SMALL CHANGE

  

 

   My brother and I hit the hustings for the first time in 1961 on behalf of Lefkowitz, Gilhooley and Fino. I was six, my brother eight and we spent hours, maybe days, standing on the corner in front of Daley's Saloon brandishing hand-made signs for the ticket and singing the ubiquitous jingle of the campaign:

How can you miss

With a ticket like this

Lefkowitz, Gilhooley and Fino

You'll be safe in the Park

Anytime after dark

Lefkowitz, Gilhooley and Fino

I supported this trio because my brother said we should and I have no idea why he felt that way. Perhaps it was because of the steady stream of sound-trucks belting out that jingle throughout the City, but I don't remember either of us having any particular ax to grind with Mayor Wagner. Indeed, I am surprised to discover that Lefkowitz was a Republican and I suppose I can no longer claim to have never backed one. For my part, I was happy to do my older brother's bidding and happier still to be standing by the swinging, saloon doors of Daley's, a place of nearly overwhelming mystery, redolent of stale beer, fresh pee and soggy sawdust on the tile floor, just visible through the murky, afternoon bar gloom. After a week of this we tired of campaigning and opted instead for the more immediate satisfaction of preparing hot mustard and Tabasco sandwiches for the neighborhood drunk. It's safe to say we were more astonished by how little effect these had on our victim than Lefkowitz's loss that Fall.

    

    

Around the time of my ninth birthday in the Spring of 1964, the Johnson – Goldwater contest had pretty well wound my entire elementary school up to a fever pitch. The candidates enjoyed a fairly even split among the student body and we busied ourselves with pasting Johnson bumper stickers on our book-bags, trading campaign buttons and arguing vociferously about The Bomb. When Bobby Rayburn made some disparaging comment about Lyndon Johnson's ears or nose one afternoon, I felt compelled to defend the President and a scuffle ensued. A teacher pulled us apart, took us to the gym and forced us into a few rounds of regulated fisticuffs with gloves on. My nose was bloodied and my enthusiasm for campaigning never recovered. Knowing what I know now of Lyndon Johnson, I'm not sure his honor was worth my shedding blood for. Certainly his nose and ears were not.

    

I've never been interested in the slightest in running for office. And, at least since 1964, I've felt no desire to actively campaign for a candidate. I'd like to think that politics wasn't as nasty and deceitful back in the day as it has proven to be of late, but I know that's not true. My grandfather, a self-described Republican progressive Governor, Senator and Ambassador, was far enough to the right to ban the use of the Roosevelt name within his house. My great-Grandfather, a diplomat, enraged over a tiff with his boss, switched parties and campaigned against his own father in the 1896 Presidential campaign. 

   It's hard to imagine that Lefkowitz, Gilhooley and Fino were up to the sort of dirty tricks, bald-faced-lies and misinformation we all take for granted in politics today. Not with that happy, catchy jingle pouring out of every radio. But then again, they lost.