Decision '91: The city's Progressive Council Puts Its Record on the Line

In the past few months a change has come over the Cambridge City Council. The nine councillors--usually at loggerheads over issues ranging from rent control to condom dispensers--have grown exaggeratedly solicitous of one another, and take pains to ask permission from the mayor before speaking.

Many have taken to blatant grandstanding, launching into lengthy, flowery and repetitive speeches at a moment's notice.

Council meetings stretch into the wee hours, as the councillors exercise their rhetorical skills and mastery of ceremony for the benefit of cable TV viewers.

It's election time in Cambridge, and the city councillors, all of whom are running for reelection, want your vote. According to many city activists and council watchers, they may very well get it.

Because of Cambridge's proportional representation voting system, which allows voters to rank their candidates, incumbents are traditionally very hard to beat. In addition, this is an election year without an outstanding issue to draw voters to the polls and encourage them to search for new names and solutions.

Last year, the highly controversial Proposition 1-2-3 referendum, which would have allowed occupants of rent controlled apartments to purchase the apartments after a year of residency, sparked an unusually high turnout of approximately 29,000 voters. Ten-year local activist Jack E. Martinelli, who was resident of the progressive coalition Cambridge Civic Association (CCA) from 1986 to 1987, predicts an average to below-average turnout of 24,000 or so this year.

Martinelli says this situation both favors the incumbents because they know how to campaign effectively and get out their vote, and indicates that voters are satisfied with the performance of the council over the past two years. He also points out that the fact that only 10 challengers are running this year in city elections which usually attract 20 or 30 demonstrates that potential candidates see the incumbents as hard to beat.

The only challenger to get consistently good odds from observers is former mayor and conservative Independent Alfred E. Vellucci, infamous for his vitriolic responses to any issue to come his way, who is often referred to as the "10th incumbent." So for Martinelli and others, the issue in this election race without a standout issue is whether the progressive CCA councillors, who two years ago won a majority on the council for the first time, will maintain their hold on the city government.

The return of the incumbents would cement the city's current political balance, indicating a rejection of the neighborhood and individual constituent-based politicking that the traditional Independent candidates epitomize.

"The important issue right now is if the progressives...can maintain a majority on the City Council," Martinelli says. "If the progressives hold the City Council, then I would say we've really broken the backs of the old Irish Democrats in Cambridge."

Cambridge's Independents are associated with old time, traditional neighborhood-based patronage politics and draw their support from townies with strong business or family interests in the city. The liberal CCA coalition projects a far sighted internationally minded image and appeals to the city's university and yuppie sectors. But many observers say that that stereotypical dichotomy no longer holds true.

Cambridge Republican Party head Vince L. Dixon notes that candidates from both camps stress neighborhood concerns in their campaign literature,and he maintains that the current CCA-dominated council has made significant attempts to address local issues.

"No one is more aggressive about responding to traffic and pothole issues than a CCA councillor," Dixon says. "By addressing the local service issues, the CCA has the opportunity to neutralize the independent potential and to come back and get support on those issues."

Dixon also observes that the city's Independent block has undergone "tremendous changes" over the years, as patronage politics and favors for individual constituents have come to play a smaller and less accepted role in the Cambridge political game.

Of the four Independents currently sitting on the council, only two, Walter J. Sullivan and Sheila T. Russell, remain of the old-time politicos who used to dominate the city's political scene. According to Dixon, Councillor Timothy J. Toomey Jr., who often votes with the CCA block, epitomizes the new breed of younger, issueminded Independents who are cropping up in council and School Committee races.

Dixon says that now that "it is no longer necessary to rely on the older, established family connections," the traditional independents may have seen their heyday.

However, Henry H. Wortis of the activist civic association Working Committee for a Cambridge Rainbow says that the still extant perception of the independents as responsive to neighborhood needs and the CCA as concerned with national and international issues could be the downfall of the progressives.

Wortis says that many traditional, blue-collar Cambridge residents feel that "their interests are served by people who are willing to grant personal favors."

He adds that because of the CCA councillors' voting records over the past two years and their attempts to reach out to the neighborhood vote, "A change in the traditional voting pattern may be evident this year, but it's not necessarily the case."

But even before it attained a majority on the council the CCA was able to enact substantial reforms, and even now votes on important issues are often split 6 to 3 or 7 to 2 instead of 5 to 4. So, observes 20-year Cambridge resident and activist Bill Cavellini, the loss of a CCA seat to an independent contender like Vellucci or School Committee heavyweight Jane F. Sullivan would not be the death knell for city liberals.

However, Cavellini adds that the accomplishments the council has achieved during the current term, with support from both independent and CCA councillors, may convince voters that their interests lie in returning the incumbents to the council.

The councillors earn praise from many sides for reforms, including filling the long-empty post of police commissioner, negotiating a landmark in-lieu-of-taxes agreement with Harvard and forming the mayor's committee to study town-gown issues, appointing new heads of the Department of Public Works and the Water Department and passing an ordinance requiring condom vending machines in Cambridge restaurants.

"[The council] is moving forward and I don't think it's time to turn back," Cavellini says.

Not all sectors of the city, however, are pleased with the council's performance. Cambridge's rent control program is always the focus of great controversy, and the many property owners and private citizens who oppose it fault the progressive councilors for their support of it and for a package of rent control reform passed last spring to great fanfare.

Small Property Owners Association co-chair Denise Jillson says that "we've been disappointed, needless to say" with the council's position. She says that her organization supports Independent councillors, viewing them as "more open to debate" about controversial issues such as rent control.

But Jillson agress with most council watchers that since Toomey supports rent control along with the CCA councillors, it is in a sense a non-issue. "I think it's a mistake to think that if we got a independent majority on the council rent control would go away," she says.

But no one seems to want to go out on a limb saying the Independents will regain their majority or the CCA will strengthen its majority. "It's really hard to make predictions, because this campaign has been largely about mechanics," Dixon says.

Most observers say Vellucci is a formidable contender, and many say that Independent Jane Sullivan could have a chance, because of her long involvement on the school committee and her grass-roots campaign style. Independent James McSweeney may benefit from his money-intensive campaign.

One candidate who has thrown everyone for a loop is R. Elaine Noble, a former member of the state legislature and an open lesbian who has not been active in Cambridge issue. Noble did not seek endorsement from the CCA or the progressive working Committee for a Cambridge Rainbow, although her positions on many issues are decidedly left-of-center.

Although she is running as an independent, Noble says she does not want to be identified with the traditionally conservative independents. Nonetheless, she was endorsed by the Young Independents and the conservative Cambridge First civic association, but not by the Lavender Alliance, the city's only formal gay and lesbian action group.

According to gay activist and Lavender Alliance member Arthur S. Lipkin '68, "the Elaine Noble candidacy is a clever if somewhat cynical ploy on the part of the independents to whittle away at the progressive majority."

Cavellini says that the Noble candidacy "is very perplexing to me."

"Part of it is the fact that no one's seen her in Cambridge for 10 years," he says.

According to Dixon, Noble faces the same problem confronting all fist-time City Council candidates: everyone's already promised away their No. 1 votes. He says he can't imagine her getting more than 500 or 600 No.1 votes, not nearly enough to win a council seat.

Another factor that complicates election outcome predictions is that it is not clear which incumbents are vulnerable.

Toomey, who is serving his first term on the council, is in a somewhat awkward position because he doesn't vote consistently as an Independent, but he also doesn't associate himself with the CCA.

According to Daniel E. Geer Jr., president of Cambridge Citizens for Liveable Neighborhoods, Russell and Independent Councillor William H. Walsh could stand to lose their seats if not his year then in a future election, because of Russell's apparent passivity and Walsh's sometimes allegedly shady business dealings.

But mere speculation will be superfluous after tomorrow, when Cambridge's masses will hit the polls and send their bi-annual message to City Hall, ending, for a while, the grandstanding at City Council.