Primary Vote in N.Y.: Four of Five Democratic Party Nominees Are Jewish

Jewish candidates dominated the Democratic state ticket this morning following yesterday’s primary election, in which only 26 percent of the 3.6 million eligible voters participated. Four of the five nominees on the state slate are Jewish, with the fifth a Negro, and all live in New York City or Westchester County. The ticket is headed by Arthur J. Goldberg, former Secretary of Labor, Supreme Court Justice and ambassador to the UN. Mr. Goldberg, who will be 62 on Aug, 8, is making his first try for elective office. The Chicago-born diplomat was the youngest of eight children of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Joseph and Rebecca Peristein Goldberg. The nominee, who voted at Temple Emanu-EI, defeated Howard J. Samuels, an upstate Jewish businessman and former head of the Small Business Administration. Rep. Richard L. Ottinger, 31-year-old Congressman of Westchester and Putnam Counties, is the Democrats’ Senatorial candidate. Finishing second and third in the four-man race were Paul O’Dwyer, brother of the late Mayor William O’Dwyer and a longtime pro-Israel activist, and Theodore C. Sorensen, former White House aide, whose mother was Jewish. Mr. Ottinger is the wealthy son of U.S. Plywood founder Lawrence Ottinger. He is a nephew of Albert Ottinger, unsuccessful Republican opponent of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1928 gubernatorial election, and a nephew of State Supreme Court Justice Nathan Ottinger.

Arthur Levitt. State Controller since 1954, was unopposed–as usual–in the Democratic primary. He will be 70 on June 28. The fifth man on the ticket is State Senator Basil A. Paterson of Harlem, a Roman Catholic and president of the New York chapter of the NAACP. On the Republican ticket, chosen earlier and headed by Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, there is one Jewish nominee–Louis J. Lefkowitz. Attorney General since 1957. He will be 66 on July 3. There are no Jews on the Conservative Party’s state ticket. The Liberal Party lineup consists of Mr. Goldberg, Mr. Paterson, Mr. Lefkowitz Mr. Levitt and Republican Sen. Charles E. Goodell. Rep. Leonard Farbstein, 76 years old and a 14-year Congressman, was defeated in the Democratic primary in Manhattan’s 19th District by Mrs. Bella Abzug, a Jewish lawyer and activist in the anti-war and women’s liberation movements. Mrs. Abzug, who is in her 40’s, is a first-time political aspirant. One of her most vocal partisans was Barbra Streisand. Rep. James H. Scheuer defeated Rep. Jacob H. Gilbert for the Democratic designation in the reapportioned 22nd Congressional District of the Bronx. Democratic Rep. Edward I. Koch, a one-term Congressman who has been a leader in the anti-war movement, was renominated in Manhattan’s 17th C.D. In the Republican Congressional primary yesterday. Rep. Ogden R. Reid, a former ambassador to Israel, was renominated in the upstate 26th C.D. and will run in November for a fifth term.