Young Calls Dukakis Camp Insular : Women Leaders Can’t Find Men Willing to Take Orders, He Says

Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young said Friday that the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis has failed to “reach out” beyond a cadre of insiders for help from other Democratic politicians, and he contended that one cause of the insularity was that the campaign was “led by women” for whom it was difficult to find men “willing to take orders.”

“It’s still basically the same crowd that won the primaries,” Young said, reflecting increasing concern among Democrats that the Dukakis campaign is too insulated from people outside the Northeast.

Winning primaries requires “a small, dedicated core group,” Young said in a breakfast session with reporters and editors of The Times’ Washington bureau, “but to win a general election you’ve got to reach out and include people.”

Missed Opportunity Cited

The mayor said he does not blame Dukakis campaign leaders for resisting “hot shots” from the outside who might want to take over the campaign, but he said the Massachusetts governor is missing an opportunity to get help from hundreds of Democrats around the South and in Congress, including Young’s fellow Georgians, Sens. Sam Nunn and Wyche Fowler Jr.

Young likened the situation to the Jimmy Carter campaign in 1976, when it “really did take a little while to open up and move beyond the ‘Georgia Mafia.’ ” Young, who was then a congressman, said he rallied his colleagues to support the ticket, encouraging them to place pictures of Carter and his running mate, Walter F. Mondale, on their campaign literature. “I plugged the Carter campaign into everybody’s House campaign,” he said.

The Atlanta mayor volunteered to “play any part . . . that I could” in the Dukakis campaign and declared that Democrats have a better chance of carrying the South “than they’ve had in a long time.”

He said he has talked with longtime Georgia Democrats “who could never remember a time when the governor, both senators, the entire Democratic congressional delegation, the mayors of every major city, the courthouse crowd, the county commissioners and the sheriffs all supported the Democratic ticket,” as they do this year.

Haven’t ‘Reached Out’

Nevertheless, Young said, Dukakis campaign officials “haven’t really reached out to anybody yet. Not only have they not reached out to Jesse (Jackson), but they’ve not reached out to Sam Nunn or Wyche Fowler.”

All campaigns find it difficult to broaden their leadership, Young said, but the task for Dukakis is “made more difficult” because his campaign is “led by women, and (it is) very hard for them to find men who (are) willing to take orders.”

(Dukakis’ campaign manager is a woman, Susan Estrich, but his chairman is a man, Paul P. Brountas. Some, but not all, of the other top jobs in the campaign are held by women.)

In a telephone interview, Estrich said, “I don’t think that’s a problem,” adding that “there are plenty of talented men” willing to work for the campaign.

Moreover, the campaign has “made substantial progress” in its effort to broaden its leadership base, Estrich said, citing Dukakis organizations “at the state levels around the country.”

‘Smart-Assed White Boys’

Young’s criticism of Dukakis’ campaign as insular is reminiscent of his charge in 1984 that the Mondale presidential campaign was run by “a bunch of smart-assed white boys.” When reminded of the furor that that remark caused, Young said: “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.”

Although he asserted that Mondale’s campaign never redeemed itself by taking advice from outsiders, Young held out hope that Dukakis’ campaign could change. “I figure by Labor Day they should have found some answers to this sort of thing,” he said.

On the issue of race relations, Young, who was in Washington to attend a commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the historic civil rights march on the capital, rejected the notion that the black-Jewish rights coalition has crumbled nationwide.

Says Koch Exploits Tension

He blamed “inflammatory” newspaper headlines in New York City and Mayor Edward I. Koch for many of that city’s problems, charging that “Koch exploits the black-Jewish tension to a certain extent. He reflects a lot of the insensitivity and hostility that you get on the streets of Brooklyn, for instance.”

But Young, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Koch is not racist. “I think Koch is just insensitive,” he said. “He’s insensitive to everybody, not just black folk. He’s a New Yorker, and that’s the way New York is.”

As for Chicago, he said, “It’s not just black-Jewish tension; you have Polish-Italian tensions” as well. “Ethnic groups don’t mix in Chicago. It’s a city of ghettos, and Mayor (Richard J.) Daley governed that way, keeping everybody in their little compartments.”