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Post Office Politics
Insight on the News, Jan 31, 2000 by Liz Trotta
Residents of ZIP code 10021 in New York City are filling the coffers of both parties.
To people who live on Manhattan's tony Upper East Side -- especially those who for months have watched black limousines clog their gilded streets -- it's no news that political power recharges itself in the townhouses of the rich. But the advocacy group known as Public Campaign underscored this local wisdom with its recent report on fund raising. According to Public Campaign, Democratic presidential contenders Bill Bradley and Al Gore have received more contributions from the 10021 ZIP code than any other in the nation.
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ZIP code 10021 -- part of the "silk-stocking" district, so-named to reflect its elegantly clad residents -- is a narrow strip of land along three of the world's most famous streets: Park, Madison and Fifth avenues. Its boundaries run west from the East River to Central Park, and from the Metropolitan Museum of Art at 80th Street on the north to the Regency Hotel at 61st Street on the south.
In this enclave live the best and brightest, Manhattan-style -- hundreds of the people who virtually run the publishing, media, fashion and securities industries and, most of all, those who have made fortunes in investment banking and real estate.
Famous faces rarely turn a head because there are so many of them: Woody Allen, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, Bill Cosby, David Rockefeller, Al Pacino, to mention a few. According to Zip Code Demographics, the per-capita disposable income for the population of 107,197 is $74,896.
Donors in this mostly white neighborhood of prewar buildings, glossy, modern high-rises and smart boutiques coughed up about $1.5 million to presidential candidates, with $500,000 each going to Bradley, a former New Jersey senator, and Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the GOP front-runner; $380,000 to Gore; and $92,000 to Republican John McCain. Gore and Bradley reportedly are courting the same donors, and Gore's daughter and campaign manager conveniently live in the coveted ZIP code.
Political power has shifted often in this territory, from Republican John V. Lindsay in 1958 to Democrat Ed Koch in 1969 to Republican Bill Green in 1979 to Democrat Carolyn B. Maloney in 1992. "Anybody who's anybody lives there, anybody who's made a killing on the Internet, Wall Street, whatever," says Koch, who represented the neighborhood from 1969 to 1977. "There's money galore for both parties. It could pay off the national debt."
Barbara Corcoran, chairman and founder of the Corcoran Group, one of the city's top luxury real-estate agencies, agrees. "The bluest-blood money is in this ZIP code, along with a lot of new money," says Corcoran. "It's raining Wall Street money. And it seems that all the political fund-raisers wind up living here, too."
Corcoran adds that the average sale price for a six-room apartment in this neighborhood is $1.272 million, slightly higher on Park Avenue, and the average buyer is 36 years old with a net worth of $5.75 million. An average one-bedroom apartment goes for $319,000.
New York 10021
Democratic presidential contenders Bill Bradley and Al Gore raised more money from residents of Manhattan's Upper East Side, ZIP code 10021, than any other area. That neighborhood ranked second for GOP contender John McCain, behind Paradise Valley, Ariz., and third for Republican front-runner George W. Bush, behind two Dallas areas.
* ZIP CODE 10021
* POPULATION AS OF JANUARY 1999: 106,972
* NUMBER OF HOUSEHOLDS: 64,624
* RACIAL MAKEUP: 87.6 percent white, 8 percent Asian or Pacific, 2.7 percent black, 1.7 percent other
* MEDIAN AGE: 44 years
* BIGGEST AGE GROUP: 25 to 44 (38 percent)
* SECOND BIGGEST: 45 to 64 (30 percent)
* AVERAGE DISPOSABLE INCOME: $74,896
* TOTAL RETAIL SALES IN 1998: $1,619,669,000.
Source: Public Campaign
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COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
