethic and the system of meritocracy, and now they're caught in a game where the rules are changing. They were just about to cross the goal line with the football when they were tapped on the shoulder and told to give the ball to a black to carry over. They know God is a Democrat, but this year they're voting Republican."

Somewhat better off than blacks but not all that much, the white ethnics are particularly outraged by welfare. A Polish bartender in Baltimore puts it harshly: "The blacks get welfare and we get highways built through us, and we pay for both." In Newark, where blacks out-number whites and control city hall, the Italians who remain in the North Ward grimly refer to themselves as "white niggers." Any of their brethren who are too compliant are called "Uncle Marios" who "think black." The whites complain that they are deliberately cut out of federal programs, which are aimed almost exclusively at blacks. Their quarrel is not so much with blacks themselves as with the white liberals who promote this state of affairs. As Stephen Adubato, director of the Italian American North Ward Educational and Cultural Center cynically puts it: "I am sure in a few years a famous conductor will throw a party for us too, and then everybody will understand."

The ethnics are down on McGovern, who sums up for them everything that is wrong with the Democratic Party. From their point of view, he made his first critical mistake when he permitted Mayor Daley's delegation to be thrown out of the Democratic Convention. If the liberals thought that the boss had got a well-deserved comeuppance, the ethnics only noticed that a delegation of democratically elected Poles, Czechs, Italians and others had been rejected. McGovern's manner is also not reassuring. Says Barbara Mikulski, a Polish councilwoman in Baltimore who is working for McGovern: "He comes on like a soft-spoken preacher from South Dakota. That style is hard to comprehend in a working-class neighborhood." An aide to Mayor Daley elaborates: "McGovern is the kind of guy who doesn't sweat. No one is more difficult for an Irish Catholic to get along with than one of the nonsweating Methodists." The ethnics want a candidate who, it seems, shares their sweat and is not put off by it.

Wounds. But their voting for Richard Nixon does not mean that the ethnics will become a permanent part of the Republican Party. Father Andrew Greeley, director of the Center for the Study of American Pluralism in Chicago, feels that the ethnics have not forsworn their political heritage. On bread-and-butter issues such as better schools, housing and health services they tend to be for liberal programs, but they insist on getting their fair share. The right candidate could bring the ethnics back to the party in 1976, Greeley thinks. "Can one imagine a Kennedy convention from which labor, the Catholic ethnics and the professional politicians would have been excluded? The 'new' political forces would have been there too. Most of the campaign would not have to have been devoted to binding wounds, since there wouldn't have been any wounds in the first place."

The Republicans, however, will doubtless try to make permanent converts of their new allies. Much depends on how they are received by the party of the WASP and big business. Will they be courted in the campaign only to be thrown over after the election? Or will they add new yeast to the rather settled G.O.P.? Says Pat Moynihan: "Ethnic elements bring their politics to their new party. They often change the party more than they change themselves." By helping Nixon get reelected, the ethnics can possibly turn more of his attention and energy to the plight of the cities, which the President has neglected in the past perhaps because he had no constituency there. It is paradoxical that those who are among the most fervent remaining champions of traditional American values--respect for established behavior, loyalty to institutions --should be found in what was once considered the source of all alien and subversive activities: the big city. By lending a helping hand to the ethnics, the President could also begin a renewal of the stagnating cities, in which today's ethnic feels so miserably trapped.

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