In Northeast, Rumblings of Discontent With GOP

FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — In front of the Operating Engineers Union local hall there stands a statue of old Samuel Gompers, the labor leader, forever enshrined in mighty stone.

“Say to them that as I kept the faith, I expect they will keep the faith,” reads his epitaph. “They must carry on.”

Voters here have tended to think like that too, though to the dismay of Gompers’ heirs their granite-like loyalty has been to the Republican Party. Long Island is where New Yorkers moved after World War II to escape the great Manhattan monolith. Nassau County is where GOP leaders run perhaps the nation’s most successful Republican organization.

Now, as the 1996 election season unfolds, there are cracks in the GOP stone. Consider Frank Stark, 46, divorced and out of work, who sat in the union hall recently in his “Big Mac” blue bib-overalls. He described what it was like to join in a protest at a rally here for House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas. Stark is a registered Long Island Republican. It wasn’t easy for him to carry that picket sign.

“But I didn’t know what else to do,” he said. “If the Republicans have their way the way they seem to want it now, things won’t be long for Long Island.”

Just as disillusioned is Eli Soblick, a retired New York City high school principal. Today he plays pinochle at a Nassau County senior citizens center. In the 1980s, he was a Reagan Democrat, one of those precious voters who crossed party lines and helped elect Republicans.

“This year there’s going to be a change back to the Democrats in that Congress,” he predicted. “Look what’s happening to people like ‘Newtie’ [House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia]. We should give him a box of lollipops; it’s childish the things he’s pulling. He’s not for the people with this ‘contract for America’ anymore, and I don’t have the feeling for him or the others that I thought I did.”

Nationwide polls show the Republican Party in serious trouble, and the comments of such working-class voters as Stark and Soblick who have been backing the GOP help explain why. Their words also shed light on the recent scramble by Northeastern Republicans, led by Long Island’s own Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato, to distance themselves from Armey, Gingrich and the rest of the party leadership.

Suggestions by some party officials that they might change Social Security or alter Medicare and Medicaid have prompted misgivings among many Republican backers here, particularly the elderly, such as Soblick. And efforts to repeal labor’s cherished Davis-Bacon Act, which require contractors on government projects to pay union-level wages, frighten blue-collar voters like Stark, a heavy-machine operator who is lucky these days to find work for just half of the construction season.

They are put off, too, by party moderates and hard-line conservatives blaming each other for the party’s infighting on Capitol Hill--a spectacle that leaves them wondering if the party in Washington is able to coalesce the national power it won in 1994 after so many lost years as a minority in Congress.

Joe Mondello, chairman of the Nassau County Republican Party as well as a national Republican committeeman, tries hard to practice former President Reagan’s 11th Commandment: Never speak ill of another Republican. But like other Long Island Republicans, Mondello is growing frustrated with a party leadership that is trying to say and do too much even if it harms the party’s core membership.

“I’ve been with Newt Gingrich and heard him speak,” he said. “I agree with every word the man says for 20 minutes. But then he goes on for 10 more minutes and that always gives me pause.

“Now, he has many, many fine ideas. There are things that are definitely beneficial to the American people, like trying to bring expenditures under control and trying to balance the budget. But there’s always that other 10 minutes, where he goes that extra mile. He takes that extra step, and that really does hurt us.”

In the industrial Northeast, many party members feel as though leaders like Gingrich and Armey, who represent districts in the South, are forcing their regional viewpoints on the rest of the nation. Some believe the kind of regional fractionalization is at the heart of the party’s woes.

“The Republican Party has a real strong base now in the South,” said Rep. Peter T. King, the Republican who represents much of the Nassau County suburbs in Congress. “But we’re just consolidating that base at the expense of our swing voters. Gingrich and Armey are appealing to the mentality of hillbillies. They’re making it a Southern party at the expense of the rest of the party and our Reagan Democrats.”

Given how rapidly political fortunes have changed in the last few elections, no one can rule out the possibility of the Republicans turning around their current problems in the Northeastern suburbs. If they do not, however, the damage could be serious.

While representatives from the South form the backbone of the Republican caucus in the House, the GOP majority depends on a couple dozen representatives from suburban areas in the Northeast, Midwest and West. And on the presidential level, large-scale defections in the suburbs would doom Sen. Bob Dole’s chances not only here in New York--a usually Democratic state--but also next door in Connecticut and New Jersey, which are often swing states.

Lee Miringoff, executive director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., argues that the party’s current problems come down to the fact that Republicans, energized by their stunning victory two years ago, took that as a mandate and tried to go too far.

Two Long Island voting blocs that have been generous in past years to Republican candidates are labor and senior citizens. But at the Operating Engineers hall and the Franklin Square senior center, attitudes are changing.

Florence Chilton, a heavy-machine operator when she can get work, left the Democratic Party for Reagan in the 1980s. But this summer she is going back. At 37, the mother of three, her drop in annual pay from $35,000 a few years ago to $20,000 today leaves her no choice but to oppose Republican Party leadership plans to repeal Davis-Bacon, she says. Nor does she care for some Republican talk about allowing striker replacements on federal jobs.

At Franklin Square, it is a matter of economics. Joseph Bruno, who is 83, retired years ago from his job as a ladies’ garment shop worker. Nearly a third of his $318 a month in health benefits comes from federal programs, such as Medicare. So just the talk of slashing those checks has sent him thinking about Democrats, even though Republican leaders loudly deny that their plans would cut benefits.

“I’ve always voted Republican, but I think I can vote [for] Bill Clinton,” he said. “He’s done pretty good, and he’s done nothing to hurt the old people.”

Sitting across the pinochle table, 69-year-old Santo Accardi, a retired pressman who left work with a disability, said he lives “comfortably” on a $1,100-a-month pension and Social Security and Medicare benefits. But he doesn’t want that touched.

“I’ve voted Republican, but what does that mean anymore?” he said. “How can this party say it’s for unity when they keep bickering among themselves?

“This year, the Democrats could run Mickey Mouse and the Republicans couldn’t beat him.”