LoPresti to Face Travaglini

After several months of battling for the Suffolk-Middlesex State Senate seat, incumbent Michael LoPresti '70 and Boston City Councillor Robert Travaglini face the voters Thursday.

LoPresti has based his campaign on his 15-year record of achievement in the State Senate and has garnered the endorsements of several liberal groups and most of Cambridge's elected officials.

Saying that the region needs a "full-time" state senator, Travaglini and his supporters have charged that LoPresti spends too much time in his job as a private attorney to be an effective representative, that he is inaccessible to the average voter and that he too often acts to please lobbyists at the expense of constituents.

While he won his first election on promises to respond to voter needs, "somewhere along the line, [LoPresti] lost that commitment" to accessibility, Travaglini's campaign manager, Carmen Monks, said.

"It's an issue of full-time representation. [LoPresti's] a full-time attorney, [while] Bob is a full-time politician. $48,000 or $50,000 is a full-time job and should be taken as such," Monks said.

But members of the Cambridge City Council, eight of whose nine members have publicly endorsed LoPresti, say that he is an effective representative of his constituents and believe there is no reason to replace the sixth highest ranking member of the State Senate. The ninth member, David E. Sullivan, serves as general counsel to the Secretary of State and may not legally make endorsements.

"Every time I ever called the man for a constituent, he has responded," said City Councillor William H. Walsh. "My experience with him has been very positive."

"A good representative doesn't have to be somebody who sits in an office all day," Walsh said. "The fact that he sits in another job, as an attorney, so what?"

Cambridge City Councillor and former Mayor Walter J. Sullivan Jr., called Travaglini a "nice kid" but added that "we've had good representation with Michael [LoPresti] in there, and you don't change a horse in the middle of the stream."

Walsh and other LoPresti supporters have also called Travaglini a cynical opportunist who has changed his views on a number of major issues and has suddenly gone over to the liberal side to sway voters.

"Clearly, he's voted one way on some issues and now changed his position," Walsh said. "My impression is that if [Boston Mayor] Ray Flynn told him to jump off a building, he'd do it, and I think that's not good leadership."

LoPresti and his backers have also castigated Travaglini for supporting an increase in property taxes that were capped tightly by Proposition 2-1/2 in 1980. LoPresti's largest campaign advertisement blares that "Proposition 41/2," which Travaglini supports, would double taxes in the region.

"That's just an example of Mike taking a statement out of context," Monks said. "No way are we advocating a tax increase."

However, despite the endorsements which LoPresti has received from city councillors and community activists, not everyone believes that LoPresti is as liberal as he describes himself.

Marguerite Gerstell, a lesbian candidate who dropped out in July after LoPresti received the endorsement of the Greater Boston Lesbian and Gay Alliance, called LoPresti a political opportunist in a letter to the editor of the Cambridge Tab last week.

Concluding that, "If LoPresti is a progressive, I'm a monkey's uncle," Gerstell charged that LoPresti had misrepresented his State Senate record to win over liberal voters and knock her out of the race and then switched back towards the right.

"He [LoPresti] started running like crazy for the gay vote" and began advocating positions that were "not at all in tune with what his previous positions had been," Gerstell said in an interview yesterday. "The LoPresti strategy was that he had to turn himself into more of a liberal."

"He went further to the left than he would have if I weren't there in order to get the endorsements." Gerstell said. Such a move, Gerstell said, was enough to "effectively deflate my candidacy."

"[Cambridge City Councillor] Alice Wolf is not going to endorse someone unless he is liberal," responded LoPresti campaign chairman Michael Matt.

Gerstell said that both candidates have flip-flopped on the issues, but said that the Travaglini grassroots claim "is at least credible. What you got in LoPresti is someone who relates to lobbyists and not to people," she said.

Matt said that Travaglini's efforts at portraying LoPresti as inaccessible, unrepresentative, and a tool of lobbyists reflected his desperation in running against an incumbent "who has a great record, who has all sorts of support."

"You don't get that kind of support being those things," Matt said.

Although Gerstell and other analysts say they expect LoPresti to retain his seat because of heavy liberal support, Monks claimed an upset is in the making. He said blue-collar voters in East Boston would go heavily to Travaglini, creating the margin of victory.

"Come Thursday, we're going to surprise some people," Monks predicted.