Subject: New York Interest Groups Won't Be Asking What They Can Do for America Date: Published: 3/24/92 (149 lines) Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. Politics & Policy -- Campaign '92: In New York's Primary Race, the Interest Groups Won't Be Asking What They Can Do for America ---- By David Shribman Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal NEW YORK -- Let the pandering begin. The Irish want justice for a prisoner in Belfast's Crumlin Road jail. The Italians want faster processing of immigrants. Blacks want a new urban policy. Haitians want a new policy toward ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Jews want a new approach to Israel. Homosexuals are looking for increased research on AIDS. Union leaders want more funds for job training. And that's just the beginning. This must be the New York primary. "New York's the big time, the big apple," crows former Mayor Edward Koch. "To us, this primary is a nice sporting event, though a blood sport. The thing we want to see is their blood -- and we generally get our way. The winner of this is generally on the mat, only about two inches above the guy he defeated." Bill Clinton thought campaigning for the primary here, which begins in earnest after the polls close in Connecticut tonight, would be a breeze now that he is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. But already he is discovering that being alone at the top of the heap has its disadvantages. There's no one here but former California Gov. Jerry Brown to share the burden of the furious lobbying by ethnic groups, labor unions, business associations and more. "Even if you're Clinton with the nomination well in your sights, you have to be alert in New York," says John Sasso, a Democratic strategist who plotted Michael Dukakis's route to the nomination four years ago. "You're going to get demands like crazy. Every interest group is going to be after you." Mr. Clinton could still get mugged. There are people waiting for him here. Like the people who wear the green eye shades in New York City's Office of Management and Budget. They would like $200 million. Since the demise of federal revenue sharing, there hasn't been a good source of unrestricted city aid. "We're looking for the federal government to step back in and take a role," says Deena Lahn, deputy assistant director of the city's budget office. Democratic Assemblyman John Dearie of the Bronx wants a U. S. special envoy to Northern Ireland. He wants new programs to acclimate the nearly 50,000 new Irish immigrants who have fled to New York in the last four years alone. He is angry the U. S. deported Joseph Doherty, a former Irish Republican Army member who was in a gunfight in which a British soldier was killed a dozen years ago. Mr. Doherty escaped to the U. S. but was returned to Belfast last month. And Mr. Dearie wants U. S. companies to pledge to give Catholics equal footing in the workplace in Northern Ireland. Herman Ferrell, the New York County Democratic leader and an uncommitted convention delegate, wants more attention to urban issues. "It's really an urban agenda, not a black and Latino agenda, we're pushing," he explains. Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, who has organized a candidate forum at Lehman College next week, wants Mr. Clinton and Mr. Brown to address education, crime and drugs, housing, health care and economic development. "I'm astounded that they came through Illinois and Florida without talking about urban issues," he says. "We're not going to let them get away with it anymore. Maybe some of these people can finally utter the word `HIV. '" This sort of thing happens every four years. In 1984, Gary Hart of Colorado plunged into New York with a notion of "new politics" and with contempt for the special interests that are in their full glory here. Then he went before the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations and declared his "constant, unmitigated, unqualified support for Israel." He criticized Jordan's King Hussein for his "changing whims." He advocated moving the U. S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. Four years later, Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore, a Southern moderate, tried to recast himself as so fervently pro-Israel that he wound up looking slightly silly. Mr. Gore's experiences stand as an object lesson for Mr. Clinton, another Southern moderate. Mr. Clinton already has faced charges from former Sen. Paul Tsongas, who last week left the presidential race, that he is a "pander bear." Mr. Clinton says it isn't so. "Pandering is changing your positions in different constituencies," he explained in an interview. "I didn't take any polls to decide what I believe. I believe what I believe." Even so, candidates sometimes can't help themselves. There's something in the air, or in the co-ops, tenements, brownstones, delis, tavernas, rectories, political clubs and jazz clubs here. "The press there is nuts and the different forces are strong," says former Vice President Walter Mondale, the Democrats' 1984 nominee. "When you campaign in New York you have to duck while a bunch of wild, ricocheting projectiles fly around." Mr. Brown already is deeply involved in this. This weekend he went to a Harlem church and criticized Gov. Clinton for playing golf at a whites-only club in Little Rock. He pointedly has asked the Arkansas governor to meet him in Harlem for a debate. And though the White House says President Bush has no plans to travel to New York before the primary, he may not be able to resist the temptation. There is nothing like falafel or a slice of pizza (no fork and knife, please) to warm a politician's heart on a wintry afternoon -- especially if the cameras are whirring. Not everyone in New York state sees the value, or the humor, of this. Up in the far western part of the state, the spectacle can get wearisome swiftly. "We don't get the attention we deserve," says Michael Haselswerdt, a political scientist at Canisius College in Buffalo. "The problem for us is that you've got to do well in New York City to do well in New York state." And in truth, substantial voting blocs get involved. An estimated 30% of the New York primary turnout is Jewish. Four years ago, Jews nationally voted for Mr. Dukakis by a 70-30 margin. They're concentrated in states with big numbers of electoral votes -- such as New York and California, which account for almost half the Jews in the country -- and could be important in states such as Illinois and Pennsylvania, where Mr. Bush had small victory margins in 1988. "A defection of 20% of Bush's Jewish support could have tipped those states," says Mark Siegel, former executive director of the Democratic National Committee and President Carter's liaison to Jewish voters. So Jews, angry with the Bush administration, are especially frustrated that there isn't much of a contest for the April 7 primary here. "It's a disappointment that Clinton has to show up for the party but doesn't have to put on a performance," says Alfred Moses, president of the American Jewish Committee. Not that Mr. Clinton has shown himself unwilling to make his bows. During the Florida primary, he criticized Mr. Tsongas for questioning Israel's attack on an Iraqi nuclear facility more than a decade ago. That same day, wearing a white yarmulke at a Sunshine, Fla., synagogue, he pronounced himself "perplexed in the last few months by this administration's position toward Israel in the peace talks." He avowed his support for military and economic aid for Israel. Then he said, "I will never use foreign policy to play domestic politics." [This article is made available here by Dow Jones Co. for the personal and non-commercial use of callers to this bbs, in the hope that it will be of some help to those who are suffering from the disease and others who are seeking to help them.]