1300 More to Go

ON A WINTER'S night in April, 1948 the white clock in the almost-empty Cambridge City Council chambers struck 1 a.m. The nine councilors had been going at it for hours, ballot after ballot, trying to find a new mayor for Cambridge, and this particular vote, one of hundreds taken since the session had opened, didn't look promising.

The clerk methodically ticked off the names; the councilors droned out their picks. But this time it seemed different. A couple of the councilors whose names fell early on the roll cast their ballots for an unknown councilor, a nobody, someone not even campaigning for the post. He in turn, in a moment of glee, shouted his own name. And then, maybe by mistake, or sheer exhaustion, the anonymous councilor accumulated a fourth, and then a fifth and final nod. The deadlock was smashed. The councilors awaited the bang of the clerk's gavel officially ending the stalemate.

"But wouldn't you know it, after everything is all set and finished, the old clerk had a paralytic attack," recalls then councilor Eddie Crane '35. And as the stick froze in his hand for what seemed like hours, one of the brief majority quickly withdrew his vote. Nobody had five. The balloting would continue.

"He thought he had the mayor and they pulled the roof on him," laughs Crane, the king of the Cambridge mayors, (he has served four times in 20 years). It took another couple of months and 1321 ballots before Crane had to settle it himself by breaking with the liberal ticket and casting a vote for an independent, thus ending the longest mayoral contest in the history of Cambridge.

But that "marathon" as the race of 1948 is affectionately dubbed, was on the lips of all who can remember that far back, as the city council adjourned after its 21 unsuccessful attempts to elect a mayor for the 1976-77 session.

For some of the observers packing the pews every Monday night, the tug of war that the independents and liberals have played weekly since reform Cambridge civic government began, seemed foolish. After all, as at least one observer marvelled while walking out of the chambers this week, if the mayor's position is such a ceremonial one, why all the fuss? Why can't one of the independents coax the other four into unanimity? And if the mayoralty of Cambridge really is in name only, why can't the liberals put four and one together and make five?

"Everybody refers to him as being ceremonial, but in any legislative body the power of the gavel (which the mayor holds at all times except during the mayoral election) can be very effective," says Crane. "And," he quips, "if the mayor's job is used properly it could get you a lot of number-one votes in the next council election."

Crane showed just how far the mayoralty can be parlayed into getting those crucial top votes in Cambridge's proportional-representation elections. After getting elected mayor in 1950-51, he doubled the necessary quota of number-one votes needed to get a seat on the following year's council.

IT'S NOT just the prestige of the title that carries the weight with the voters the next time around. The mayor has at his command a car and a driver, three staff positions, a summer job program employing 150-200 boys, an expense account for travel and for wining and dining dignitaries, $1000 more pay than his fellow councilors, free office space, and control over the city hall switchboard.

This year one of the mayor's supposedly ceremonial duties--his role as chairman and ex officio voting member on the Cambridge school committee--looms especially large. The committee, a liberal bastion in the late '60s and '70s, is now split evenly, 3-3, among liberals and independents. At stake with the swing vote are the hiring techniques that the school committee uses: either the patronage system as the independents have favored in the past, or the liberals' system of hiring outside professionals at greater expense. Also, the fate of the alternative school programs, experiments of the liberal-dominated era, may hang on what happens in the weekly balloting.

The race for the 1973 mayoralty showed to what great lengths some of the councilors are willing to go for a crack at the mayor's post. After weathering a deadlock that took the councilors into February, Walter J. Sullivan, a moderately conservative independent, promised to vote for a new city manager, in return for the four liberal votes needed to make him mayor.

Crane says now that such moves are something new, abusing a system of reform government designed to eliminate the politics of hiring and firing city managers. But such deals have been more a matter of course in recent years than exceptions.

Although there are no concrete deals in the wind, a couple of things seem obvious. The independents, hopelessly divided by their own selfishness and vanity, don't seem to be able to compromise at this moment. The liberals, strongly united by their progressive Cambridge Convention platform, stand a better chance to break the deadlock. They would do well to ask a recently-friendly independent, such as Alfred Vellucci, to endorse a good deal of their platform, including the needed retention of rent control, in exchange for their four votes. A liberal mayor would be best for Cambridge, but that's unlikely, given the liberals' minority status, unless they grant major concessions to an independent.

Whether the mayor's race is to be settled before the end of the month, or whether it will grind on into April, depends largely on the behind-the-scenes caucuses. But even if they do keep balloting until April, they'll be able to transact their regular business without interference. It was only after the marathon session of '48 that the council agreed that it could move other business before it found a new mayor. During that long winter of '48, while the council fished for a mayor, it "couldn't do anything," Crane remembers, "except maybe pass an order for an emergency snow removal."