Politicians Open Battle for Boston, Cambridge Pollings

Cambridge and Boston municipal election campaigns, traditionally quiet during August and the early part of this month, will get noisier and noisier as election day on November 6 draws closer. For both cities, the election will be the first definite test for the present reform-backed administrations.

In Cambridge, ever since voters chose the present city manager--city council system in 1941, the reform group, the Cambridge Civic Association, has had a majority of the members in Cambridge's nine man council.

But this year, the anti-C.C.A. group, calling themselves "Independents," have for the first time been able to put up a strong state against-the C.C.A. So they are planning a vigorous campaign in hopes of gaining one more seat on the council, thereby controlling the city.

The present nine members of the city council, including Mayor Edward A Crane '35, are running again, along with 19 new candidates. Four of seven present school committeemen are in a field of ten. A University faculty member on the school committee. Robert Amory '36, professor of Law, will not run this year; he is at the Army's General Staff School in Texas.

Boston will pick from five candidates in its mayoralty race. The two principles are present Mayor John B. Hynes, who has been backed since his first election two years ago by many Boston reform groups, and former Mayor James Michael Curley, who served a term in the Federal Penitentiary at Danbury, Connecticut, for mail fraud.

Tradition points toward Curley's victory since he has always won an election after a defeat in the preceding one. But political analysts point to the fact that Curley's once powerful political machine has lost much of its might since the colorful leader took control of Boston at the beginning of this century.