Mr Murdoch and Mr Koch

Michael Davie

These days, Mr Rupert Murdoch is cer- tainly a man to watch. The news from New York this week is that if its super- ebullient mayor, Ed Koch, becomes Gover- nor of New York State as a result of next November's elections, Mr Murdoch will be able to claim some of the credit.

The political event of the week was Mr Koch's announcement that he had decided to run. Speculation about his intentions had been brisk for a month. Before that, whenever he was asked about the governor- ship, he always replied that he loved New York, loved being Mayor of New York, loved New York restaurants, and that translation to Albany, the state capital, where the restaurants are less celebrated, would be a living death. ('Everybody has to die some time,' he explained this week, spreading his arms, when his dictum was quoted back at him.)

Every reporter and cameraman in New York seemed to have turned up to see Ed Make the switch. For the occasion, he wore a grey three-piece suit, and a blue tie with green symbols. He is a big man, bald, with a tuft of hair sticking out at the back. He delivered his statement with great gravity, as if the future of the United States, at least, hung on his decision. But he sprang to life in the questioning. Unlike President Reagan, who meets the press in order to withhold information, Mayor Koch cannot wait to tell everyone what purport to be his innermost thoughts, and to overwhelm hostile questioners, triumphantly, with statistics.

He explained that he had changed his mind about running for Governor for two reasons. First, the unexpected decision by Govenor Carey not to seek re-election. Se- cond, the unveiling by the Reagan Ad- ministration of its proposals for the new federalism, which involves turning over to the states many responsibilities previously borne by Washington. He evidently wants to get his hands on all the new power that he foresees will be available, even if it Means that he won't eat properly for four Years.

Mr Koch's ambition is wonderfully un- concealed. He is now 57, the son of Polish immigrants. He was a Congressman for seven years, and was elected mayor in 1977. Last November, an extraordinary thing happened. He ran for re-election not only as the candidate of the Democratic Party, to which he belongs, but the Republican Party as well. He got 75 per cent of the vote, as he reminds people who do not have the exact percentage at their fingertips.

But what is the connection between Mr Koch's ambitions and Mr Murdoch? Mr

Murdoch was in London, attending to the future of two of his newspapers, when the Koch announcement was made. He is the publisher and editor-in-chief of the New York Post, a tabloid, and the brashest of New York's three daily newspapers. The Post is widely credited with having helped to elect Koch mayor in 1977. Critics alleged that the paper not only supported Koch in its editorials, but also distorted its news col- umns to his benefit, a charge denied by the Post. Subsequently, Mr Koch nominated the Post editorials, without success, for a Pulitzer prize.

In recent weeks, the Post has been runn- ing a 'Draft Ed Koch for Governor' cam- paign. It published coupons in the paper and urged readers to fill them in and join the campaign. Fourteen thousand readers did so. The Post also commissioned polls: the latest one showed Koch leading his rivals by two to one. Certainly the Post thinks its campaign may have helped to propel the mayor along the road to Albany.

On the day that Koch announced, the Post carried on page one a tear-out of a photograph taken a month ago when the mayor returned to New York from Spain. According to the Post's caption this week, the mayor was 'besieged' by reporters holding up copies of the Post, which carried a big headline saying 'Let's Draft Ed Koch for Governor' and wanting to know if he would run. 'Was this the moment that started it all?' Perhaps it was. Certainly it was the first time Mr Koch said publicly that he might be thinking about running.

On the same day that the Post was wondering if it had started it all, it printed an extra long editorial welcoming Koch's decision. The mayor, when he read it, must have felt strongly inclined to put the Post in for a Pulitzer again.

The editorial said he had been a `remarkably successful mayor' who had brought New York 'from the edge of bankruptcy to being one of the few American cities that are financially sound', and went on to mention the mayor's 'uni- que experience of government', his success as 'a hard-driving administrator', his inten- sification of the war against crime, his fiscal responsibility, his adroitness in handling the state legislature, and his constructive role in democratic national politics.

Mr Murdoch's name as publisher and editor-in-chief of the Post appeared im- mediately above the editorial. I asked one of Mr Murdoch's employees, who has followed New York politics for two decades, whether this ringing endorsement could have appeared without Mr Murdoch's express approval. He thought not. He said of Mr Murdoch and Mr Koch, `The two are very, very close.'

The two men at least have in common a talent for expansion. Mr Koch shows every sign of delight at the prospect of stepping on to a larger stage, as he will if he wins in November. The Governor of New York State automatically becomes a powerful figure in national politics. Franklin D. Roosevelt was a former Governor of New York. Nelson Rockefeller was governor when he launched his bids for the presiden- cy. 'Koch for President, anyone?' asked the New York Times the day after he announc- ed. Mr Koch at the moment modestly restricts his sights to the vice-presidency.

Whether his record as mayor entitles him to think he should be running for anything more serious than dog-catcher is a matter of opinion. His own list of achievements runs on for several minutes: In education, he has raised the literacy level; in health, he has 'virtually abolished measles'; in the bureaucracy, he has brought down absentee rates to 3.34 per cent; he has reduced the time ambulances take to answer calls from 18 minutes to 12.

To achieve these benefits, he has worked between 15 and 16 hours a day. In addition, he told his press conference, New York has come down the cities' crime table one place — to tenth (`Boy, I'd certainly hate to 'Do you think we're drifting apart?' live in the other nine', muttered the woman next to me).

He thinks the crime rate would be still lower if his remedy of capital punishment was applied. 'Would you pull the switch, Ed?' called an abolitionist. 'That's such a dumb question — those things are done by professionals.' One other reform he has not yet managed is the removal of the United Nations from New York. He was par- ticularly incensed by the UN vote after Israel annexed the Golan heights. The Post also thinks the UN should get out of town; it ran a telephone poll on the subject that drew 54,000 replies, seven out of ten being in favour of expulsion. Mr Koch would have thought the Post's anti-UN editorial prizeworthy, too. `Mr Koch gets it right when he says that if the UN moved to Vienna, where it owns alter- native accommodation, no one would ever hear from it again.' The UN itself officially described the Post's campaign as `demagogic'.

So the views of Mr Koch and those of the paper of which Mr Murdoch is editor-in- chief often coincide. How far the paper's Draft Ed efforts really influenced Mr Koch's decision to run is uncertain. Some people, including at least one Koch press aide, think it did. Others are less sure. But few people doubt that the Post's whole- hearted backing of Koch's coming cam- paign, which starts in April, will be welcome indeed to the mayor. Already, ac- cording to a New York Times columnist this week, the Post 'has become a Koch political pamphlet'. One black, talking about the Post's support of Koch, said, wonder what they want from him later,' and roared with laughter. New Yorkers are regrettably cynical.