Candidates Navigate the Sound Bites of New York

Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s plane had barely touched down on Long Island last week before he found himself in the middle of a typical New York blood feud of the political sort.

By his side at a forum on breast cancer research--Bush’s attack weapon du jour against Sen. John McCain--were the two most powerful politicians in the state. Both are Republicans and Bush supporters more (Gov. George Pataki) or less (New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani). But each man detests the other, for reasons too arcane to go into.

When the mayor seized the microphone, he immediately made it clear that he did not want to be there, referring to an aforementioned new cancer-research tool:

“Pataki called me yesterday and told me I could get a ‘virtual colonoscopy’ if I came here. You guys ready to do it?” asked the mayor, glancing at the TV cameras and the white-coated health professionals in the audience. “You’re probably going to do it to me now, right?”

Bush looked vaguely uncomfortable and Pataki gave a tight grin, and darn if Giuliani didn’t bring it up again. He was asked if he would respond to a letter sent to him that day by his buddy McCain thanking him for not joining attacks by New York’s GOP establishment. Giuliani’s reply: “After my colonoscopy.”

Indeed, there was no mistaking where the 2000 presidential primary had landed this week. For all the sameness to campaigning in America--the bus touring and the candidates reading “Green Eggs and Ham” to schoolkids--the tribalism of New York politics never fails to break through. Every four years, candidates learn that walking onto the New York political stage is like a journey through the Balkans or the Middle East, where ancient animosities can consume them.

Over the last few days, the four leading candidates flocked to the state to prepare for Tuesday’s primary. Mostly, they came via red-eye flights from California in planes filled with strung-out campaign aides who found themselves up against not only a primary that matters but also the usual pressures and tensions of New York.

There was only so much motorcade cops could do, for example, about a water main break in Manhattan on Friday that flooded subways and tied up traffic. And candidates had only so many ways to avoid commenting on local controversies such as the acquittal of four white police officers who shot 41 times at Amadou Diallo, killing the young black man.

On the other hand, the candidates probably consider it a gift from the gods that the city’s ravenous tabloids have been distracted during the primary season by the Senate race between “Hizzoner,” as they call Giuliani, and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

To wit: “We’d be looking a gift horse in the mouth if we didn’t salivate over an opportunity to cover a race that comes down to who do you dislike most,” said New York Post Publisher Ken Chandler.

As for the presidential playoffs, Chandler said he’d be sticking close to the office this weekend. Just in case.

“Anything they say will be taken down and used as evidence against them,” he said with a chortle.

With Vice President Al Gore way ahead of former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, New Yorkers have gone against tradition, focusing their attention this time on the Republican mudfest. Only Republicans can vote in the GOP primary, and the latest poll of likely voters shows Bush and McCain running neck and neck.

McCain dearly needs a win here, and he seemed at times wistful about his successes and failures as his storied “Straight Talk Express” bus lurched through Manhattan traffic Friday. (His beloved Krispy Kreme doughnuts were all gone, given away that morning to demanding NYPD cops.)

“As long as I live, I will remember this campaign,” he sighed.

A battered Bradley made only a brief foray into the city where once he’d been a basketball superstar. He made a 15-minute pit stop in Greenwich Village on Friday to wolf down some juice and a hot dog with sauerkraut.

(Earlier, in just a few hours’ campaigning in Queens and Long Island, Bradley ate a piece of baklava, a hunk of feta cheese, a spinach pie, a bowl of chili and a tall glass of grapefruit juice, proving a well-known New York-ism that if the politics here doesn’t kill you, the food will.)

Bush, still grasping for New Yorkers’ affections, seemed at times testy during his visits to Long Island and upstate. Unlike McCain, who is a kindred in-your-face spirit, Bush stayed clear of the five boroughs that make up New York City. The political explanation is that likely GOP primary voters are upstate and in the suburbs, so why waste time touching the soul of the state. But when asked why Bush was avoiding the city, someone close to the campaign confided, “They eat you up there.”

Only Gore seemed robust campaigning in New York last week, prepared to go anywhere, do anything. But only Gore has been through a real New York drubbing. In 1988, then-Sen. Gore came into the Empire State a rube, the third man in a three-man Democratic race. He was badly cut up and beaten.

Four years later, Gore saw Bill Clinton get “the treatment.”

“The reason [Gore’s] not getting hazed this week is because of all the spade work he’s done over the last 7 1/2 years to make sure he’d never get hurt here again,” said Mark Green, a top city Democrat expected to succeed Giuliani as mayor.

Describing another memorable New York primary hazing, Green recalled watching Californian Jerry Brown, who opposed Clinton in that 1992 primary, get grilled by a Jewish activist about how he’d manage his friendship with the Rev. Jesse Jackson if Brown made it to the White House.

“I’ll be president,” Brown said. “I’ll set the agenda.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said the activist. “But what if you die?”

Indeed, it was bizarre scenes like that that Gore had in mind, according to an aide, as he spent the last few years kissing the robes of city columnists, Brooklyn ministers, Hasidic rebbes, union leaders and Gabe Pressman, the 77-year-old local TV newsman who was ubiquitous on the campaign trail this week.

So this time around Gore arrived a seasoned winner. And New York loves a winner.

In the Republican race, Bush’s determination to use McCain’s votes against a bill that contained funds for breast cancer research as a campaign issue has managed to offend some, even here.

Pataki, whose aides came up with the strategy, defended it: “This is sandbox stuff for New York politics,” he said.

But U.S. Rep. Peter T. King, one of the state’s few elected GOP officials in McCain’s camp, didn’t care.

“Breast cancer. I mean, really,” said King. (He had just raced through the marble foyer of the World Financial Center at McCain’s side with a reporter from the Gay Cable Network screeching at McCain for appearing on gay-basher Don Imus’ radio show.)

“It’s one thing to call someone corrupt or say his party is involved in organized crime. That’s acceptable commentary,” King continued. “But it’s another thing to say your opponent is furthering breast cancer. I mean, breast cancer.”

Of course, Bush is taking as good as he’s giving, not so much from McCain as from the tabloids. For whatever a candidate’s rival doesn’t churn up from his past, sordid or not, the tabloids will. Last week the New York Post, which has endorsed McCain, ran a story about how Bush’s wife, Laura, was in a car accident as a teenager that killed her then-boyfriend.

Hank Sheinkopf, a former New York cop turned Democratic political consultant, offered candidates this advice on how to survive the city’s political cross-fire:

“You need a tough skin,” said Sheinkopf. “You need to know who can deliver votes for you and who can’t. You need to understand the timing of news cycles and to know to never hang around too long because you’ll get pilloried. You need to know who’s in it for the money, who’s in it for love.

“OK, you got all that?”

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Times staff writers Maria L. La Ganga and John Johnson contributed to this story.