Jewish voters in New York City contributed heavily to Democratic Rep. Hugh Carey’s landslide victory yesterday in his Gubernatorial contest with Republican Gov. Malcolm Wilson, But precinct-by-precinct breakdowns of the balloting indicated that Jewish voters were sharply divided in the Senatorial race that pitted veteran Republican incumbent Jacob K. Javits against former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark.
While Javits won a fourth term in the Senate with a statewide plurality of nearly a quarter of a million, he squeaked by his challenger in the city with a margin of less than 20,000 votes. Although Javits, always a popular vote-getter, had made his staunch pro-Israel stand a campaign issue, he was topped by Clark in some heavily Jewish populated areas of the city and ran neck-in-neck with him in others.
In the race for N.Y. State Attorney General in which the two principal candidates were Jewish, incumbent Louis Lefkowitz nosed out Bronx Boro President Robert Abrams by a plurality of over 300,000 votes. But the younger Abrams, who had identified himself closely with the movement in support of the rights of Soviet Jews, beat Lefkowitz in the city by over 118,000 votes.
Reps. Elizabeth Holtzman and Bella Abzug, both Democrats, easily won re-election to Congress, Another winner was Rep. Shirley Chisholm who is Black. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency learned today that a group of Israeli lawyers visiting Washington had expressed dismay to her over alleged anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiments expressed by the chief assistant in her Congressional office, Thaddeus Garrett (See separate. story.)
WHERE THE VOTES WERE
There were no identifiably Jewish issues in the Gubernatorial race yesterday. While ultra-Orthodox Jews tended to favor the conservative Wilson, the Carey vote in predominantly Jewish districts ran more than 3-1 in favor of the challenger. Both Carey and Wilson are Roman Catholic. On Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Carey polled 15,027 to Wilson’s 3573. The Upper West Side favored Carey by 27,007 to 4900 for Wilson. But Clark won handily over Javits in both these districts.
The East Flatbush-Crown Heights district of Brooklyn gave Carey 18,702 votes to 7197 for Wilson; but Javits beat Clark there by only 2800 votes. Similarly, the Flatbush-Parkville district, heavily middle class Jewish, voted 24,339 to 7424 in favor of Carey, but gave Javits 14,746 votes and 12,803 for Clark. Co-Op City in the Bronx, almost entirely Jewish, voted 39,207 for Carey and 10,387 for Wilson, but gave Javits a plurality of barely 1000 votes. In a local all-Jewish con-test, Robert Morgenthau scored a 4-1 victory over incumbent Richard Kuh for the office of Manhattan District Attorney.
Other Jewish Congressmen from the New York City area re-elected yesterday were Reps. Benjamin S. Rosenthal, Edward I. Koch and Lester Wolff. Steven Solarz, who lost a year ago in the race for Brooklyn Boro President, was successful yesterday in his bid for the House seat of New York Democrat Bertram Podell. Podell did not seek re-election after becoming involved in criminal proceedings.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
