Koch Recalls Highs, Lows of N.Y. Politics

Time tends to compress the hundreds of news conferences, thousands of public appearances, the emergencies, the dreaded phone calls in the middle of the night when a cop has just been killed.

But an inescapable fact remains: A student entering first grade when Edward I. Koch first was elected mayor in 1978 could have started college by the time Koch leaves City Hall in January.

On Jan. 1, David N. Dinkins, who defeated Koch in the Democratic primary, takes the oath of office. Koch’s departure caps a political career that led him from being a Democratic district leader to serving in the House of Representatives to being elected New York’s chief executive.

It was a career marked by dizzying heights and depressive lows, and one that made him one of America’s most recognizable politicians--certainly its best known mayor.

“I have served 25 years of my life in public service . . . and I have enjoyed every single one of those positions,” Koch said in a valedictory interview.

But would he run again?

“I am tired of taking the crap that you have to take in public office. I think that lots of good people won’t go into public office anymore,” he said. “If you are in there, you take it. But to go back in and take it--ridiculous!

“I never want to hold public office again,” he added.

Koch won office in the dark days of New York’s horrendous fiscal crisis and eventually was hailed for tough budgets, management and buoyant optimism that not only restored the city’s solvency, but also went a long way toward restoring its spirit. Those achievements brought him a period of national acclaim, the cover of Time magazine and even some talk that he should run for President. “How am I doing?” became his trademark as he sought both opinions and praise from New Yorkers.

But later, as the city struggled against crack, AIDS, homelessness, poverty and corruption, his popularity ebbed. Some voters found his abruptness and brashness more irritating than refreshing. During the 1988 Democratic presidential primary, his rhetoric got him into serious trouble. “Hey, everybody, it’s me and Al Gore,” he yelled from a subway stop as he campaigned for the Tennessee senator, who ended up losing by a wide margin.

It was during that campaign that he also said, in words that came back to haunt him, that a Jew would have to “be crazy” to vote for Jesse Jackson. Koch later apologized, but Jackson helped mobilize the black vote that played a prominent part in defeating Koch in this year’s mayoral primary. Signs exist, however, that history already is treating Koch kindly. He leaves office with polls once again giving him positive job-approval ratings.

Koch himself remembers different high points and low points.

The best time? New York’s huge, emotional, ticker-tape welcome in 1981 for the returning U.S. hostages held by Iran--a parade, Koch revealed in the interview, that he had to pressure then-Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. for permission to hold.

” . . . Haig called me . . . threatening not to let the hostages come,” Koch said. “My response: We have our hostage. His name is Barry Rosen and he lives in New York City. If my parade only has one hostage, we are going to have that parade. Then they capitulated and the hostages came.”

The toughest moments? Attending the funerals of almost 50 police officers killed in the line of duty.

“They are overwhelming,” the mayor said. “It’s hard to explain why, but you feel as though the cop that died is a member of your immediate family. I don’t normally cry at funerals . . . . I did it at the death of my mother and father and at every police officer killed in the line of duty. I really can’t explain it, except in a less than articulate way, I think I say to myself, ‘If they can kill him, they can kill me.’ ”

“You know the mayor of the city of New York is the most wonderful job in the world and it is the most oppressive job in the world,” Koch, 64, said as he relaxed in a dark leather chair in his memento-filled office.

“It’s wonderful because it gives you the opportunity to leave a positive mark for the future . . . and to seek a place in that pantheon of good mayors, as close to former Mayor Fiorello (H.) La Guardia (Koch’s hero) as you can get.

“The oppression, every day, it is like Sisyphus carrying around this boulder, climbing, climbing up the mountain. And every day you think you are getting to the top and the boulder falls and you have got to go down to the bottom of the mountain again . . . . You are on duty seven days a week.”

Koch’s departure underscores the fact that a lucrative life can follow a career in municipal government. When he leaves office, he will hold no less than six jobs--prompting a New York reporter to wisecrack in print that he should incorporate himself as “Koch Industries.”

Koch will be a newspaper columnist for the New York Post and a television and radio commentator. He will also practice law with a Manhattan firm, serve as a visiting lecturer at New York University and speak on the lecture circuit. Some friends predict all these occupations could add up to an income of more than $500,000 a year.

“It drives my opponents batty, absolutely meshuga ,” the mayor said with characteristic combativeness. “They thought that somehow or another I would fall apart, I would be bitter and unable to accept the outcome, and that my future would be very dark and uninspiring and painful. Just the other way . . . . It adds to my glee.”

But there will be no more campaigns for office. “That is a firm, full pledge, made with the full knowledge of what it is to serve,” he said.

Koch also said: “I think the press is out of control. I think that the vicious, venomous attacks of some members of the press are such as to keep lots of people out of office.”

Koch continued, warming up to the subject. “Now, I fought back. I mean I probably have written more letters that were printed in the daily papers than anybody else before me. (But) people say the most horrible things about you when you send in a letter pointing out how wrong they are or how base they themselves are. It’s like the First Amendment is only for reporters and not for their quarry.”

What does Dinkins face?

“What he faces is that he has to find himself,” Koch said. “When I came into office, the opinion makers, the people who make the city run, thought I was a Greenwich Village liberal flake. I think they were wrong to have that opinion based on my congressional career.

” . . . They expected the worst, and in terms of having no understanding of the management of the city and the need to control expenses and to deliver services, they thought I was just an ideologue. Well, I quickly fooled them and changed their opinion.”

Dinkins must also be tough enough to say no to the city’s unions and persistent enough to motivate New York’s huge bureaucracy, he said.

“A mayor has to have enormous strength that is exhibited by his ability to say no,” he said. “A mayor should not be conned by the thought that simply because he says something should be done to assume that it will be done . . . .

“You have to keep going back and back. You have the equivalent of the French civil service working for you. They think they know better than you . . . and they know they will be here long after you’re gone. Therefore, you have to keep pushing and pushing.”

Koch said that despite union friendships, a mayor must remember he is management. “You must never, if you’re mayor, be confused what your position is. You are management, you are not labor. Once you decide you are going to be on the picket lines with labor, you have given up much of your ability to deal with labor over a collective bargaining table.”

The mayor was asked if Dinkins’ decision to march on the picket lines for striking hospital workers before the election worried him. “Yeah, sure,” he replied.

Koch said because of close contact with constituents, governing New York resembles being mayor of a small town.

“I sum it up by saying you don’t like what the President is doing and you want to picket, it costs you $200 round trip. You want to picket the governor, it’s $120 round trip. You want to picket me--two bucks. That’s the intimacy of it.

“The mayor is perceived in an avuncular way in the city of New York. I like that. The best illustration: I went to a senior citizens rally some time ago and had a lovely time in the South Bronx. As I was leaving, a young man, 15 or 16, comes over to me, his eyes glistening with tears welling up. He says, ‘Mayor, will you help me?’

“I say, ‘Sure, what’s wrong?’ I put my hand on his shoulder because he was crying. He said, ‘Mayor, I can’t read. And my classmates make fun of me.’ I said, ‘What’s your name?’ His name is Ernesto. I said, ‘That’s not difficult to overcome, Ernesto. I will get you to read. I am going to get you a tutor and you are going to read.’ I got him a tutor through the Board of Education.

“You know, anybody can do that. But I had such a great sense of saving his life in a sort of strange way.”

Of his own life, Koch said: “My response is please don’t be sorry for me. I am neither dejected, rejected, remorseful. I had a wonderful time. I have no regrets.”

The phone on a side table rang. It was Koch’s secretary, reminding him of his next appointment. After 12 years of riding in the mayor’s official limousine, he was off to the Motor Vehicles Bureau--to renew his driver’s license.