Council Hopeful Waits, Waves at Traffic

Five days after negotiating a multi-million dollar zoning agreement between Harvard and Cambridge’s Riverside neighborhood, City Councillor David P. Maher kicks off his day by waving at the traffic for two hours.

“This is the public humiliation phase of the campaign,” he said from the center of the Fresh Pond rotary. “No one wants to be waving at cars.”

A policy wonk known for negotiating complicated and lengthy zoning agreements—and for winning elections by a razor-thin margin—Maher says politicking is not his forte.

Nevertheless, flanked by half a dozen supporters, the 45-year-old incumbent put on his best smile to greet thousands of cars, which rush by the rotary.

“When they see you out working hard it actually makes them feel better about who they’re voting for,” he says.

Cambridge Mayor Michael A. Sullivan toots his horn and waves as he whirls around the rotary in his SUV.

Like Maher, Sullivan is one of nine incumbent city councillors seeking re-election in today’s election. Eleven challengers are also vying for spots on the council.

Maher draws his strongest support from West and North Cambridge, and his base includes a lot of firefighters, police officers and teachers. His elementary school gym teacher joined him on the rotary to hold a sign for two hours.

Cambridge’s “proportional representation” election system means that every vote counts.

Voters rank their choices, and when a candidate gets enough top votes to achieve “quota”—10 percent of the vote—the rest of their ballots are credited to the next candidate on the ballot.

This year’s election has been very quiet so far, Maher says.

Maher still glows when he talks about the compromise he helped engineer between Harvard and Riverside. Under the final agreement, passed at a marathon meeting last Monday, Harvard will give the neighborhood a public park and 30-34 units of affordable housing. In exchange, the University will be able to develop its property in the area.

Like most city council incumbents, Maher claims credit for the agreement, which he calls a “huge accomplishment.”

“When you think about the naturally tense relationship—the huge University in a very small city and encroachment it involves—it is the first time in that relationship that city council took a proactive role and got more than before,” he says.

But as Maher went door-to-door on the other side of Cambridge, retracing the steps the previous night’s trick-or-treaters, the Riverside deal seemed distant to voters.

Three issues dominated Maher’s brief conversations with neighbors: Cambridge public schools, rent control and the various home improvement projects that dozens of people were trying to finish on a 70-degree November day.

Kathleen Knisely of Newman Street pushed aside Maher’s introduction.

“I remember you from your school board days,” she says.

After eight years on the school committee, Maher was happy to talk about his plans to improve the city’s school system through greater cooperation with Harvard.

Average test scores at Cambridge public schools rank among the worst in the state, even though the city boasts one of Massachusetts’ best-funded districts.

Maher plans to involve Harvard in an advisory partnership, which he says would benefit the University and the city.

“I don’t want a takeover like in Chelsea, but it would be a win-win,” he told Knisely, referring to the state-endorsed program that gave Boston University control of the ailing Chelsea school district in 1989.

Maher says the city’s school system hurts Harvard’s attempts to woo new professors.

“When a professor is deciding between Cambridge and Stanford, he’ll choose Stanford because of the schools,” he says.

The contentious issue of rent control also weighed on some residents, like John Carbone, a plumber by trade who was laying brick for his own driveway.

Carbone worries that the ballot proposition on rent control will be passed (see story, page 3).

Rent control would discourage owners from investing in the upkeep and improvement of their property, he says.

Maher opposes rent control, which he says is a divisive and destructive policy.

“In this market it is very ill-conceived,” Maher says.

He said, however, that the proposition had little chance of passing because it requires the approval of one-third of registered voters—a number roughly equal to voter turnout in a typical year.

Will the Real David Maher, Please Stand Up?

When not talking to volunteers and voters, the normally upbeat Maher seems very tired.

By noon he was yawning.

“I’ll be glad when this is behind me,” he told Paul Toner, leader of the teachers union and a longtime campaign advisor.

The night before, Maher handed out candy to 75 kids first at his home and later at his office off Porter Square.

“I always give away big candy bars,” he says with not a little bit of pride.

Along with his reputation for candy, he is known as a particularly hard-working council member.

He is quick to point out that he is one of the few city council members who also holds a daytime job.

This gets added on top of his council work, which Maher estimates took about 40 hours per week during the zoning hearings. At the height of the negotiations, he put in 16-hour days.

He worked 28 hours a week at his day job up until Wednesday, when he took a leave to commit himself full time to campaigning.

Maher pitches himself as a hard worker, not a politician.

“I do not self-promote as much as some of my colleagues do. I’m less of a speechmaker than a worker behind the scenes,” he says.

But out on the rotary, Maher was very much on stage.

And the dozens of honks, toots and waves, undermined—if ever so slightly—Maher’s claim to being a behind-the-scenes player.

Unlike many in local government, Maher does not have aspirations for higher office.

He says he blinks too much to be photogenic, and his $45,000 campaign budget is half that of some of his competitors.

“It’s not necessary,” he said of an $80,000-plus campaign chest. “We run an efficient campaign on $45,000.”

To save money, he reuses his signs from the last election.

There is definitely an understated quality to Maher, who sports a blue denim shirt tucked into black dress pants but no coat or tie.

“It’s a Saturday. I think people understand,” he says. “Was Anthony wearing a suit?”

Maher was mildly relieved to hear that Anthony Galluccio Jr., the Council’s top vote-getter and Maher’s friendly competitor, was waving to voters just a few blocks away in a white shirt and tie, but no suit jacket.

Still, while Maher portrays himself as a man more interested in legislation than elections, he is no stranger to politics.

His late father was a city councillor as well as a Cambridge police officer.

Maher says he enjoyed being the son of a politician.

“I assumed I would try it,” Maher says. “I think I’ll do it for as long as I can be effective.”

Maher says he started off thinking that he would give politics one chance, and if he lost an election he wouldn’t run again.

When the 29-year-old Maher lost his bid for school committee in 1987, he put off quitting. In 1989 he lost in a second bid for a school committee seat, this time by just 11 votes.

But the razor-thin margin made him more committed to running again. Immediately upon losing, he went to look at the voting rolls to see who hadn’t voted, and just started off with the street where he grew up as a child.

“I saw my old neighbor and said ‘Oh my God,’ why didn’t she vote for me? What did we do wrong? By the third person I would have grown angry if went any further so I stopped.”

This impressed on him the importance of every vote, especially in an election like this—where 1,600 to 1,750 first-place votes is typically enough to win election.

With that in mind, he spent his Saturday stranded on a circular island of grass in a rushing stream of traffic.

“There’s no greater rallying cry than losing an election,” he says, adding quickly, “but I’m not looking to do that again.”

—Staff writer Jonathan P. Abel can be reached at abel@fas.harvard.edu.