Several Dem machines take it on chin

Continued From Page 20-A Coggins asked: "How can you debate with someone who is old enough to be your mother?"

• Seattle: Charles Royer, a television newsman who spent seven years covering City Hall, will now move in. Royer, 38, defeated another political novice, Paul Schell, 39.

Spokane: Ron Blair, another former television newsman, exploited his visibility and recognition to defeat City Councilwoman Margaret Leonard.

Buffalo: James Griffin, 48, a Democratic state senator, won the three-way election on the Conservative line with a plurality of 14,402 votes. He pulled 42% of the vote compared to 31.5% for Democratic nominee Arthur O. Eve, a black, and 25% for Republican candidate John J. Phelan.

Eve, a black leader and state assemblyman, beat Griffin in the September Democratic primary and was favored to become the city's first black mayor.

A conservative trend emerged from the vote on hundreds of local issues and referenda. The questions varied from a proposed crackdown on pornography in Washington state

(approved) to a ban on liquor sales in north Florida (upheld).

The repeal of Ohio's recently adopted election day registration law, despite a personal push by Vice President Walter Mondale, is likely to make it more difficult for the administration to resurrect the idea in Congress next year.

In Pittsburgh, voters decided that jobs are more important than clean air. Concerned about recent layoffs in the steel industry, they voted by a 2-1 margin to ask their officeholders to fight for jobs by seeking changes in existing pollution control laws.

In Oregon, a bond issue that would have authorized the state to fund development of non-nuclear sources of energy such as the sun, the wind and the ocean was voted down.

In Boston, Louise Day Hicks, the once-powerful leader of the city's anti-busing movement, was narrowly defeated in her bid for re-election to the City Council. She lost to another busing foe.

In San Francisco, Harvey Milk, 47, became the first avowed homosexual to be elected to the Board of Supervisors.