The Courtly Manner That Soared After Ed Koch’s Defeat Now Seems Too Tame for New York City. Suddenly, We See. . . : Dinkins Descending

After 12 years of Mayor Edward Koch’s loud and abrasive personality, many New Yorkers were relieved when David Dinkins was sworn in this year as the first black mayor of the nation’s largest city.

A quiet man who dresses elegantly and oozes gentility, Dinkins seemed to offer tactful leadership in place of Koch’s shoot-from-the-lip style. He promised to heal racial tensions and turn down the decibel level at City Hall. It was a farewell to shtick, and Dinkins took office on a wave of goodwill.

But now, less than 11 months into his first term, the graying, 63-year-old mayor has come under fire for being precisely what he promised to be.

As the city grapples with soaring crime, a $1.5-billion budget deficit and a looming recession, people who once supported him say Dinkins may not be tough enough to govern New York. There is much talk that the new mayor--a former city clerk and Manhattan borough president--is simply not up to the job.

“All these critics . . . what they really want is Koch in black face,” says a disgusted Wilber Tatum, publisher of the Amsterdam News, the city’s largest black newspaper. “What has happened to David Dinkins is very disturbing.”

In New York, as in other big cities, style is power. Mayors aren’t usually held accountable for crime, homelessness or the economy. But they are expected to respond forcefully to these problems, to provide the appearance of leadership. Failure to do so conveys an image of weakness and vulnerability.

The need to understand symbols is particularly important in New York, where four daily newspapers and a host of television and radio stations bang heads every morning in the nation’s noisiest media market. Leaders who stumble badly in getting their message across can be destroyed by a press corps that thrives on competition and likes to eat politicians for breakfast.

So it has been with Dinkins. In recent weeks, his approval ratings have plummeted in polls from 53% to 38% and everything about his Administration--even his snappy attire and bathing habits--have become objects of ridicule. At its worst, Dinkins’ plight recalls that of former President Jimmy Carter, whose testy personality did him in, as much as the crises with which he was dealing.

“We needed class in City Hall,” grumbles New York Newsday columnist Jimmy Breslin, who supported Dinkins over Koch last year. “Instead, we have a guy with the imagination and crankiness of an old clerk.”

Some Dinkins supporters, such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, say much of the criticism is racist and utterly irrelevant to his job performance. But other observers, including some blacks, suggest that the liberal, Democratic mayor has much to learn about public relations.

“He’s a decent guy,” says political consultant David Garth, who has run campaigns for Koch and Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley. “But he’s been slow to realize that you’ve got to get out in front of breaking stories in this town and grab the advantage on each one. If you don’t, the press will start digging up their own angles, and then you really get in trouble.”

The controversy over Dinkins’ style erupted this summer, when the city was hit with a wave of brutal street killings, including young children slain by gunfire in drug-infested neighborhoods. There was a widespread sense of the city spinning out of control, even among hardened New Yorkers.

“Dave--Do Something!” screamed a New York Post headline. But the mayor, resisting calls for an immediate plan to hire more officers, said he was studying the long-term needs of the police department and would offer a proposal later.

Dinkins ran into even more turbulence when he refused to personally intervene in the black boycott of a Korean deli in Brooklyn. Hoping to mediate the volatile, racial conflict, he negotiated behind the scenes for months and spurned calls to play a more public role. When Dinkins finally showed up at the embattled business, there were grumblings that he had waited too long.

The discontent reached its peak last month, when the mayor came under fire for his response to the murder of a Utah tourist in a Manhattan subway station. The stabbing death of Brian Watkins, a 22-year-old man who was trying to defend his mother against a gang of teen-age thugs, quickly became a sensational front-page story in New York and nationwide.

But Dinkins seemed nonplussed by the tragedy. Asked the next day about its likely impact on the Big Apple, he gave a tepid response that other cities had higher crime rates, and that such events should be put “in perspective.” Later that afternoon, he climbed into a police helicopter and flew off to see the U.S. Open tennis matches in Flushing, Queens.

As outrage over the crime grew, Dinkins kept flying to see tennis matches. Against the advice of some aides, he decided not to attend Watkins’ funeral in Provo, Utah, sending a deputy mayor, instead. He never met with the grieving family in the city, but offered his condolences over a car phone.

New Yorkers accustomed to Koch’s passionate style--which included frequent denunciations of criminals--were puzzled by Dinkins’ lackluster response. If Koch were still mayor, some said, he would have at least hopped on the subway to show that New Yorkers would not be cowed by teen-age predators.

Suddenly, something seemed to be missing at City Hall.

“When the heart of each New Yorker was yearning to say, ‘I’m sorry’ to the family of Brian Watkins . . . Mr. Dinkins should have gone to the funeral to say it for us,” wrote New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen. “Perhaps he had a scheduling conflict, but real people don’t care about scheduling conflicts when a funeral comes around.”

Others chafed at the image of Dinkins playing tennis while the city burned. A longtime tennis buff, the mayor rises early to whack a few balls on the court before heading to work and plays every chance he gets. He had thought that doing so would project the image of a physically fit, older man. But that is not what some critics saw.

“Every time we turn around, there’s Mr. Dinkins in his silly little sweat band and short pants, racket in hand, flailing away,” wrote Richard Carter, a black columnist with the Daily News. “Nothing’s wrong with having a hobby. . . . But Mr. Dinkins seems to have tennis on the brain.”

Not surprisingly, New York’s mayor is irked by the furor over his personal style. Sitting in his comfortable office at City Hall, he dismisses the notion that he is not “angry enough” for the job. Sounding irritated, he reminds a visitor that loud leaders are not necessarily strong.

Only a fool would suggest that he wasn’t outraged by the Watkins case, Dinkins says. But it would have been “sensationalistic” to fly to Utah to grandstand at a funeral. Besides, he asks, what kind of message would it send to the relatives of other New Yorkers, whose funerals he didn’t attend, if he paid his last respects to a white, middle-class family from out of town?

“I don’t care what the damn reporters wrote,” the mayor says curtly. “Some caring has to be used about such things. You don’t want to appear to be some politician coming out to Provo to make a grand splash at this moment of ultimate grief.”

The last thing he is about to do, Dinkins adds, is ape Ed Koch’s style.

“I can’t speak like other people. I speak like I speak. . . . You just have to keep doing what you think is right.”

But these days, it seems the mayor can do nothing right.

Although Dinkins has pledged to put 9,600 new police officers on the street, critics say he waited too long to unveil his plan and doubt that he can raise the tax money needed to pay for it. In a sign of inexperience, the mayor unveiled his sweeping proposal without notifying state leaders whose political support he will need to implement it.

Hoping to manage New York’s sputtering economy, Dinkins has sent out confusing signals. In one week, he announced the police plan, a generous wage increase for teachers and then said he may have to lay off 15,000 city workers. Business leaders wonder if he is really in charge, saying that the city seems to be lurching from one fiscal crisis to the next.

During the election, supporters expected Dinkins to surround himself with top-notch advisers. But his City Hall staff has been criticized as inexperienced. None of his deputies have worked on the mayoral level before, and several of them are feuding over fiscal policies as the city enters a period of rocky wage negotiations with public employees.

As doubts about him have grown, Dinkins’ personal habits also are coming under scrutiny. Reporters and columnists mock him for wearing tuxedos to evening events; there is snickering that he takes two or three showers daily. Newspaper cartoons have lampooned him as a cautious, plodding turtle, unwilling to make tough decisions.

Despite Dinkins’ angry denials, newspapers have had a field day with reports that he ordered city carpenters to build an $11,500 headboard for his bedroom suite at Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence.

Lately local stand-up comedians are getting into the act, taking shots at the mayor’s dapper appearance and ponderous speaking style, which his press secretary has described as “19th-Century English.”

All of this clearly upsets Dinkins, who has tried to project an image of quiet dignity and traditional values. A family man with two grown children, he says such carping has nothing to do with his actions as mayor.

“If I were so poorly attired as to reflect badly on the state of the government . . . I think that might be fair comment. But I don’t dress like a dandy, you know, I’m just reasonably neat and reasonably clean. If I wore a top hat and spats, I think that might merit some conversation or discussion, but I really don’t quite see how what I wear is important.”

As for tennis, forget it. The mayor says he has no intention of cutting back on his favorite sport just to satisfy some critics.

Meanwhile, Dinkins continues to take a hammering in the press. Although he has tried to refurbish his image--announcing recently that he and other city officials will take a 5% pay cut--the damage has been done. After months of bad publicity, there is speculation he may be a one-term mayor.

“He just hasn’t conveyed a real sense of leadership,” says Koch, who is gleeful over his foe’s misfortune and attacks him regularly in a newspaper column and weekly television show. “He doesn’t understand what is required of him, and he hasn’t explained what his programs will accomplish.”

How did it happen?

Some experts chalk it up to bad luck and even worse timing, especially when it comes to economic problems. Dinkins faces a budget short-fall of as much as $1.5 billion next year, a crisis that could cause massive layoffs of city workers and severe cutbacks in municipal services.

Earlier this month, Standard and Poor’s put the city’s $13 billion in general obligation bonds on “credit watch,” which means New York’s credit rating could be lowered if it doesn’t make progress in cutting the deficit. If that happens, the city would have to borrow money at higher rates.

This kind of news spells trouble for any politician, regardless of color or style, says NAACP director Dr. Benjamin Hooks. Take away those problems, and someone like Dinkins would thrive in New York or any other big city, maybe even Los Angeles, he says.

Indeed, Dinkins and Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley are remarkably similar in temperament. Yet they have had significantly different experiences in office, largely because of fluctuating economic trends, Hooks says.

In New York, the mayor “inherited a world of trouble from Koch the minute he took office, because the economy was crashing and crime was up. When it’s all gloom and doom, people get unhappy with you.”

But in Los Angeles, he notes, Bradley has presided over a period of prosperity--and criticism of his style as a black leader has been mute by comparison.

Others say Dinkins faces image problems common to other black officials, such as Bradley and Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder. These politicians owe their elections to white as well as black voters, and they campaign as cool, dispassionate managers. Unlike whites, it would be dangerous for them to shift gears and grow more confrontational, if the situation requires.

“If (Dinkins) had been an angry black candidate, he would not be the mayor,” wrote New York Newsday columnist Murray Kempton. “He owes his election and now the torments of his tenure to the same accommodating disposition.”

Finally, some observers say New York is having a difficult time adjusting to its first black mayor. Given the way white New York mayors have been treated, they believe there is a double standard at work.

The press dust-ups over Dinkins’ headboard and his personal habits are “racist and wrong,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson says. “They’ve been writing as if David is a big spender, and he’s not. He’s a voice of moderation and hope, and he walks on egg shells every day.

“When Koch did foolish things, for years people laughed,” he added. “When he said insulting things, it was, ‘Ha-ha, there goes Eddie again.’ Well, David doesn’t crack insulting jokes about people. And when you vilify or marginalize a guy like him, what’s the next level of leadership?”

From the beginning, Dinkins has been a quiet man who valued consensus over confrontation. Born in 1927 in Trenton, N.J., he attended Howard University in Washington, D.C., and was graduated with a degree in mathematics.

He met his wife, Joyce, in college and the couple later moved back to New York, where Dinkins earned a degree at Brooklyn Law School. Mrs. Dinkins came from a political family--her father was an assemblyman and district leader--and the young Dinkins was soon attracted to the world of Harlem politics.

As the years went by, he rose through the ranks of the Democratic Party. Dinkins learned about clubhouse politics the old-fashioned way, working in a well-connected law firm and paying his dues. He allied himself with a group of rising black politicians, such as: Charles Rangel, now a powerful member of Congress; Basil Patterson, former vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee; and Percy Sutton, former Manhattan borough president.

Quietly, almost always behind the scenes, Dinkins climbed the ladder, first as a district leader, then as an assemblyman in 1965. Five years later, he became counsel to the Board of Elections, then a member of the board.

His first big break came in 1973, when then-newly elected Mayor Abraham Beame tapped Dinkins to be deputy mayor for planning. But Dinkins was forced to turn down the offer when he admitted to reporters that he had failed to pay federal, state and city income taxes for four years.

It was the low point of his public career, and Dinkins is still dogged by questions about the incident. Then, as now, he has given the same answer: “I was busy taking care of other people’s business,” refusing to elaborate further.

Beame resurrected Dinkins two years later by making him City Clerk, an obscure job in which he processed marriage licenses and filed office-holders’ financial-disclosure forms. In 1985, after two losing efforts, Dinkins was elected Manhattan borough president, a job traditionally held by blacks.

In his new post, Dinkins pushed for construction of more moderate- and low-cost housing. He became a spokesman for children, AIDS patients, the homeless and the city’s poor. He enjoyed the position and would have been content to win reelection, but in 1989 the time was right for him to challenge Koch in the Democratic primary.

Voters were ready for a change, and Dinkins whipped the incumbent mayor in a hard-fought contest. Backed by a coalition of liberal neighborhood groups, big labor and minorities, he held on to beat former U.S. Atty. Rudolph Giuliani by less than 50,000 votes in the general election.

Those who have watched his career are unsurprised by Dinkins’ performance in office.

Howard Rubenstein, a prominent public relations consultant who has advised Dinkins on how to upgrade his image, says the mayor never was a media hound: “He’s sort of a reluctant dragon in terms of being an aggressive communicator. He’s courtly and he’s laid-back, and he values his intellectual approach to problems.

“But,” Rubenstein adds, “in a media world, sometimes you have to drop that stance and speak in headlines and symbols. The problems are aggressive, almost killing in nature, and the decibel level is up. You have to be more aggressive. . . . You can’t just call for a peaceful, easy time.”

Dinkins grudgingly concedes that he has had communications problems. Yet it seems unlikely that he could alter his style much, even if he wanted to.

“Look, this guy is formed, he’s 63, he isn’t going to change,” says media analyst Edwin Diamond. “He’s always been a machine politician, and stylistically, he can’t be like Koch or (former New York Mayor) Fiorello La Guardia, who used to ride fire engines to the scene of fires.

“Besides, do people really want that? We had a show biz, loudmouth mayor and that didn’t work. He was the guy who knew how to do a sound bite and rush to the hospital and he was a master of symbols. But that was just entertainment, that didn’t help the city’s problems.”

Diamond, Garth and other observers believe Dinkins must show more emotion to connect on a gut level with New Yorkers. But those who know him say he almost never displays his temper or other strong feelings in public.

Last week, for example, Dinkins was heckled by gay activists at a fund-raising dinner. Initially, he seemed surprised, but he maintained a steely calm throughout the disturbance and completed his remarks.

Behind closed doors, however, Dinkins can be contentious, stubborn and downright nasty when it comes to dealing with media inquiries, according to a longtime New York activist. In private, he loses patience with aides who do not agree with him and does not always pay close attention during briefings.

The only time the public gets a glimpse of this side of Dinkins is when he speaks about the prejudice he experienced growing up. In a recent breakfast meeting with the Los Angeles Times’ Washington Bureau, he spoke sharply about the days when he was not allowed to walk or shop on certain streets in the nation’s capital because he is black.

Later, noting that blacks have made economic gains, Dinkins said racism persists in America: “I recall a friend of mine once making the observation that a white man with a million dollars is a millionaire. A black man with a million dollars is a nigger with a million dollars.”

As mayor, Dinkins has tried to project an ecumenical approach to solving urban problems. But his feelings as a black man do occasionally surface.

Asked about crime in New York, he told The Times that violence has recently “gone well beyond the African-American and Latino community. Much of crime is so-called black-on-black crime. We have folks of color who have been dying for a long time and there has not been quite the same interest.”

Despite these flare-ups, Dinkins continues to be the Unflappable Man at City Hall. And there is a growing debate whether he will recover from his political free fall any time soon.

A veteran New York political observer who asked not to be identified says it is possible for Dinkins to halt his slide--but only if he realizes that big-time public relations is truly part of his job.

“He’s in a brand-new ball game now, it’s the major leagues, and this city won’t let him be a quiet little clerk like he was before,” the observer says. “But I think he’ll survive. If he had it to do all over again today, and that Watkins boy was killed in the subway, I really don’t think he’d fly off to the tennis matches again. That much he’s learned.”