Brotherly Hate

In this week's pivotal Pennsylvania primary, Mayor Frank Rizzo was hoping to play kingmaker for his friend Senator Henry Jackson. But the burly Rizzo --who vowed during his own campaign last year that "I will make Attila the Hun look like a faggot" and won re-election with 57% of the vote--has got himself into deep political trouble. A former cop and police commissioner from South Philly's tough "Little Italy" district, Rizzo, 55, is accused of failing to uphold law-and-order in the city. Having campaigned on the slogan "He held taxes down," he is now advocating harsh new levies. So sharply has his honor's popularity plunged that a Philadelphia Bulletin poll published in mid-April gave him an anemic 27% approval rating among those surveyed.

Rizzo's most recent trouble began in March with a satiric and rather rough column in the Philadelphia Inquirer that portrayed him as a swaggering pol who spoke and thought like Archie Bunker. Rizzo looks tough, even hobbling around with the aid of a cane (the result of a broken hip suffered during an oil-refinery explosion in Philadelphia last October). He also talks tough; in his 1971 "law-'n'-order" campaign, he called his opponents "bleeding hearts, dangerous radicals, pinkos and faggots." In certain respects, to be sure, the comparison is hardly apt. Rizzo, who favors costly conservative clothes, looks less like Archie than like Spiro Agnew, and enjoys good liquor and luxuries of all kinds. He and his rarely seen wife rule over a big, expensive house in fancy Chestnut Hill (Rizzo denies persistent reports that he spent up to $410,000 to buy it and fix it up). He will not even say "hell" in the presence of a woman, but when he is with the boys he can swear with the best of them--especially at the newspapers.

Denouncing the Inquirer piece as "treasonable" and "garbage journalism," he sued the newspaper for $6 million in libel damages. Five days later, 250 members of the pro-Rizzo Building and Construction Trades Council blockaded the Inquirer building for ten hours, stopped distribution of two editions and beat up two of the paper's photographers. City police stood on the sidelines until federal marshals arrived with an injunction against the demonstrators. The Inquirer sued the union, mayor and police department for damages. Disclaiming responsibility, Rizzo said that he had not ordered the police to intervene because the construction workers were merely engaging in a "labor dispute" with the Inquirer.

The episode moved many Philadelphians to launch a campaign for Rizzo's recall. Led by Lawyer Charles Bowser, who was deputy mayor in a previous administration, the recall campaign has picked up support from many liberals, blacks and others who have long disliked Rizzo because of his disdain for civil liberties and his blatant use of patronage. Ten days ago former Mayor and U.S. Senator Joseph Clark blasted Rizzo as "a rascal, a liar, a man who is ignorant, arrogant and stupid."

Clark signed the first recall petition. But the anti-Rizzo legions still face the difficult task of gathering 145,000 valid petition signatures within 60 days for a recall referendum. The odds are against Rizzo's being unseated, but there is no doubt that he is in the worst mess of his political career.

Budget Deficit. Rizzo is also losing support because of his inept handling of the city's fiscal crisis. In his first term, he increased the number of city employees by nearly 12%, and most of the 3,787 jobs he created were patronage positions. In 1975 he granted 20,000 city workers a 12.8% pay hike, while insisting that Philadelphia had no financial problems. Yet one momth after beginning his second term, Rizzo discovered a budget deficit of $80 million and proclaimed a "fiscal emergency." Since then he has asked for 20% increases in city payroll taxes, boosts of up to 50% in real estate taxes, and a raise in transit fares from 350 to 500. He has urged layoffs of 500 to 1,000 city employees.

The proposals have hurt Rizzo most among members of his own working-class constituency, who stand to bear the heaviest tax burden. The mayor has survived earlier furors--including those raised by journalistic investigations into spending for improvements on his house and his use of city police to hector political opponents. But this one may well frustrate his long-held ambition to become Governor of Pennsylvania.

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