Three Minorities Vie for Seats in Cambridge City Council Campaign

When State Rep. Saundra K. Graham first campaigned for a seat on the Cambridge City Council 15 years ago, some of her neighbors were surprised that a Black woman was running for local office.

"I'd knock on doors and people would say to me, 'I like you. I like the way you vote. But you're Black," Graham said yesterday about her earliest campaign and the close-mindedness she met.

"But now there's a mixture of folks coming into this city, and I can appeal to people all over Cambridge," said the seven-term incumbent for reelection.

This election year, two other Blacks will appear on the ballot alongside Graham, prompting observers to ask whether Kenneth E. Reeves '72 and Renae Scott could take away some of the Riverside resident's long-time minority support in the city.

"For years Saundra Graham has had the leisure of the Black vote," says Miles Byrne, the campaign manager of one of the coalitions running for city council.

Byrne, a newcomer to Cambridge politics, says there could be a serious race for Black support among the three candidates--especially after a series of critical news articles on Graham appeared while she was overseas last summer.

Popular Stands

Local pundits say that three Black candidates, all endorsed by the liberal Cambridge Civic Association (CCA), could draw at least 5000 voters from Cambridge's Black community in their favor.

Under Cambridge's system of proportional representation where voters rank candidates by preference, name recognition and neighborhood support are considered important factors in gaining number one votes.

To win, however, all three contenders "must have across the board support to be viable," said first-time candidate Reeves.

Although the Harvard alum and attorney for the United Auto Workers says the three are not competing against one another for votes, Reeves said organization is essential to coming out ahead in the field of 22 would-be city councilors.

Reeve's endorsements by four major Black ministers in says Lieb, who has decided not to run so she'll have more time with her two young children. "They don't seem to make judgements according to what is best for the kids."

Koocher agrees with CCA member Leib in the ways jobs are filled and potential applicants are recruited. Both believe the committee must continue to move away from filling school positions solely from within Cambridge, and rewarding teachers and staff solely on the basis of seniority.

"There is still an element of political interference," says Koocher. He belives much of the patronage and seniority-based promotion schemes are implemented by "traditional independents" and not CCA-endorsed officials, but still sees the problem as affecting the entire system.

"People should not be so naive as to think that people like Frank Duehay and Alice Wolf and the other pious hypocrites of city government are not as much into patronage aas some of the other hard-core political figures they criticize," Koocher says.

Long Range

Leib believes that the school committee needs to focus more on its objectives, giving more thought to long-range goals rather than short-term remedies. She says that Superintendent Robert S. Peterkin's "Key Results" proposal presented in June gave the committee an agenda and has pulled the community together.

"It's the first time that anybody has tried to get an overall goal with long-range plan," says Leib. "He's very conscious of people's different interests and concerns and he takes the time to respond to them."

At the same time, she points out that parents and school staff were not consulted before Peterkin's proposal was formulated. The extent of parent involvement within the school department, particularly in evaluating teachers and administrators, has become an important issue in this year's committee race.

"There have been too many times that people have been ignored even though their input has been asked for," says Leib