August 7, 2006
More on Jacob Javits Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 10:15 AM EST In response to my post on Jacob Javits’s doomed 1980 reelection bid, Fred Schwarz wrote: “Javits had known for years what a nut [Elizabeth] Holtzman was. . . . So instead of bowing out gracefully, Javits dragged his weary bones around the state one last time to save the country from having a 1960s-style radical in the Senate. Rather than being a case of giving in to pride, it was the last and perhaps most noble and selfless act of a distinguished career in public service.”
Fred is right that Javits pointedly criticized Holtzman during the 1980 campaign, especially over her position on defense spending. But I don’t think he’s right about Javits’s motivation in running. The senator surely believed, for a time, that he could win re-election on the Liberal line. Eleven years earlier, in 1969, New York City’s incumbent Republican mayor, John Lindsay, had lost the GOP nomination to a conservative state senator, John Marchi. In a three-way race, Lindsay had gone on to win the general election solely as the candidate of the Liberal party. So there was some precedent for what Javits was attempting.
Moreover, it’s well-established that Javits viewed Holtzman as the lesser of two evils. On November 5, 1980, in the aftermath of the election, The New York Times reported that “in private, aides say, [Javits] was far more blunt. He feared that by staying in a race he apparently could not win he would merely draw votes from Miss Holtzman and help elect Mr. D’Amato. Despite his neutral comments last night, his opinion of Mr. D’Amato in private bordered on contempt. Mostly, he resented the way Mr. D’Amato had drummed away during the primary campaign about Mr. Javits’s age, 76, and his motor-neuron disease. He was afraid, friends say, that by remaining in the race he would tip the balance of victory from Miss Holtzman to the Republican candidate.”
It seems that Jacob Javits ran as a Liberal because he wanted very much to remain in the U.S. Senate, not because he wanted to sabotage Elizabeth Holtzman.
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