The Ed Koch Show : Politics: The voters threw him out of office, but the ex-mayor of New York refuses to go quietly. His favorite pastime is needling current Mayor David Dinkins.

He’s like a broken car alarm. He’s irritating and just won’t stop.

--Dan Collins, co-author of “I, Koch,” a political biography

It’s 6:40 a.m., and Ed Koch is talking, talking, talking--long before the city has its first cup of coffee. High above the streets, in the study of his Greenwich Village apartment, the former mayor opens his mouth and another round of target practice begins.

“As I was s-a-a-a-a-a-ying, I don’t like him personally, and he doesn’t like me. Occasionally he takes cheap shots at me, unlike me at him,” Koch tells a radio deejay, complaining about a New York Post columnist. “You know, he’s not my favorite writer.”

It’s a direct hit, and Koch moves on to bigger game. Cradling a phone on his shoulder, he blasts former President Jimmy Carter as an “enemy of Israel.” But it’s all a warm-up for the main target: New York Mayor David Dinkins and his fiscal battles with state legislators.

“They’re giving David Dinkins a tough time,” Koch says with a grin, reveling in the misfortunes of the man who booted him from City Hall. “He used to think he had a close relationship with the legislators. I imagine he’s shocked !”

Hanging up, the balding pundit with Bozo hair chortles again. Then he gets back to topic No. 1: “You know, I’ve never been more popular. Never .”

When New York voters tossed him out of office in 1989, there was little likelihood that Edward I. Koch would retire gracefully from the political stage, like the ex-mayors before him. After their time was up, John Lindsay, Abraham Beame and Robert Wagner Sr. played the role of elder statesman, fading into a dignified obscurity and almost never criticizing their successors.

But Citizen Koch tore up the script. Indeed, the man who ran this town for 12 years has grown more outrageous since leaving the city’s top job. Although his political influence is sharply diminished, he refuses to give up the spotlight. Brassy, vain and outspoken, his almost childlike craving for attention is more pronounced than ever.

These days, Koch has unprecedented media exposure for an ex-mayor. He writes a weekly column for the New York Post, tapes a daily radio show from his apartment and appears twice a week on the local Fox TV station as a commentator. He also does movie reviews for the Wall Street Journal and is a national spokesman for Ultra Slim-Fast.

When he is not making media appearances, Koch, 66, is making money as an attorney with the blue-chip firm of Robinson, Silverman & Pearce. A tall, stoop-shouldered man whose shirttails sometimes flop out of his pants, he earns in excess of $1 million annually. He is also one of the nation’s most sought-after lecturers, garnering $20,000 per appearance.

To be sure, Koch has had some setbacks. He was recently bounced off a local CBS talk show after station officials decided he was too controversial. The former mayor had a habit of telling some on-air reporters that their questions were stupid, and he once criticized news anchorman Dan Rather for allegedly insulting Saudi sensitivities during the Persian Gulf War.

Some critics complain that Koch the Commentator is out of control. After all, the voters told this guy to take a hike. One journalist likened him to an inflated balloon, hovering over Manhattan like the nagging Jewish mother in Woody Allen’s segment of “New York Stories.” But Koch brushes off that criticism like bagel crumbs off a plate.

“What am I, chopped liver?” he says. “A lot of people expected me to go away, but I’m still here. I haven’t changed. And I know that drives some people nuts. “

New York is a town that loves characters, and there never was a character quite like Ed Koch. During his heyday, 1977 to 1989, he was the nation’s most famous mayor. A best-selling author and compulsive eater, Koch bullied his way to the top of the heap and stayed there for three terms, holding the Big Apple enthralled with a mixture of comedy, street smarts and chutzpah. He was brilliant, divisive, articulate and inflammatory, in no particular order.

The mayor finally fell out of favor when corruption scandals engulfed his Administration and racial tensions wracked the city. His shtick got old, and the refrain of “How’m I doin’?” began to grate in a town where the quality of life was deteriorating.

Koch won only 42% of the vote in the 1989 Democratic primary against Dinkins, but there is still a huge audience here for his views. Since leaving office, he has sounded off on issues ranging from abortion rights and employment quotas to Israeli security and Operation Desert Storm.

His most pointed barbs, however, have been aimed at Dinkins, the city’s first African-American mayor. After observing a self-imposed six-month moratorium on negative comments, Koch lowered the boom on his successor, calling him a nice man who is simply not up to the job. Without being asked, he gleefully predicts that Dinkins will not be reelected in 1993.

It’s easy to find a soapbox for these sentiments because New York is in an economic tailspin. The city is staring down the barrel of a $3.5-billion budget deficit, and Dinkins, a soft-spoken, undynamic man, has not inspired widespread confidence. Yet it’s questionable whether dissatisfaction with him translates into political support--or even nostalgia--for Koch.

At City Hall, staff aides are trying to keep Dinkins from tangling with his chief critic.

“The mayor does not respond to columnists,” says acting mayoral press secretary Lee Jones. “He does what he does, and Mr. Koch does what he does.”

For his part, Koch insists he won’t run for office again and says he’s never been happier. Life is easier, he’s lost 35 pounds, and Hizzoner doesn’t miss the old political heartburn.

“When people meet me on the street,” he says, “they tell me, ‘We miss you, we miss you.’ And I say to them, ‘But you threw me out!’ And they say, ‘Oh no, not us!’ ”

His finger wagging in the air, Koch rolls into the punch line: “I haven’t met anybody who voted against me! I should ask for a recount! They want me back!”

So far, there are no signs of a draft-Koch movement in New York. And some critics say the former mayor is kidding himself about not missing the old routine.

“How could he possibly admit that he was happier at City Hall?” says biographer Dan Collins. “To do so would be to admit that his critics are right, and that he could never do.”

Andy Logan, who covers City Hall for the New Yorker, questions how long Koch will last as a media personality: “His influence seems to be fading because I don’t hear a lot of people saying, ‘Did you hear what Koch said today?’ But then again, in a city of 7 million people, he’d probably be the last to admit it.”

Others, however, believe Koch is a happier man these days. Joe Klein, a columnist for New York Magazine, says the former mayor now enjoys all the benefits of his old office, such as media exposure and punditry, without the tensions of day-to-day minutiae and city crises.

“Koch is a lightning rod, and he certainly gets under Dinkins’ skin,” Klein says. “I’m sure Dinkins hates every goddamned thing that comes out of his mouth. But he’s a genuine New York voice, and it would be a tragedy if that voice somehow disappeared.”

Judging by Koch’s activities on a typical recent day, there is no danger of that happening.

7 a.m.: The mayor hops into a waiting limousine and speeds through the streets to his workout at an East Side gym. Along the way, he listens to the latest litany of bad news for Dinkins on the radio and then shifts the conversation back to himself.

“It took eight years for the two greatest mayors of the city of New York, (Fiorello) La Guardia and (Robert) Wagner, to be rehabilitated because when they left office, they were hated,” he says. “But it only took eight weeks for me. It’s a wonderful position to be in.”

Bounding into the gym, Koch climbs onto a treadmill and begins huffing and puffing. Within seconds, he’s sounding off on New York’s fiscal woes and the miseries of his successor.

This morning, there’s a new story to tell. Koch had read a newspaper article several days before that said Dinkins, en route to the wake of a slain corrections officer, realized he would be late for a flight to San Diego, where the U.S. Conference of Mayors was meeting. After the wake, Dinkins called for a police helicopter to rescue him from a traffic jam, and he made the plane just in time, armed with a shoulder bag and two tennis rackets.

“He has a budget that has to be adopted in 11 days, so what the hell is he doing in San Diego?” asks Koch. “He’s on the highway, and the traffic is so great, he decides he can’t make (both) the wake and the 5 p.m. plane. But there’s a 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. plane. Now, if they had taken him to the wake, that would be appropriate.”

As the day wears on, he repeats the Tennis Story to several reporters, never conceding that Dinkins might have had important business in San Diego. The story was quickly forgotten by the press here, but to Koch it signifies something greater.

“You either have (leadership) or you don’t,” he says.

7:45 a.m.: The former mayor arrives at work and immediately takes visitors on a tour of his 30th-floor law office. Like his home, the walls are filled with pictures of Koch and VIPs.

“That’s Mitterrand giving me the Legion of Honor . . . that’s the ambassador of Sweden giving me a medal on behalf of the king, that’s the ambassador from the Netherlands giving me a medal on behalf of the queen. This medal was given to me by Sadat, and that’s me giving Sadat a medal. . . .”

Turning to city problems, Koch says he has called for the firing of four top Dinkins aides, branding them as incompetent. Two of the aides left office, causing him to write a column saying it was “two down and two to go.” On June 10, the morning of New York’s Desert Storm parade, he ran into the two remaining aides.

“I was invited to attend a breakfast for Schwarzkopf, Cheney and Powell--I know them all--and I got there a little late, and out of the building comes Hazel Dukes and Laura Blackburn,” he says. “They’re both very beautiful women, beautifully dressed, and they carry themselves well. And Laura Blackburn says to me, ‘We’re still here!’

“I thought that was very intelligent on their part,” he says with delight. “It means they’re reading my columns.”

10:30 a.m.: Koch leaves the office for a cable-TV interview with talk-show host Leon Charney. During the one-hour, freewheeling broadcast, he runs through a Rolodex of who’s who.

Former U.S. Atty. and 1989 mayor candidate Rudolph Giuliani: “I don’t think he has the kind of personality that you want in a mayor. You don’t want someone who’s a killer, even a legal killer.”

Vice President Dan Quayle: “I happen to like Quayle. . . . I think he’s far more intelligent than Teddy Kennedy and certainly far more honorable. And character is everything.”

Former President Richard M. Nixon: “I’ve come to like Nixon better than I did; I think he’s been rehabilitated.” Koch says he sees him at funerals: “They put me next to him to chat.”

The late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir: “I met her in Washington. A wonderful woman, brilliant, warm. But she smoked like a chimney.”

3:30 p.m.: After private appointments and lunch, Koch fields telephone questions from a radio deejay. He’s asked about his recent trip to Japan, where he lectured for Sony. Incredibly, Koch manages to discuss the visit while also mocking Dinkins’ personal hygiene.

The Japanese “are marvelously clean people. I mean, they bathe all day long,” he says with a laugh. “They take more showers than David Dinkins.” (More laughter). “I’m just joking about David Dinkins, but he does take two or three showers a day.”

Koch tells the Dukes and Blackburn story again and then prepares to leave for his twice-weekly taping at the TV station. Walking out the door, he takes yet another swipe at Dinkins, suggesting that his habit of wearing baseball jackets is bizarre. “The mayor should not run around in shmattas (old, tacky clothes),” he says. “I worked in shirt sleeves, but that’s different.”

At the station, Koch hammers away at familiar themes: The city is floundering and Dinkins will not be reelected. But this day, the big news is clearly elsewhere. The current mayor was talking about gun control to a Brooklyn group when gunshots were heard less than a block away.

Koch, who had been rolling until this topic came up, says only that gun control laws won’t solve the problem. He looks strangely subdued now that the focus has shifted away from him.

When the taping ends, he jokes with station officials as they walk down a hallway to the exit. Suddenly, Koch points to the framed color pictures of TV personalities on the wall.

“When are you going to put me up there?” he asks. The station official laughs, escorting his guest to the street. But Koch asks again, more persistent now: “No, really, when are you going to put me up there?”