Roosevelt Runs for City Council Seat

Great-grandson of the 26th U.S. President and grand-nephew of a former First Lady, third-year Harvard law student Mark Roosevelt '78 hopes to win a seat on the Boston City Council in next year's election.

While the 26-year-old Roosevelt does not attribute his political aspirations to his lineage, he says he is not embarrassed by his near automatic name recognition. Seventy-five of Roosevelt's classmates sponsored a fundraising party last month and raised more than $1,800, according to David G. Golden, who is in charge of Cambridge fundraising for Roosevelt.

"We think it's great that someone in the class is doing something to fight Reaganomics and take an active role in politics," said Evan C. Wolfson, a third year law student.

Roosevelt has raised $8,000 in the past six months, but says he must raise at least $50,000 by the end of his campaign for the eighth district city council seat, which includes parts of Boston's Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Mission Hill, and Fenway neighborhoods.

In 1975, Roosevelt worked as ward captain in city councilor Larry DiCara's re-election campaign and in 1977 he was campaign manager for John O'Bryant, the first Black member of the Boston School Committee.

According to Michael J. Astrue, who has coordinated several local campaigns, Roosevelt's major hurdle will be the September primary." Astrue said that unlike some of his opponents. Roosevelt has "no readily identifiable core constituency."

Roosevelt's declared opponents are David Scondras, who has run unsuccessfully for city council and is strongly supported by gays; Dennis Quilty, assistant district attorney in Suffolk County, who emphasizes crime-related issues and Judy Porteus, who stands to gain support from women voters.

Next year's Boston election will be the first since the 1940's in which city councilors are elected by voters in individual districts rather than by residents at large. There will be nine district seats with an additional four "at large" seats.

Roosevelt says the new system will allow him to concentrate his campaign on the area where he has lived for four years. The district which is commonly referred to as the "most widely contested most spirited seat in the city," according to city councilor Raymond L. Flynn, includes students, elderly, upper class residents, and "a mix of third or later generation Irish, Hispanics, and Blacks," Roosevelt said.

Roosevelt says that with 63 percent of property in the district on the tax-exempt rolls, institutional expansion is a major problem.

He supports regulations banning condominium conversion and halting all tenant evictions. Roosevelt is also calling for a "return to cops on the beat," to reduce crime.

On city-wide issues, Roosevelt cites what he calls the current city council's "lack of leadership" in easing race relations tensions.