Fragmentation of Jewish Vote Affected Outcome of Mayoral Primary, ‘post’ Says

Fragmentation of the Jewish vote helped give two conservatives the Democratic and Republican Party nominations in yesterday’s mayoralty primary elections here, a district-by-district survey of the results by the New York Post disclosed. City Controller Mario Procaccino won the Democratic nomination for mayor and State Sen. John Marchi the Republican nomination. Both men campaigned on one issue–safety in the streets and law and order.

Mr. Procaccino came out a head in a five-way race in which he defeated former Mayor Robert F. Wagner, a one-time favorite of Jewish voters, and two Jewish candidates. Rep. James H. Scheuer and writer Norman Mailer. Mr. Marchi defeated incumbent Mayor John V. Lindsay whose 1965 victory over Abraham D. Beame, a Jew, was attributed in large measure to his heavy Jewish support. According to the Post survey by reporter Michael J. Berlin, “the Jewish vote was split three ways–and raised serious questions of whether there is any longer something called the ‘Jewish vote’.”

Both Mr. Procaccino and Mr. Marchi received overwhelming support in Italian-American, Irish, German and Scandinavian districts. The Jewish Democratic vote on Manhattan’s West Side went mainly to Bronx Borough President Herman Badillo, a liberal Democrat and the first mayoral candidate of Puerto Rican descent. But in Brooklyn’s heavily Jewish Flatbush and Brighton Beach sections, Mr. Procaccino ran a close second to former Mayor Wagner. He decisively took a Jewish district from Mr. Wagner in the Rockaways. On the Republican side, Mayor Lindsay rolled up a better than three-to-one margin in a largely Jewish Upper West Side district but lost to Mr. Marchi two-to-one among Jewish voters in Queens and three-to-one in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights section, Mr. Berlin reported. Crown Heights, the Rockaways and Brighton Beach have heavy concentrations of Orthodox Jews.

Mr. Berlin said that the Post discerned a break in the traditional Jewish liberal pattern of voting last year when certain Jewish neighborhoods in Queens and Brooklyn gave a sizeable minority–25 percent–to Conservative Party candidate James Buckley in his Senatorial race with Sen. Jacob Javits, a liberal Republican. “The primary results indicate that the fragmentation of the Jewish vote has increased,” Mr. Berlin wrote.