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Edward KocheEdward Koche
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Session:         Page of 617

That campaign was an interesting campaign. Here's Levitt, poor Arthur Levitt who's a very decent man. Today he's so old. If he walks in a parade, I have the feeling he's going to pass out and yet he's in every parade. He puts one foot in front of the other in total pain. (interruption)

Arthur Levitt. I'm going to give you a late story about Arthur Levitt. In this last race in 1974 when I ran for Congress, he's running for reelection to the controller's office, and we decide on the east side of Manhattan that we would put together a single piece of literature. Instead of having 16 different pieces of literature for the Assemblyman, the State Senator, Congressman, Controller -- I mean there are so many people running and people just throw away that literature in the subways because there's so much of it -- we decided we would print a million pieces of literature (I don't know what the exact number was), assess everybody depending on the area that they covered (it wasn't very much, like $300... would be Arthur Levitt's share; for an Assemblyman maybe $150) and then one person can hand out a piece of literature for ten people. We called up everybody (the campaign managers) and said, “Do you want to do it?” and they said, “Oh, yes -- delighted.” So we told them what their share was. Arthur Levitt's share was about $300.

Everybody sent in their money, we printed the literature, with the exception of Arthur Levitt. He didn't send in his money. We called. They never said they weren't going to, but





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